Substitutions are short term solutions
To problems that we cannot resolve
Even though I am human, I need to evolve
My hand is not my companion
It doesn't ask me how happy I am
The twitch happens and its time to go again
Is this how sobriety is supposed to play out?
Kicking ***** to the curb, only to receive
In return an obsession, over my depression
To try and write down life's lessons?
Yet with all these journals half empty
What exactly am I saving for me?
Disappointment, because I missed the
Appointment to my own creativity?
I do have a proclivity to playing out
My own self-fulfilling prophecies
Oh well, that's just me

Don't believe, for one second,
They'll hear nice things from me.
Were you dying for some kind of originality?
Well, let me just say,
It's still death by stupidity.
I'm telling you now,
I have nothing to say.
No one will hear of your generosity
(though we all benefitted);
Or your loyalty (of which I know firsthand);
Your discretion (none ever accused you of less).
I can't find the words. I'm speechless.
I warned you.
Stop smoking (both)
Stop drinking (especially every morning, afternoon and evening)
Stop being idle (and your posture *****)
Stop being a lap dog (stop licking boots)
Stop this slippery ***** of a lifestyle (there's ground below)
Stop taking bad advice.

You didn't Stop.
Now you're stopped.

That's all I have to say. Not much. Is it?

Sparkling honey-colored liquid  
waits, a bored date,
a veil of ten thousand beads.

Why not just
stop?
Why not just?
You are not a prisoner.
Can walk away, heels turning up and over stones
without a ****.
Why not?
Why?

You----
variant of swilling ancestry
dug up and replanted 1685 miles
to miss a death, a birth, a marriage or two
still can be seated down
and the similarity is striking
when we hold the glass.

You---
wishing to escape an invisible trap
you maybe knew at one point existed
but drank it in and conquered it
so you thought
why not?

I don't want to go a
gentle journey,
from convoluted to
convalescence.
I quit drinking again;
found love in
the psych ward.
She's my broken-winged
angel.
So much pain behind that
sweet smile.
She's drinking again,
and I can't fix her.
It hurts, like an arrow
through the stomach.

I have a rabbit that comes
to my yard.
She lies in the same
spot every day.
So much so, that
she has worn down a
place for herself--the surrounding
grass grows around her.
She feels safe.
I feed her spinach, and my
brother sings her
show tunes.
That's what we get
for having a drama
teacher for a father.
Thanks, Dad.

It's been an unseasonably
cold April.
I feel sorry for Harvey;
That's her name, thanks
again Dad.
I talk to her softly.
"Hi, baby--what are you doing?
Do you want to come in?"
She doesn't answer.  I'm sober.
I want to take care of her...
Both of them...
My two little bunnies.
It's cold, and the wind is
blowing hard,
beneath a mean grey sky.

The very thing
I seek for hope
is robbing me of it.
So I drink more;
Surely, this will
do it.
I become more
hopeless,
degradation of the
mind sets in.
I'm sunk in the mud
and despair.

I wonder why it took another mans tears for your ears to open to the truth.
Years I’ve spent crying over you,
Getting drunk off the whiskey residue on your skin,
Spinning in and out of your life
Alarmed and dizzy.
A meteorite that never quite hit the mark.

How were you to know you used to be the sun,
That you’d cast us into an ice age?
We will orbit you until there is nothing,
Spinning ourselves into oblivion.

I wrote once that your hands cradled dust,
But that doesn’t do justice the worlds your hands crafted
Or the lives you lived.
A father, first and foremost.
It saddens me I will never know all your children.
I doubt you feel despair that you never knew them either.

my descent into Darkness;
i remember how beautiful It felt.
being swallowed into The Pitiful Abyss
until i was sealed underneath Its surface.
it was pure Bliss.
numbing my emotions,
Its darkness encapsulated my feelings,
keeping them buried out of sight.
falling   diving   sliding
              sinking.
the days grazed into nothingness.
the agony was gone.
It felt wonderful.
there were fires burning above the surface
but no longer were they felt by me,
only others.
It was a beautiful descent.
yet as i slowly began to lose my breath,
Its pain began to to pierce my lungs,
asphyxiating me by means of emotional strangulation.
my unbearable grief fired into my bloodstream,
the effects worse than ******, and without the pleasure.
It's flooding through my veins
as tears endlessly cascaded down my cheeks.
"How did I get here?"
the pain became unavoidable, unbearable.
but how can you become what you already are?
it was then when i realized:
i wasn't sinking into the Abyss,
i was drowning inside of It.

we've been playing for months, yet
i am no longer the master of my own game.
i sit and wonder, "how did i get here?"
without ever truly questioning myself.
simply because i knew.
it is as though I am currently without a name.
considerably since "This" is no longer Me.
who I am, who That is,
                I am no longer certain.
I have simply become a replica of Its impression on Self.
      "tick tock, tick, tock."
the arrogance of time refuses to stop,
and "now" becomes a fleeting "then"
as My life slips through "Her"
into a dazed, drunken phase.
time only lingers in the present
for those who are truly Present.
Her time is lost, so what is My time
when the days blur together?
"Her" memory sanitized and wiped cleaned.
***** cleans wounds, right?
Dissociation to self,  the insouciant desire to care.
an erratic, chaotic, tumultuous torrential downpour.
I'm theatrical sure, but passionately so.
"Passion," i'll drink to that.
                   "Pain" has me pouring another,
                                                    and another.
"Reward me," and we'll cheers to the clear liquid that
warms my throat with each increasing gulp.
"Relax." you worked hard, take one or two.
              Six deep, Seven's the magic number,
                          plus, what's one more?

yet one will never be enough.    "sleep or shoot."
            
                            don't forget to swallow.
                            you know you love it.

stop saying no when You can say "yes,"
and stop holding back, when I'm telling You "NO."

                         stop fighting...
                                                ...su­ccumb to the misery.
  
 besides, just one pour will make it all better.

second sight alternate mind
sliding down the slippery *****
chasing a rabbit into fantasyland
the world is the same but changed
this drink is full of laughter
this drink makes everything strange
and why am I here you may ask
as I refill my already refilled glass
to find myself of course
I've looked everywhere else
and this is the only place I exist
at the bottom of a bottle
recycling  the abyss
I am alive tingling inside
and I know he is waiting
on the hangover side, but
I'll let him deal with it **** it up
while I just crawl away to Hyde
until he is again enticed
to walk away from his Jekyllite life
we're all inmates so what's your poison
prisoners here in alcoholism