The Alcoholic
You were an alcoholic, my mother says,
Fixing me with her timid tear-watered gaze –
You lived in paradise, on the wings of angels,
And you were an alcoholic…
So we had to take you away
Like Eve with her apple we had to remove you,
From the temptation – from your final graceless fall
We did it to save your life
She says it, tremulously, and I make no rebuke,
Offer no sharp retort
But she knows, and I know, that tearing me from Paradise did no good
That I am still an alcoholic; always will be
For though the booze was cheap in Paradise, the thirst is in my soul
And wherever I am, it comes along too
A dehydrated demon, crouched in my belly,
A baby screaming for milk – laced with your finest vodka
I crave the drink, I cherish the drink…I hoard it like Gollum with his precious ring
And whenever I can, wherever I am, I thirst and I swallow
And I fly into the air on tenuous wings,
Unshackled from sobriety for a brief tempestuous time
But the hills skimming below me are bleak,
There are no angels with me, and my heart is a cold lump of lead
I am consumed by bitterness
For though the alcohol remains, the landscape is not the same
And all is now black where it used to be shades of grey
And oh God, how the memories haunt me now,
Memories of when I used to live in Paradise, and drink…
How I soared above those Utopian beaches of golden sand,
Over those glossy jungle-garmented hills
They were my salvation, my succor during my drunken despair
But I was cruelly torn away from my precious Eden not so long ago,
And sent to purgatory to repent, still nursing the thirst, deep inside
And now here I sit, on the banks of the Styx, still thirsty – still drinking
Still an alcoholic, swallowing acrid mouthfuls of angst and self pity
But there is no Paradise now to comfort me, no angels with gossamer wings
No one to wipe the whisky tears that stream down my ashen cheeks
I am an alcoholic still, with nothing left to live for and nowhere left to go
So when my mother says she wanted to save my life – to save me from myself
I look at her in sullen silence and wonder;
How the loss of Eden could ever have taken away my alcoholic shades
When the mutinous eyes that stare through them belong, solely, to me?
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