I sit here,
lost in vagaries,
holding hope
and whiskey straight.
Daring fate,
or confrontation
to erase me.
From broken down buildings
on stricken roadways,
I had built
a house of shame
and I had wandered
far from anyone
who knew my name.
Junked out beggars
became my vicars
and the gutter my
baptismal font,
as I cursed the angels
and their sexy cousins
for making me feel again.
I poured out liquor for the dead
in the streets of nameless towns
and I broke laws
that had not been enforced
for centuries.
No one knew me.
I was a criminal,
I was disgraced,
I was disbarred;
excommunicated
by the way I loved her.
When I stood at the foot
of her grave,
I knew I would lose my mind.
When I walked off the edge of the earth,
no one would know.
I would find her in these bottles
and drag her out of my veins with time,
but I was seeking the ocean
from the shores of Las Vegas.
My long stare sees a thousand miles now,
for there is no horizon safe from my gaze.
The only thing that this world ever gave me,
it stole back again.
Now there are only bitter whispers
and broken glass,
and the rasp of my breath,
sucking back another cigarette
and flexing my hand around my gun.
There will never be another
baked tequila sunrise,
for the azure of her eyes
was replaced with ochre
and this world gained another enemy.
Another fantastic misanthrope.
Guardian revenant of desert trailers
and stray dogs
and gap-toothed hookers.
Finding a reason to live in the dirt
is only easy for seeds;
everything else here is dead.
Love sets on life like a hot mirage,
baking the hardpan
and setting off the fuses of my restraint.
Hell will come with the darkness
and heaven to meet it
and I will be there,
waiting to kill them both.
