deepundergroundpoetry.com

Ship Wrecked

You clutch your bottle like an old anchor,
The package store must be your harbor.

I had walked with you to church
So you could tell somebody about it,

Like maybe that you love to swim, forty-proof,
Or that you yell louder than the whales wail.

But there were no priests, no nuns; you cried
By the altar as if it were your own funeral.

Then at home you sank back into the current
Of piss-stained sheets, browning dry-yellow pools

Curving your upper lip as the anger puffed in your guts,
Puffed them out in sad pregnancies; the drinks kick you-

And I watch from the other room, yes I do,
And I never cry,

I write poetry about the death in you like it's something cool.
I give the bottles in the trashcan personality and meaning

But they never tell me why you like them so much,
Or why you try to drown yourself routinely.

They just swerve you home from the boatyard, the liquor packy
Three docks down, and rock you into a big red boat,

A big swollen boat that doesn't know how to dock.