Tom

a persona poem.

it's disheartening

to watch the faces that look about as old as yours fade into their mistakes.

they laugh for 60 years

and by the 61st, they cry with their trachs and sandpaper voices.

the most exciting news on the soapbox is a wink from someone in year 65 at the end of the bar.

You live your life, it sucks, then you die.

my biggest competition is the life I chose to live.

i licked each fermented, alcoholic teardrop until the fog hugged my frontal lobe like old friends.

we never got along.

i'll wake up the next morning and do it all again.

"will you sit here and cry with me?" i ask the world.

it did not answer.

i waited and i cried.

i’d never hugged anything more tightly than my mouth did an unfriendly bottle.

too bad i had a daughter

who lived her life, let it suck, then waited to die.

it was a sad, little thing.

she took her small-town daddy blues and brought them to the big city.

i wonder at times, did she feel like me?

did she love the bottles because i couldn’t love her?

i’m sorry.

i’ll wake up another morning and do it all again.

it was too bad, i bred a b*****d.

he was small and weak and lacked.

he’s living his life, it sucks, and eventually he’ll die.

he took his blues and sharpened them.

i’ll apologize to the boy.

he’ll ignore me

and hug the bottle i bought for him.

i’ll wonder when the round lips of the bottle will grow sharp.

will they cry for me

alone and ask the world

to cry with them?

Author's Note

Please feel free to provide constructive criticism. I want to grow as a writer and will take advice.