POEMS

by Robb Allan

LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL

and the wind blows
trash across the
street pockmarked with the
armageddon at hand

i was sitting in the corner
booth greasy with crisco
fires burning out of
control has been wrested from
me smoking a cigarette wondering where my
dinner burnt to a crisp is

lightening carrys
banners across the burnt out
sun screaming in agony as
meltdown singes the earth
scorches the stick figures
buried standing up
and erases from my mind
memories of lying face down
in the mud screaming 'go ahead kill me'

and the shadows whisper grim

and the oceans wash in tide

and silence is The Reaper

and then i waken to the ragings
of a middle aged woman trying to
push sewing needles through my eyelids
chanting some voodoo curse
as i try to shake off last night's run in
with that wild turkey
feathers still clutching my lapel

amd then i wonder where she came from
my mind a bubbling cauldron
seething with skeletal dreams

i've awaken in hell
and as i look into the abyss
the abyss folds shut around me
lying alone in a gutter filled with
acid rain and sleeping

an uncluttered sleep


RECOVERY

That was the year my mom's
brother disappeared just walked
out of the institution he'd been
drying out in although he was
as wet when he left as when he went in
i never saw him without a bottle of
something one time i even caught him with
paint thinner they found a body near
Gallipolis floating face down in the
Ohio river several months later
but it couldn't've been him
the skin was still intact
an obvious suicide i suffered with
his affliction up until a year ago
when i suddenly thought of him,
as i lifted the bottle of Absolut
to my lips, and where he might of gone
where he might be
to this day twenty years later
no one has ever searched for him,
just wrote him off as dead, masquerading
as the compassionate masses too lazy
to get off their asses and look for clues
in the tall grass or too scared at the
bones they may dig out of the closet
and i set the bottle down on the table
stare at it awhile grab a slice of pizza
and a few cheez curlz and drown my
sorrows in an ice cold Pepsi.