“The Happiest Drunk”
 
The orange sky behind yellow leaves
remind me of my own grey hair
and how I used to be
the happiest drunk, smiling
between glasses of whisky
while all the sadness swirling
in my brain could never find
a drain, but now my despair
has become dry like a desert,
where I’m slowly dying
of a thirst
that was supposed to save me.
  
“An Unopened Beer”
 
If I could, I’d sit down with you
and the ghosts you brought home:
smoking cigarettes, drinking beer,
cursing German snipers,
but you died when I was three,
so I never had a chance
to refill your glass or hear
about the dead friends
you carried with you
long after the war,
while too many are content
with it all being
another chapter in history
textbooks, filled with footnotes
instead of dead grandfathers.
 
“Loud Simplicity”
 
I used a towel as a cape
when I was a kid,
and playfully stomped as I pretended to fly,
saving the world with a loud simplicity,
but now, my feet kiss the ground
(a sober kiss like one reserves
for a dead aunt), while the world
prefers to have a screaming match
with itself,
leaving my own frustrations whispering
inside empty whisky and beer bottles, 
before another hangover 
wails like a newborn.