I am your enabler. <br />Here I find my awakening, <br />a purpose to your dwelling, <br />juggling excuses like a seasoned acrobat. <br /> <br />You covet these clear bottles, <br />wicked as diamonds; <br />I hide them, purposefully <br />making it difficult to sustain <br />your habit. I dispense <br />the dogma of your disease <br />like lozenges. <br /> <br />But there is no wisdom <br />to my words; <br />they fall on you <br />like scattered pearls while <br />you sleep, bottle in hand, <br />and the stink of gin <br />on your pillow. <br /> <br />There is no salvation <br />in hell or heaven or all <br />the places in between. <br />You live in too many dimensions <br />like a thief and share <br />your purgatory with me. <br /> <br />All night your candles <br />have been glowing, incandescent <br />flickers. The pillars of your <br />strength weaken me. <br /> <br />Mornings you waken to a gut <br />full of bile, that rancid <br />cocktail, a sort of sentimental <br />slaughter you spew at me. <br />The bottles I gather clang <br />like bells <br /> <br />summoning you to another death <br />communion. If I could only <br />distance myself from your <br />graceless suicide, these piranhas <br />that tear chunks <br />from you, day after day. <br /> <br />These are your obsessions <br />that crack you from a dark <br />altitude, and I <br />am your melancholy whore. <br />So drink! Drink! Drink yourself <br />to death. <br />I just can’t do this anymore.<br /><br />Caroline Misner<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-alcoholic/
