Frater diligo

Nothing could be done to efface or erase the disgust
Written on his face in gorges and pits of quickly earned age
Heavy packs of shadowy stubble entangling a gaunt frown
Hooded sweatshirt hiked up around his ears
Armor from the world - the world is his source of misfortune
A stunted lifetime of liquor soaked reminiscences
Tennessee honey vats and alchemical homebrews
Barrels of bathtub gin to disrupt the even flow of suffering
To introduce discord into the overwhelming tide of being
He imbibes and struts to summon the absurd
and bask in its beautiful, blinding cascades of light
Fluctuating between haunting dirges and cheap
thrills: fumbling syntax from relapse to deaf ears
I don't recall time before the fact
of his disillusioned self, a monster of disquiet
that pervades my own notions of certainty
His perpetual doubt calls into question
all I've considered sealed and answered
This drunken pimpernel; this Socrates of dribbling booze
and ludicrous bouts of Lil Wayne lyrics
I see his skeleton peering out, eager for an errant cue
His time is short - that much is clear
But after time ends, where do the bits
and parcels within the clock go to mourn?
How do the cogs and minute hand
reconcile years of adrenal shock?
Brutal agony and repression - a middle class concern
His prophecy was made under bated breath
Stinking with the redolence of finely crafted whiskey
It croaked of its own accord:
"All that once was will cease unto the gripping blackness
and in so doing reclaim the life before life
All pain, all anguish, all years spent twiddling
thumbs and grimacing in memorium - dissolved
in the alkaline rebirth of decomposition"
My only wish is that when the truth comes
to fruition, I'm near the hearth
Warming my hands for Winter's approach