The Inventory

Jeff and I plied his dog with beer one night.
Oh, how he lapped it up.
At times the past washes over me,
and as if I could ever stop it,
I rebel, and then revel
in the flood of memories I cherish,
And revile.

Too much of this,
not enough of that,
too much like myself,
or not enough.
Calamity upon calamity,
things happened as if by themselves,
But not.

Moment by moment,
and also in great bites,
life happened to me,
and now seems so inconsequential
in the face of monumental loss.
Self destruction seemed,
So attractive.

Who is that other me,
who didn't value smiles, and laughter;
Who died of sheer grief,
enduring hell and flowers?
Drunken regrets count for naught
while you are too drunk
To regret.

That dog wandered in circles
and then headlong into the wall.
My heart asks questions
for which there are no replies.
These difficult tasks cross paths,
each demanding their pound of ego;
For what reward?

Of what was I so afraid?
From what did I run?
The very things I wanted
so deeply, so longed for?
Squandering memories dear
to pursue an uncertain death,
At life speed.

As if in retaliation
for thinking I could forget,
the pain of my wrongs,
recriminations flood back,
emotional prison becomes hell,
and hell becomes,
Me.

And I become another
drug-fueled psychotic,
Until the walls
of my ever-shrinking cell
tower to the heavens;
no end in site,
again today.

With options short
I go on from step to step,
without knowing what the moral is,
because in my many lives
I am absent, here now,
and also the man I was,
At the same time.

Perhaps that is the real mystery;
Jeff's dog never drank again.