WITH A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY BY HIS SIDE

Copyright 2013 Gordon Kuhn

 

With a bottle of whiskey by his side,

he fell asleep and softly cried;

as he laid upon the cold ground that day;

on the cold, cold ground in the mottled month of May.

Leaves, spent, brown, tinged with orange lay

where his body had come to stop and stay

at a place where others passed him on their way

going to someplace other than there

walking and trying not to glance over and stare

at where he lay with a bottle of whiskey by his side.

For his life was spent on the outgoing tide,

and for him there was no place left to hide.

Clothed but naked upon his grassy grave,

Un-dug then was his plot of clay,

No strength had he to stave off the coming moments,

Of a passing soul of torn torments.

Simply this was not his way.

He conscious chose no more to stay.

Life for him had slipped on past.

This day would simply be his last.

To live with the growing pain.

To live with self-projected shame,

circled, flushed, and down the drain,

too late then to retrieve or stop the stain.

With a bottle of whiskey by his side,

he knew his life was on an outgoing tide.

Where friendships once felt good and strong,

They had all failed to make it long;

nothing then left for him to do,

life for him was finally thru.

With a bottle of whiskey by his side;

he fell asleep and in his sleep he cried.

With a bottle of whiskey by his side;

he curled up in a restless sleep,

one far more than ever deep,

there drifted he on an outgoing tide

and in his lonely sleep he slept and died.                                        Sunday, January 13, 2013