Hateful When You’re Sober

Hate, the alcoholic’s remedy to sobriety. I drink hate coffee

        in the morning and a hate soda

when I need the fizz of a noon beer. No one ever tells you the truth.

        No one says, Hey man, I drink

until I am face first in the toilet or the sink, whichever is closest.

        Most nights I fall asleep quaking,

rolling back and forth. I drift off to the soft sounds of the bed frame’s

        squeak. I don’t talk about those nights,

those two years spent drunk or getting there. The poems I don’t remember

        writing, girls I don’t remember dating,

and the scars on my left leg I can’t place for the life of me. All the close

        calls and the sound of my car skidding

to a stop at the edge of the lake. How when you need the brakes

        to work the most, they splinter into a million

red hot pieces and you are stuck swerving your way into what you

        are sure is hell. I don’t talk about any of it.

I lick my lips, let the taste of hate go numb like gum that has been sitting

        at the back of my throat for an hour.

I yell at passersby and shoot children down in the streets with my middle

        finger. But look! I am alive, sitting

outside of a café on Railroad, a death mask for a face. I watch the birds fly

        over my head and I don’t feel the need to count them.