SOLITARY DROP

Looking through the glass at the world outside
I see a young man who has lost his pride
Stealing and begging from the people on the block
So he can go and get his whiskey on the rocks

A bottle of hooch, his cravings it will feed
At the moment its all in life he will need
Blended Canadian he opens without haste
Not a single solitary drop he will waste

The warmth caresses and soothes his mind
And takes away the pressures of the daily grind
He fills his glass again, over ice it flows
The unbalanced warmth inside him grows

With every glass he pours, the edge he encroaches
The beast inside him smiles and approaches
By the end of the night he is no longer himself
That person has been put to the back of the shelf

He lays his spinning head on the pillow to rest
Thinking this night was one of the best
Twisting and turning all night in his bed
Dreams of shredded bodies filling his head

He awakens with a jolt in an unfamiliar place
A uniformed man says soon the judge you will face
Fear grips his mind as he strains to remember
A woman's face he sees, body dismembered

Visions of carnage flood his mind's eye
He knows if found guilty he surely will die
Twelve people in a box damn him to hell
As they lock him away in a five by nine cell

His bed sheet tied to the bars of the door
Wrapped around his neck he tightens it more
He gasps as he thinks of the family he hurt
But soon he will be covered with six feet of dirt

The last thought he had as he stepped off the brink
He could almost kill for one last drink


--James B. Moss
4.25.00