No Other Life

                             Reeling from drink and living in the stink
                             Of an addicted life where booze is rife.
                             Passed out on the sofa after the bout
                             With the bottle pouring at full throttle.
                             In the morning comes another warning
                             But there’s no doubt that there will be no drought.

                             The seduction will cause his destruction
                             And one day he will die and we will cry;
                             As his life is bent on bottled torment,
                             His mind decays within the liquid haze.
                             The cloudy mist within which death exist
                             Carries the weight of this most certain date.

                             The so-called disease that takes life with ease
                             Can be stopped using a no to the flow
                             Of booze-- if that were the choice he would choose.
                             His end will come- alone-- without a friend.
                             That is the end of days to drunken ways,
                             When all is gone and there is not a dawn.

                             It is a high cost, living with the lost,
                             Paid for in grief and constant disbelief
                             Of what we see acted out in the spree
                             Of alcoholic drive that can’t survive.
                             The poisons breath will deliver his death
                             Into the arms of the fated alarms.

                             How will I feel when death grabs at his heel?
                             Will I be reeling in pain from the strain
                             Of a life that destroyed husband and wife?
                             When one refuses to halt the assault
                             Of alcohol or drugs, there are no hugs
                             To comfort the dad that lost his sick lad.

                             Will my life return to normal or burn
                             With shame, thinking somehow I was the blame?
                             My intellect is here to inject
                             Its knowledge from the drunken son college,
                             But it is the heart, no matter how smart,
                             Thought— “maybe I could’ve saved my baby.”