Alone: unable to make my own bed,
Piss unaided, or ever tie my own shoes.
For a long time, right was left.
The bed pan, my closest confidante.
The comforting smell of urine,
Knowing I was done for the day.

My friends disappeared for no one liked
The smell of death or of a life reduced to this:
Afraid it would absorb them,
Steal them away in the night,
Teach them to sing the darkest songs.

As those homebound to coffins
Playing cribbage or hang man forever.
Once upon a perfect tragedy, this very one,
I sang happily through recovery
yet my ‘Welcome Home’ was missing.

Greeted by his secret family
Via a New Hampshire under-aged whore.
Twelve years of my life pilfered overnight:
My childhood possessions
And my child-birth dreams.