Caroline Misner - To An Alcoholic

I am your enabler.
Here I find my awakening,
a purpose to your dwelling,
juggling excuses like a seasoned acrobat.

You covet these clear bottles,
wicked as diamonds;
I hide them, purposefully
making it difficult to sustain
your habit. I dispense
the dogma of your disease
like lozenges.

But there is no wisdom
to my words;
they fall on you
like scattered pearls while
you sleep, bottle in hand,
and the stink of gin
on your pillow.

There is no salvation
in hell or heaven or all
the places in between.
You live in too many dimensions
like a thief and share
your purgatory with me.

All night your candles
have been glowing, incandescent
flickers. The pillars of your
strength weaken me.

Mornings you waken to a gut
full of bile, that rancid
cocktail, a sort of sentimental
slaughter you spew at me.
The bottles I gather clang
like bells

summoning you to another death
communion. If I could only
distance myself from your
graceless suicide, these piranhas
that tear chunks
from you, day after day.

These are your obsessions
that crack you from a dark
altitude, and I
am your melancholy whore.
So drink! Drink! Drink yourself
to death.
I just can’t do this anymore.

Caroline Misner

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-an-alcoholic/