In dreams you insist on a bit of silliness

before your gravitas, burnished to unusual 

patinas from vague years in rancid cantinas, 

weighed in. The fuzzy shift from childhood awe of you

to the sort of seriousness that slights the old is 

slippery. We are paying homage to the brown 

devil in the bottle, who claims to love us while 

he desecrates our livers. Knowing no bottle 

offers a river of salvation, but love and 

habit when fermented and aged overwhelm.

I turn to look at the none-space you inhabit 

and revel In the spike of pain that announces 

the end of this dream-hallucination. I have 

dreamed awake without sleeping, nothing registers 

As real. The sheetrock walls feel like paper as I

punch my rage through. Your grey ghost sitting in my wingchair, 

already threadbare, tries to read in a language 

it no longer has any use for. I take the book 

from your hands busy with tremors and read to you,

stumbling through Italian. My tongue numb and clumsy, 

I’m comforted by alcohol and nostalgia.