The taste of liquor took away my father;
black bottle’s shroud shadowed his soul,
laid him to an early rest in a hoarded squalor.

Bag full of religion could not save him,
a thinning sight scraped flat from alcohol,
barely daring to breathe, rather grim.

Swallowed the booze, could not talk to,
he rode the feeling like a destitute
and scorned the tick of the poisonous brew.

A scowled age struck down my mother,
trolled her grave in golden slumber,
for thirty years she prayed to be with my father.

He counted the time with god to a bother,
shrugged off the tongue lashings by fallen angels,
and scorned the sacramental wine from holy fathers.

O ransack the graves, anonymous alcoholics,
find another man who mangled his life,
you vampires are dirt searching for a holy bottle,
the dead are scared of you, apostolic.