The blind drunk night comes creeping down

Throat heavy with the darkness of moon’s weeping

Silvery tears of estrangement from daylight falling through sleepy trees

It slithers past those solitary swirls of grapevine

Stuck to the walls around my window

I know now how they make wine

The deep red nectar of a night’s loneliness

Stored in curved containment of sad fermenting barrels

I know now how they make wine

The solitary night drowning within the flesh of sour new grapes

It fills them up with the sorrowed sweet poetry of old wisdom

So when you crush them under your tired weathered feet

They empty out

They empty out into the streets of your own memories, your own losses

The kingdoms of your banished ghosts swirl about in liquid depths

An alibi for living with the hollow blankness of failures

A fallen soul cries, cries among the ruins of ancient buildings

It doesn’t hope for help, but it hopes for a whiff of fine wine.

I put my cheeks against the cold window panes

And I feel the outside sinking inside me

Diamond studded skies sparkling with ruby stars

They melt away slowly in my loving gaze of longing

Little drops of red raining down into the crystal glasses

Those crystal glasses held between long fingers

Wet with kisses from lips trembling with pained silence

I know now how they make wine

I know now why they drink wine

It makes amnesia fashionable

It brings the elusive happiness just a little bit closer

And suddenly all evil and sin is swept under the rug

Everything disappears, at least for a while.  

The wine of night’s tragedy sleeps in the crevices of my mind

I dream of it often and it flows out from the slits of my eyes

I know about the stubborn red wine stains that refuse to go away

No, I know they just won’t yield.

The wines of night’s ugly mistakes crawl with the shadows of your skin.

And then the blind drunk night comes creeping down yet again.

I see it clearly silhouetted against my own blindness.