Locking Lips

A black gnat crawls across the screen,

another intoxicated soul trudging towards the light.

A specious promise of freedom,

a thoughtless truncation of an insignificant series of events --

a streak of innards and imperfect ideas.

Moonlight drips down the windowpanes,

the addict on the moon

pissing alcohol into midnight gutters,

grinning his way across the weary evening.

Maundering to an apex,

stumbling, collapsing over a horizon. 

My laughter is stretched, raucous, 

around the lip of this bottle. 

I collapse in the colorless light of this midnight monarch,

this drunkard king of the evening,

a singular darkened spot

shuffling towards his pale visage,

towards freedom.