sardine

everytime i'm drunk
i become
like the chicken of the sea
everything real
goes out with the yellow leak
my body like a tin can junk car
like the kind my grandpa
used to sleep in
every car i see
i want it to be my coffin
just hammer in the nails
so i won't get free
accidents
have always been my thing

in my suicides
i've tried to cut it with a razor
and drown it in the river
but all i get is foam
many years of drinking
but still only foam

i am playing go fish
like my grandpa
and niether one of us
has anything to give
it's a red herring
this inherent thing
because granpa is dead now
like the sardines
he used to eat
and i still remember the smell
of them rotting
-those fish who made me afraid of dying

with their eyes always open
no lids but the old tins
and their mouths a big gaping O
like a witness
to a terrible crime
and it was
because i live in a time
when grandpas
die alone
as they waste away on rivers of beer
thinking it would take them somewhere
but it was all just foam