Stricken Sick

My lips are cut and the alcohol stings them.

My throat is dry but filling with blood.

I hear no bells nor no one who rings them,

As I look to the sky, my back to the mud.

I swore as a child that I would be

A laugh, in short, a memory.

An elusory call to a woman's remembrance;

An unlit fire of an older spark.

But now it seems that I can see,

So far away, too far for me...

Too sly for love, for hate, too intense.

I'm a man on fire who's afraid of the dark.

And to call would be weak,

For to call is to cry.

If I need no one, and no one need me,

I wouldn't fear myself to die. 

But it's you I love more than life;

You, the memory of happier days.

It's you, for you, whom I would do

Any extreme act only to reject the praise.

Yet here I am, dying alone.

And paying no mind to the taste of blood,

My eyes to the sky, my back to the mud;

I'll leave here an ordinary collection of bones.