I was consumed with loss, and with the tragedy of addiction, how it had claimed my father so quickly, and the literature and music I surrounded myself with at this time reflects that. This was one of the poems I was struck by.

“…the bull-black, deadweight wines that we swung/towards each other rang and rang/like bells of blood, our own great hearts./We slung the drunk boat out of port/and watched our sober unreal life/unmoor, a continent of grief;…” 

The heavy weight, the desperate sadness of that unmoored state, the ‘unreal life’ believed in.

Published in White Lie: New and Selected Poetry, Graywolf, 2001 and available to read online at the Poetry Foundation website