Remembered screams

Every night I listen to those screams
her drunken staggering, desperate, aching screams
in the middle of night and day
Her husband shouting, hitting, escaping
the burdens of life
in twisted alcoholic exorcism
as I drag my mother to her bed along the floor
over thousands of misshapen beer cans
never discarded but kept like sparkling
crushed dreams of alternate lives
and I feel myself sinking into that drunken abyss
trying to understand this normal childhood
in that ragged middle class house
sustained by mirage of financial aspect
every spare penny, spent on drink
my brothers themselves, wild and grown
returning for nights of gloried vengeance
wreaking new, crisp images with the knife
of ingrained remembered pain
and still I listen to those screams
as later in years I look back
and never remember
those people dead. My parents.
killed, destroyed by drink and yet I see
my mother lying there
unconscious on the floor
in that house constantly filled
with the stench of acrid vomit
Those people dead. My father. My mother.
As I now write words describing the house
of that little boy who would grow beyond his years
quickly learning those essential truths of life
maturing under the sounds of screams and
I who became a man by the time I was twelve
am now at twenty eight nothing more
than a disillusioned child
still listening to those desperate, aching screams