Simplicity is the best dish:

Easy to prepare and mimic, over and over again. You could make it ten-thousand times and it'll still feed you.

It'll keep you full on those nights when the only thing keeping you warm are thoughts of success; of drowning in cash flows. New clothes and a home right in the middle of a city.

You're too old for that.

Oh, no, you see your friends choking on fine cigars and driving cars that they can barely afford, with kids pushing at their knees.

There's soil under your fingernails, and you can't cook with filthy hands.

So you think. You pray.

Ruminate for years until you decide that it's alright.

Live quick and harsh and ***** because food tastes good and she does, too.

While satellites come close and leave,
whole moons and the swirling dust
of reflective obeyers,
it arrives from distance.

Running a course through weight
from a pencil-thin horizon brow,
it might have streaked across darkness.
With the dead shines behind,
washed clean in a trail of wild flame and
then fallen, bolide broken into cascade.

Or rising to collide,
only skim the surface.
Ruffle the sheets of land,
wrinkle fertile leas and parched sands.

No, to strike full and shudder
the core and extinguish
light and life.
With unswerving smite.

From underestimated range
and unmeasured haste,
a peacock tail drags far behind.
Each one diamond dolefully eyed.

Is this eccentric orbit
the only the path seen?
Fastened to your celestial belt
and looped in an endless trajectory.

She hits the bottle
like she’s playing blackjack
Always wanting more
And inevitably losing it all

She stands in the remains
Of the destruction she’s caused
Filled with regret
Finding salvation
At the bottom of a glass

Coming home jubilant
To speak of all her successes
And all I hear is a buzz
The slurs in her speech
And lose sight of all else

Hearing loosely threaded stories
From that point on
Trying to find the holes
Where the honesty shines through
Knowing she’s far too happy
To be telling the truth

Filled with self loathing
Reeking of liquid courage
Losing her grip on what lies
She’s told before

She loops
And falters
At which point
I close my ears and walk away
Not wishing to waste my time
On tall tales and a tossup
No matter which side the coin lands
I’ve lost myself
In this battle with your illness

Nobody chooses a bottle willingly. A pill or a loaded gun, in the end it's all the same.

We're waiting, still, hiding. In our holiest of places:

The kitchen and the office. A quiet sideways-slide into the last available stall in a casino washroom. The seat is still warm.

Teachers don't tell kids that drugs are bad. They told us that we were the evil ones for deep-******* a bottle of ***** every Friday.

They didn't know what we had to go home to.

Cancer sounded better than living past 20, and that's the thing that they'll never comprehend:

There's always a reason underneath overdose.

The only time a drug is bad is when you can't afford it, and you're sitting alone in a fetal position crying in need for a chemical bliss that you've caressed over and over; a blanket covering memories. Feelings. Emotions.

The only time a drug is bad is when you're too **** poor to grab anything better than a box of Benadryl and a dimebag of shake.

The only time a drug is bad is when you're anything but rich an' white and pretty, because then you're not addicted, you're having fun with the price of 1,000 a week at an all-inclusive rehab resort.

Drugs don't discriminate, but people sure as Hell do.

There's always a reason underneath overdose.

There's always a reason underneath.

There's always a reason.

There's some joy in getting old.

Broken bones and snapping hips.

Wrinkled skin and falling hair.

Wasted days that aren't spent wasted;

Coughing lungs and swollen hands.

I've seen the seas of sorrow high.

I've loved and been loved by.

I saw a war and guilt and pain.

I've bled and cried and mourned again and again.

Now I have more years behind me than ahead.

I'll continue on living, but I'll still end-up dead.

There is little joy in getting old:

But it's still there,

and I'm still here.