I cannot recall the moment
that sanity became a working goal.

Drugs are expensive,
sobriety; even more so.
Somewhere between all of this
I will have to learn to live.

The homeless are pushed out of town,
asleep beneath the railway bridge
that sends rain through rivets
like bullets.

I keep punching the clock
as it throttles Eros with slow hands.

“Sometimes just a smile is enough”
reads a cardboard placard.
But I have not cracked a smile
since I started popping these pills.