When you hear stalls emanating sobs
In cracked, ***** bathrooms, in between jobs
Drunk, gritting his teeth and getting buttfucked
By black men, grunting, as you stand dumbstruck,
Do you wonder how a man could be so down on his luck?
In a truck-stop graffiti-tiled bathroom in his white frock,
Trying to ignore the incessant crow of the ****,
Gagging between unforgiving ticks from the clock.
Sipping on beer, the **** bleeds from the cell
Spreading dollar bills over the ghost where he fell.
Pale-white, scraggly, he bends down for his cash
Using mental math to make the conversion from bills to crack.
Rope still dangling between his teeth, he drops the syringe,
Dragging a cigarette and counting his next binge.
Do you wonder if on the way to help, he just lost
His way? But he looks up to ask "the ******* want?
Are you throwing out an ad hominum argument?
Slipping into something like aluminum garments.
Throw me face down into the edge of a tar pit,
What are friends for?"
Kaysea, turn back, you don't want to touch it
Your lungs will turn black and your soul will be rusted
Over by doubt, self-deprecation and shame
You'll realize everyone else is exactly the same
Only you've changed. You don't need the shot
Lie sprawled, get sick naked in one spot (and rot)
Lest we forget the chains of superstitious fear,
The two of us would be lending bleeding ears.
Gotta wait for the grenadier to return
With the test results
What have we learned?
Gotta find the truth from within the turntables
What have you earned?
Misery loves company, and this is your catch.
You desire the freedom of looking at mirrors to retch
But it's not lucidity (you'll forget that a lot),
Just impulses revealing that which is not.
Your father'd die twice if that was your insight.
Do we all have the right to be in hell for a night?
There is a never ending layer of nicotine in my throat
And nostril scabs, and that's all she wrote, I hope.
this was my mood today. bottom. uuggh. ha.
(c) Ryan Bowdish, 2011