Were I a man of great riches, surely my roster of friendship would grow, reaching wide,
Her net casting at greater and darker depths, and I would be surrounded with love and lovers, comrades deep who knew me from afar, yet claimed kinship,
A walking celebration ensuing, lest the well run dry and the bottle bear cap in lieu of cork, drinking as savages drink.
My oldest and dearest friends would see my new clothes and friends and laugh in my face, because no price I could muster can erase a lifetime of excellence in the field of mediocrity.
She tells me that I would have a lot more money to spend on whiskey if I didn't spend so much money on whiskey, and on this circular logic, I am inclined to agree, if only because I am far too drunk to come up with a compelling counterargument.
If I drank less often, better whiskeys I could afford, but they won't get me any drunker than the others. If I had more sober days between, that might give enough time for a hangover to set her hooks in me, and I've had a remarkable run.
I've a firm belief that you can't get a hangover if you don't stop.
I would walk into the fire to bring her touch but closer to my lips, no price too great to keep her love entwined with mine.
With smile I offer my life in trade, her secrets safe, her dreams secured, that I dare not quench the fire, lest the price paid be bargain to the prize received.
No, I will not sully the gifts of her affections, will not slander her whispers, gold unto mine ears.
Her toll will be paid, her pleasure, my penance.
Born into servitude, we feed this machine, this machine that subsists on blood and sweat and soul alike
As we walk we see our fathers break, as their fathers broke before, cogs in a device that never stops, never falters, it chews them as cud, and all it wants is more
We take their place in this machine, and work and blister and drive with all our piss and passion, that someday, we will be greater than the sum of our parts, that we will become the machinist, but it will never be.
Luxuries are dangled before us, driving us onward to an impossibility masked as a certainty, inmates told they are the jailers.
You just keep that motor running, Boy. You'll be done soon.
I'm always asleep when she gets home, or so I would make it seem.
If I'm still up and walking, I turn everything into an argument, a fight for the sake of having something new to talk about.
From drunken slumber I reluctantly rise, and go about the machinations of my role, a choreography of sorts, second nature by now.
As I roll off of her, reeking of Bourbon and the layered sweatings of a three week bender, I wonder what the fuck she sees in me at all.
Fucking me makes her filthier than I am.