Bang and it's dark
and the world swims
with a noxious green
gas, thick, supple
and hard to get out
of your clothes

I am here alone and
night has left a thick
tattoo of self pity
and cigarette ash
on the lap of my
my nocturnal landscape.

Crediting my account
I find myself short again
and there is no one to
pick up my bill.

I carry it
around my neck, sad and proud.

As much as my finances
are a shame
they are also a set of dog tags
that I have worn far beyond any
service.

And a knee-jerk liberal
and an angry republican
and a sick f*** with vomit
on his teeth and lust in
his breath argue on into
the haze.

But the haze has to end.

It has to give something back
instead of wringing me dry.

All my words
all my feelings of a better life
waiting in a small town, a
yeller dog and ah shucks for
day's libation

And it is living in my head
quietly crying, quietly reminding
me that I used to do it all the time
hell when I was a kid I could do it
10 times a night, but
that left with a car payment
and an after school job, tieing
up the loose ends and drawing
them tight around my neck
until it gets so hard to breath
that I wish I had never written
at all.