Champagne taste with a shoestring budget.

I am back to square one.
Learning to crawl I sit in my own emissions
and wallow in my own filth.

I've forgotten how to be a man,
how to take it when its good
and drop it when its
so bad.

I spend too much time wondering
instead of just knocking down the wall
and letting the chips fall wherever
they may.

And the middle class shivers
and jingles their keys
and they toast their martinis
to their mediocre lives.
With 2.5 children and a fresh
green
American Express
with their name on it.

"Valued Customer"

I in my designer jeans
call them dillitantes
of luxury and life.

How clever I am -
but I cant stand the thought
of looking less than
polished.

I preach life in its rawest
but I don't like hotel rooms
without a refrigerator.

Is it so much more noble
to have a gut and a closet full
of irony?

Bukowski would spit on my grave.
But why should I care what he thinks?
After all he left a long time ago
and took all the good writing with him.

None of this matters.
I should probably just shut up
and find a career.

Or a better way to support my champagne habits.

Sometimes I wonder

If in the end any of what I've done will make sense.
Will I have ever truly needed to go through any of these things?
Were the deaths and disgrace all necessary to burn me into
some effigy which changed the world?
Did I need to be hardened by abandonment and poor decision making
to become some future version of myself?

Maybe.
Maybe I had to drink too much
and spend too much money.
Get arrested
or cry in front of too many women.
Have too many hangovers and days spent in bed
and bad health.
Make enough people despise me
and say unbelievably hurtful things.
I wonder if I'll hate Alice forever
or forgive her and cry at her funeral.

I don't know.
Another thing to add to the list of what I do not understand.
I just hope that I will be forgiven.
That I will not leave a stench in the Earth's nostrils
which makes the land groan and ache.

None of the past twenty-eight years has killed me
and only time will tell how much it has made me stronger.
If at all.

One day we'll see if it was all worth it or completely
unnecessary.
Until then I'll wonder
as I attempt to sleep off another
possible mistake.

Cliches

If you do what you've always done...

then you will still be up way too late
with no one to blame but
yourself.

You'll wake up with someone
you don't know and
probably don't
want to.

You're pockets will be lighter,
that's a plus,
unless they are so light that you
have to sell
your pants.

Use this as a reference.
Let this be a reminder.
No one ever got rich
off of being a
moron.