Bourbon tears burn

You will spill your medicine 

on the wounds you’ve inflicted

Crying and begging

Killing and fucking

complaining and weeping

writing and drinking

smoking and coughing.

You have never reflected on 

these minds and their importance  

You’ve studied and understood the shapes, 

the curves, the soft meat, the wet and warm 

interior since your adolescent years, 

but never have you truly reflected over the innards.

You’ve read about it under oaks with bloody knees

 and wet hair. You’ve tried and failed with an anxious

 mind not understanding what it is you’re missing.

 You’ve kissed your mother, hugged your father, 

disappointed your teachers, comforted your sister

 and laughed with companions. You’ve soaked up warm 

grease with bread out of cast iron pans and sung

 songs about brotherhood with ethanol stained breath. 

Your clothes have absorbed the smoke from various

 burning plants and you’ve shared bottles, food 

and cigarettes with dirty, shaky hands.

But still you do not understand the mind 

of the creatures. The left side of Atlas' brain is 

impenetrable to you. 

As you romanticize the spirit and play with 

the body, you do not even reflect on the mind and 

it’s deepest desires.

You understand you're not the best. You understand

 you aren’t her favourite and that you,

 like the boys in your mind, do not claim to own her.

This makes you morally superior.

Still you see shadows of these women next to

 heads hanging on your wall. Vaguely, slightly. 

Ghosts and spirits puking and crying, laughing 

and moaning, haunting the sweat drenched sheets.

And even though you talk and laugh and listen,

 it is never with the respect humans have for eachother. 

Bragging and boasting about killing an animal you cared for. 

You tell yourself it isn’t only for your pleasure

You flaunt your insecurities and use it against her.

But as she’s kneeling and crawling naked over 

your toilet seat, filling it with bile and Zinfandel 

while you, stuck in bed, see a man in his thirties falling 

from the fifth floor, kissing the concrete.

You laugh, you tell her to come, and you say;

“This is for the art, and only the art. 

Art transcends human suffering”

You sound really fucking stupid.