THE CAKE IS A LIE

Sober bar hopper to the bar: you are not as charming as you think you are.

Striped collars, boxing scars, gorillas costumed in silk ties just egging each other on with their
come-fight-me eyes. Ladies got their best cum-fuck-mes on.
Heels and lashes painted black to match
the absence of color that spins together the fabric of their heartless heart threads.
Wear their best organic cotton scarves tight around their necks and breasts
even when it’s unbearably hot outside.
(They must be freezing inside to wear so many clothes, a cavernous soul must get awfully cold. Best not to go explore it alone.)
Watch them finger it all night. Must be cutting off their brain’s blood supply; their laughter is so loud and wild. Their smiles seem wider with each drink they try. Even the shyest girls seem over-sexualized.  
Sauntering more casually up to every boy with a bulge. Perfect pout dares to mouth “Well, what you about?”
The oxygen is lacking; their words and morals seem a little more loose.
Each drink they sip removes some clothes but tightens round their thoughts and trepidations
 like a brand –new never worn noose.
(I bet you like to tie them to the bed post when you get em home like a bitch you’re right to own. An outside dog who only comes inside when she’s good for an occasional midnight bone).

Pleasantries and forced repetition of shaking hands and liquid wisdom.  Swapping shorts, retorts and weather reports.  Brazen boys and girls brave the summer evening drizzle to deny their lungs a clean air supply. The entrance is dotted with flickering lights
 and choking first- timers who just thought they should try.
“I only smoke when I drink; it’s not even a thing, I can stop anytime.”
(Right, I only talk when I lie, it’s perfectly fine.)

They’re real juiced up now. Dancing to the sound of their own libidos on the prowl,
the only noise heard is inane chatter screaming above some awful crackle from the static
on the low tier speakers.
Can’t even hear the bass no more.
Just hear the clicking of plastic pumps on the linoleum floor racing to the bathroom to empty their guts
so they can return to their medicine and guzzle some more. The unfortunates  get left on the bathroom floor  holding their stomachs and dignity with quivering fingers. Eyes barely open, they can’t see clearly. Just feel their way over the cool tile to the toilet when needed.  Rinse and repeat it.
They’ll  be collected at the end; an unwanted toy leftover from a  local yard sale.
We’ll try again next weekend: someone’s gotta want this  ol’ Raggedy Ann, shes only been played with  but a couple of times.
(At least that’s what she’s screaming every time she cries.)

Let’s get the hell outta here. 
Who called the cab?  Let’s walk then. But I got the tab. Fuck off then.
There’s no one in charge, no one to steer.  Cattle needs cowboys to herd them back home
lest they go wandering and  get stuck in the field all alone.
Figuratively speaking, there’s always a couple loose deer. Pretty fawns waiting to be found 
underneath the street signs and lights. Doe-eyes dimmed down, their brights are out
and they look like they are dying inside. Anxiously waiting for a gentleman with a spare seat in his ride
to offer his coat and a dark place to hide til the morning sheds light on all good girls’ mistakes;
all good girls just dying to be bad guys’ good wives.
(They’ll settle instead for listening to all bad guys’ great lies.)

“What’d you say? “
“Oh, nothing man, just that you’re a faggot ass pussy with a limp fern for a dick. You can only get laid by your hand.”
And here come the words.
The nasty, icky words that stick to your bones when you’re back at home trying to curl up and sleep.  Eating your brain, those words creep into your dreams, manifest the ugliest ghouls, they wake you from your blissful drool. Feels like your suffocating to death, you’re dying to breathe.
Throw off your sheets, hurl your feelings into the nearest bowl.  Words that you swallowed
just a couple hours ago with your big cup of manhood now makes your stomach turn in half
like a huge, hungry mouth just voraciously, happily eating itself.
(Bet you wish you could eat your words when you said, “Watch this.” You thought you could drink with the boys, now, go spew those words out.)

“Yeah, fuck off, that there’s my girl. She said she wants a man not a dyke to take her home tonight.”
Here comes the fight.
“Naw, man, fuck you, she said it was like this: she wants a guy with a thick wallet and an ever thicker dick.”
Here come the fists.
 Clenched, but for how long? These brothers are tempted to pull out their balls just to show one another how bad they can fuck.

Last call!

Thank God and common decent law that protect the barbarians from the bar.
No one can breathe in those stalls. They’re all crap-covered hogs
lined up to suck from capitalism’s most insidious trough.
Liquid soma sprinkled over civilization to keep the thinkers in their coma.  
Up grows a garden of sleepwalkers in sweaters and suits. An aroma
of shit and hops, these shitshows hop back to their studio apartments and tiny rooms
in their shared  summer houses.  Lubed up on life, they wriggle out of their suits and sweaters full of sweat and hard-earned strife to slip into something more comfortable, less binding, less costume, less tight. Those girls remove their scarves.
 Except, of course, for the ones that have been dragged from the bar, bribed with breakfast in bed,
they choke on that cotton before they gag on some lucky dick’s head.
And the women all alone are blurrily punching numbers they used to know into their phone.
They don’t want to go home.  They send an ask to the atmosphere, the last of the patient deer.
Begging to be hunted. Begging to be found and surrounded. Desperately hoping to be pounced on and mounted.
(They’ll never be found, no meat is ever thrown to the hungriest hounds. Mangy mutts breed with hoodrats, mangy mutts die in the pound.)

Weekend warriors  ready to die for their war. They name their demon freedom and they toast it every night.  Like boozed up vampires, they  just wait for the cover of dark to rapaciously suck every tumbler dry. Gobble their poison like a fat boy on Fourth of July
who snuck back inside for the last of Momma’s homemade apple pie.
(The apples are sour and soaked in Vodka. Even better for us sleepwalking monsters, anything nutritious is for imposters. They like to stay living. We like to stay awful.)

It’s not even a thing, they can quit anytime.