Ducking and rolling my way back to the station-
A good clean fight with a bottle of Beam.
I play this game to lose, and I play it well.
Some rich white man in Kentucky made a buck
Off the sweat of my brow tonight.
But the spirits know he'll probably light up
An expensive cigar tonight,
Rolling it with methodical and expert pressure
Between tobacco-stained fingers as it burns,
And the exchange will be complete.
We have traded our livers for the lungs of the white man.
And they can blame Raleigh or anyone they want,
But we taught them to grow that horrible stuff.
And as the amber fluid sloshes in bottle and belly
On my long walk home, I look up to the path,
And laugh till tears flow down my weathered, desert-lined cheeks,
Laugh like a moondog at the richness of the cosmic joke,
As it occurs to me that we are already in a domestic, entirely civil
Chemical war, bobbing and weaving their ethanol, our nightshade.