Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild Wild Women

(from a song)Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quicknessand yet, as things progressed,

I learned early about the stockadeor taken out, the fume of the enema.

By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires undergroundwhere none but the dolls, perfect and awful,
could be whispered to or laid down to die.

Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been altogether what I always was—a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,

I find the effort useless.

Do I not look in the mirror,
these days,
and see a drunken rat avert her eyes?

Do I not feel the hunger so acutelythat I would rather die than lookinto its face?

I kneel once more,
in case mercy should comein the nick of time.