Five-Dollar Bill

The armpits of the bridges keep the poverty asleep

As the mountains puke the day into the sky

The sun and river creep, both rejected, toward the sea

And the sullen clouds between begin to cry

Another night of drowning in the gutters in this town

Another morning finds me down the hill

I spend every wasted day drinking last night from my slate

And every night I spend my last five-dollar bill

The stench of all that isn't me engulfs me as I swim

Against the sea of those who distantly attain

While I, an island, wax ecstatic for the flower in the attic

That keeps my former self my memory's only stain

Another night of drowning in the gutters in this town

Another morning finds me down the hill

I spend every wasted day drinking last night from my slate

And every night I spend my last five-dollar bill

My city, she is silent, though the ghosts of day remain

And she shivers, raped and nauseous in the night

And the cobbies splayed between the tracks that glisten in the rain

Shed the fog that folds around the trolley lights

Another night of drowning in the gutters in this town

Another morning finds me down the hill

I spend every wasted day drinking last night from my slate

And every night I spend my last five-dollar bill

My city, she is silent, though the ghosts of day remain

And she shivers, raped and nauseous in the night

And the cobbies splayed between the tracks that glisten in the rain

Shed the fog that folds around the trolley lights

Another night of drowning in the gutters in this town

Another morning finds me down the hill

I spend every wasted day drinking last night from my slate

And every night I spend my last five-dollar bill