Eighteen Years
Through the stained streets and circus faces of nighttime San Diego a lone sailor (drunk as only a sailor can be) stumbles his way from bar to bar
Twice-aborted teenage hookers with dollar signs in their eyes follow him, cajole him, curse him, turn away.
Were he a younger man, (who did not wear his Eighteen Years Of Service like a crown of thorns) he could be opiated, dissipated making empty love to lonely midnight queens of desperation.
Up the street in a sawdust country dive nighttime cowboys dance with hillbilly ladies whose only crime, like his, is that of birth.
And weeping steel guitars sing empty promises of temporary oblivion.
My Life Outside the Bell Curve
Anonymous1949
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