In Moderation We Love

you look carnivorous
drunk, doused in sweat,
is this your domain?

perhaps ethical, but not very pretty;
who am I to judge,
staggering right beside you.

you are a man, I suppose,
and we all get thirsty,
greed and disease and fucking the stoics.
please, illuminate me to what you have learned,
and what I have not.

if I gag myself in a dive bar bathroom,
throw up my dignity,
plead to you for understanding,
and you are not my reckoning;
who must I turn to then?
what else must I over-consume?

you’ll read tomorrow,
you’ll go outside,
look nice, be noisy,
and the cold on your ears will not feel random.