Bottle Shop Poem by Raj Dronamraju

Empty and easily broken on hard pavement
Time killing, time disassociation from unemployment hopelessness, cyclical poverty, monumental heartbreak which ends the process of achieving something
Empty and slightly brilliant
You are one who always buys a food item with a bottle of whiskey, maybe a couple of slim jims or a candy bar

You'll burrow into heredity with the knowledge life is no better now
And you'll give up on looking presentable
It could happen the way he said or it could be one bad decision after another
It could be the lonely place in the heart of a crowd
Impossible to escape from and easy to settle into prison type fatalism

Buying a lottery ticket is not the real reason he's come by
There are dark awful things that only the bottle shop can contain
Everything is alright the more bleary it becomes
The liquor store euphemism moves forward the artificial good feeling

Cigarette butts in an overflowing ashtray
They'll spill out on the floor under the panicked march of the failed, those who've given up, those in a weakened state
The screams of the redundant temporarily quieted by alcohol