What One Could Buy With the . . .

. . . $950 charged by a Chicago jeweler for one cocktail:

A new engine for the Beetle,
a '78 ragtop, unsexy on cinderblocks.

A Goodwill spree:
three pair of jeans, a couple of faded shirts,
and everything else in the store, plus tip,
just to be a barrel-chested bigshot.

Two baby-oiled beauties,
shimmering in the half-light, grinding, for an hour

Or a flight to the Philippines
and three whores all night

Food and drink, my style:
fried rice, fruit, java, lick-aa, then 'rrhea, for four months

My rent, pro-rated,
for a month and twenty-six days

A rental car, fully insured,
driven into the Gulf of Mexico

Biopsies on the three multi-hued malignancies,
that the clinic doc said, "won't kill 'ya"

A promising start to a drug habit
which could take years to kick

Something better: a fifty spot for nineteen people
who gone out of their way to help me.
Maybe I'd need more money . . .

G-note after G-note, at a roulette wheel,
looking for lucky twenty-three.
One out of nine's gotta hit.

One month on a beach, sand so warm
that my crotch ignores the stray grains,
as I alternate: eat fish / swim like one

Oh so many ways to swallow nearly a thousand
dollars, much more than one drink.