The Flavor Of “Winning”

For a moment I sat there

With blood on my hands

Smearing life on my white-bread toast

In a room all alone

With inanimate friends

In a halfway house built for a ghost.

My Ferrari was mired

In a 90-hour week

When I needed just 12 to survive

But I’d long since stopped living

For the privilege of being

Among the elite few who can thrive.

The child in the basement

Was calling for daddy

‘Til its fat little throat had gone raw

And yet I was too busy

Helping others to join me

To notice my life had a flaw.

But if I’d payed attention,

Tasted a tomato

Or felt a moth land in my hair,

Just walked outside barefoot

Or put salt in my coffee

I’d realize somehow I still care.

I care about family.

I care about freedom.

I don’t need this bottle and pill.

And maybe that baby

Will say “taste the tomato”

And if I haven’t yet died then I will.