"Titled"

Act II, Scene 3:

"I realized yesterday what you smell like most times I see you."
"Polo Sport?"
"Alcohol."
(Defendant hides face in covers, Guilt enters stage left.
Awkward silence broken moments later:)
"How are you?"
"I am."
"You are? That's good..."
"I guess. Sometimes I don't want to be."
(Curtains close, Narrator returns to comfortable format.)

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He started calling me the Spider, and
this tangled web looks like LSD was involved.

The goodbye hug would've been fitting, but that
wasn't her first or worst mistake;
I'm no poet, Phoebe, just a man
barely--
a hack
with a lot of pretty
alibis
who only wins on paper, if then.

My father's God gave me two gifts:
the charm of a teddy bear
politician
to draw them in
and a tongue like a whip
in the hands of a sadist
to take care of what tends to come
next, unfortunate as it is.
(Take them all, die trying.
Take no prisoners, least of all yourself.
Take whatever they're foolish enough to give
and act surprised when the void only grows.)

Some of them have it coming, at least I
admit that I am one of them.
When you boil all the bullshit down
it all makes sense:
I trust two people in this world, and one
of them's my mother.