whiskey pour out

--- TRACK 3 — Pour a little liquor out for the ones I can’t call, whiskey in the mason, gravel in my drawl, porch light hummin’ like a hymn that don’t end — everything I love either leaves or it’s dead man. Back porch, two o’clock, cicadas say a sermon, unpaid light bill on the counter, but the dark keep workin’, boots by the door still caked in the creek clay — last pair of hands that unlaced ‘em went away in a Chevrolet. I drink slow, like the south taught me, sip it ‘til the burn feel like somebody talkin’ cigarette burn on the Bible page where she dog-eared it — I quit snorting three years back, but tonight I reappeared with it. Moon through the oak tree like a porch-light mistress I ain’t cryin’, that’s the whiskey, that’s the smoke, that’s the… Ones that doubted me the most Jughead called, left a voicemail, cracked screen played it twice — “that bag cross was the county line, and you just rolled the dice.” I got regrets like a gravel drive, long and loose and white, can’t hose ‘em off the concrete, can’t sleep ‘em off at night. Grandaddy raised me on grit and on hammer, said a man’s word and a chainsaw both jam when you ram ‘em — well I swore I’d change, and I changed it Now it’s just me, the jar, the crickets, and a light that won’t come on. I pour a capful for the ones the road took, sip mine like it’s medicine for a memory gone rogue. If I’m bein’ honest… and the whiskey makes me honest… I ain’t pourin’ one for the dead. I’m pourin’ one for the version of me They said never bled That’s the part that ain’t comin’ back bitch Pour a little whiskey out for the ones I can’t call, whiskey in the mason, gravel in my drawl, porch light hummin’ like a hymn that don’t end — this time it ain’t the whiskey… it’s me that won’t let a motherfucker pretend they love.