Men trade water for gold here and call it
prosperity. Their tongues swell black
with compound interest. Their children
learn to suck moisture from stones,
to read the small print in scorpion tracks,
to sing hymns that sound like drought.
The heart grows leather in this heat—
not for water anymore
but for the weight of another body
confirming you exist. Even bruises
would be proof. Even bite marks.
Even the grave.
They hand you a shovel at the border.
Dig your fortune, they say. Call it promise.
So you dig. Call each blister revelation.
Call the hole your American cathedral.
Call the ache in your spine democracy.
When you strike gold, you'll know—
your pulse becomes a slot machine,
your blood turns to coins.
You carry your fortune to the only church
that's open: a saloon where the piano
plays itself, where the whiskey tastes
like your father's funeral, where everyone
bets their bones on games nobody wins.
The bartender's smile is a contract.
His eyes are fine print.
You trade your gold for what passes as living—
amber promises that burn going down,
women who charge by the heartbeat,
a seat at the table where the house
feeds on hope like a patient spider.
You say: We filed our teeth to stumps
for the common good. We learned to love
the taste of sand. We did everything right.
Your shadow peels itself from the wall,
wearing your mother's disappointed mouth.
It loads a single bullet—not for justice,
not for mercy, but for the simple economy
of ending: one life, one death, books balanced.
You kneel in the sawdust, and sing:
As I went down to the river to pay
Learning about that promised way
And who shall wear the banker's crown
Sweet dust, show me the grave
Same position as when you first broke ground,
back when your hands still remembered rain.
The circle closes like a snare. Like a covenant.
Like a mouth that's done explaining why it must eat you.
The piano stops. The whiskey turns to dust
in every glass. Your gold becomes what it always was—
weight without meaning, shine without warmth,
the fever dream of dying men who mistook
their thirst for God.
Outside, tumbleweeds carry their emptiness
from town to town, preaching the only sermon
that ever mattered in America:
The house always wins.
The house has always won.
The house is winning right now,
with your bones for dice,
your hope for the ante,
your children's names for the pot.
This is the gospel according to thirst:
that you will kneel twice in your life—
once believing you're planting,
once discovering you're the seed.
