A Prostitute Instead

During lunch I wrote this for my brother who is having job troubles. He just can't seem to get one...and keeps chasing after shitty opportunities that keep falling through (as shitty opportunites tend to do). This was meant to deftly suggest he should go back to school. With my bro, the less staightforward, the more straightforward...

If you were not a dude
but a prostitute
instead

Oprah would have you
on her show
and tell you plain

You are no two-bit hooker!
Though the past may
suggest otherwise

It is important to eat, to live
with sturdy roof
above your head

To work, to find pleasure
and contribute someting to our
long span of days

Don't jump and spin at every
bedazzled pimp
that looks your way and calls

Take a moment, maybe
a few more and think
about the fishnets

Crisscrossing your fine hooker
legs and begin to
imagine more

If you were not a dude
but a prostitute
instead

First steps would be (no pun)
profoundly hard and
wayward at every turn

The upper stratospheres
where the earners reign
quickly recedes

What more to do than throw
up your brightly polished
whore's thumb?

In defeat, and solicit the next
gorilla man with severe
doggy breathe

If you were not a dude,
but a prostitute
instead

You would already know there's no
great shame to hustle
for money alone,

But the price of the hustle
can quickly outweigh
the cost

Look. Close your eyes,
plug your nose
and jump in

To something big, bigger
than you and even your
supposed dreams

Dreams are flimsy anyway
by virtue of the fact they
occur every night

True. Life won't be a street corner
of bright lights, bending bodies
and cash.

(though it never really was)

There will be the slog
the deafening day
of stupidity

And the slow, painful ascent
that means learning
something new

But, then, there will quickening
a vivid imagining of an
unknowable future

Stretched out like a prairie plain
you in the middle, gripping some
shiny new tools

If you were not a dude,
but a prostitute
instead

It would take some bravery
and some small admissions that we cannot
know everything

(least of all ourselves)

But you can walk a long way
before coming to what you
already know

You are not a hooker
whoring yourself out to a someones
damaged whims

Move through the immovable space, move
away from the stiletto
break-neck heels

If you were not a dude,
but a prostitute
instead