I made my muse a whore

I sold my muse today, a birthright for a crust of bread, a pint of ale,
My scripts and poems, for mass consumption,
Were there to provide my crust of bread,
My sip of sour wine I thought I should have instead
Earned honestly through the toiling sweat of my brow.
The bread earned this way proved most bland, worse than stale,
Sticking fast in my craw, though the feast was temporary redemption
I could not help but think, ‘I have made my muse a whore.’

She disrobed in front of me, a goddess in a waking dream
I saw fit to bring her nothing but an essence I might glean
If she had made me a better man, rather than a poetic parasite
But though she tried as she might she was but a servant,
I had made my muse a whore, subjecting her to foreign might
So I could feed that vanity to prove my life more valuable than trite
Or in the very least palatable to the presumption of ‘might is right’
But I, weepy in lament, made my muse perform like a whore.
I could have been unconscious or in the very least amused
But every time the masses my pathetic scripts perused
I saw the ragged raw-boned nature of my prostituted muse.

Her shame was difficult to conceal behind the finery of a verse,
those lecherous greedy eyes, those grasping fingers, they appeared perverse
as they leered and drank in the common form, I made my muse a whore.
Though I force her onto the street, she complained not once, or ever before
Because through it all, though I cheapened her, she always will adore
The way I gave her life, the ways I had her shed her breath,
She was always with me, even unto the very portals of death.
My muse, though she performed in the gutter, was still virginal and pure
Every time she had embraced me and presented me with her cure
For the frail disease I had contracted when I lived with her store
Of laughter and tears, of celebration and hunger, augmented by common jeers,
She gave me all I could ever hope for, taking the greater burden of my fears
Upon her shoulders, upon her gentle shoulders, the sum of all my years.
Though I made my muse a whore, she never left me, unless to inspire another
And when she made departure from my barren home, only then did I discover
My muse, though I cheapened her with house wine, was my constant lover
Even when I accused her of infidelity, of breaching my trust when she departed
The truth was there all along, and I, feigning the sentiments of the broken hearted,
She was always there to oversee my scribbling hand and guide my jealous heart
Even though I had cheapened her by giving her a lesser active part
In all my creations of this twisted mind that forced her to become a whore
Paying for my crusts of bread and rental title to the number on this hovel’s door.

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