Traps for Troubadours

A party downstairs --
up here, it's black
like liccorice or the soot
on the feet of street urchins.

"You haven't lived!",
you've lived a thousand lives
but none enough to trim the tide
of fleeting life lost at sea
or some vague immortality.

Sluts, the lot of them,
sucking time from days and
slithering through their
ugly frays with boyfriends and
pigtailed girlfriends with skirts
that flounce a bit too close
to that ol' V spot --

if you can't tell,
I'm a bit tired of the dream --
feel the vibrations in the air,
slurp down a viagra and mutter:
how many strings are missing
on life's guitar?