ABOUT THE POEM: “Business” is a scathing, cynical critique of transactional relationships and the hypocrisy of seeking genuine connection in exchange for money or status. The poem argues that there is little distinction between the actions of a sex worker and a supposedly earnest lover when the motive is personal gain. It strips away romantic pretense, revealing a raw negotiation where the 'customer' is often the true novice, left insulted and betrayed by the professional skill of the one who merely "did the business."To be a whore and to entice someone –
indistinguishable when the act is only for personal gain
yet appears inseparable and indispensable.
You will not be able to tell if the money is talking
or if she is actually sitting in your lap
as if you were her daddy, and she means it.
For that she is skilled and fully capable;
it is her passion, her profession, and her character as well.
You are a novice at sensing the fraud or the seduction.
And in frustration, when you lose yourself,
you call her a whore.
But you are no less than that yourself.
You were the one looking for love in lieu of money.
She merely did the business.
A game of patience you once seemed to play,
or so it appeared to her when she waited for you in the beginning.
But as time passes, everything changes –
she begins to drift, stops pretending to wait,
and it is then you are left hanging, insulted, impatient, in anticipation.
She used to wait in a spa or a brothel,
smelling of oil and moisturizers, asking where you were,
but you never came. Now she takes her revenge.
By counting coins and moving on. A clever move.
You’ve started avoiding my eyes;
seems you’ve begun walking into someone else’s night.
The dreams we once saw together –
it seems you’re now searching for them in others, despite.
Naturally, she found a new customer, a new target,
while you stayed behind, even though you should have moved on.
That is her talent: you could have left,
but you didn’t-and she did.
In a world where a girl is projected as an object, a thing,
where a guy says “I will take advantage while you hang me out to dry,”
it’s inevitable that a girl-not only a call girl-
has done this again and again,
in many faces, shapes, statuses, and phases of her life.
She is shit and her lover is cow dung,
and their God made them poop in doggystyle-
what a joke, oh my dog.
And I was the one who paid for her food.
While she spat on my plate.
