Semi-retired

Part I

You're a 45 pound sledge, to the stomach
For sure
A rubber semi-truck tire, on fire
One must strike to survive
Just to goddamn bounce back from
An all too familiar plummet for me, anymore
I wrote this, I made you

You’re driving the canyon now and much too fast
You know it
What logic suggests speed limits are limitless
I will stop looking for rest stations
I will stop looking at your face
No attempt to acknowledge, a fear in me, one that you continue to refuse to understand
Neck, vice gripped, fastened to my right side, I become rigid
Took some time for me to pull my weapon though, didn’t it?
I’d listen to the wind whip through cracked windows
Errant ashes witness the distance between us, grow wider and hollow

You push my buttons, make more money, choose late evenings to take my pants down
Spit in your hand, shove it in, sleep on the couch
Convince yourself it’s so I can rest
Leave dollar bills on the coffee table for me to find the next morning
You’re careful to be so reckless
All in, your fancy underwear, snore as I get ready for work
Remnants of me thrown away with your three a.m. snack, string cheese, see-through, trash, me

The Salt River skids by, I don’t cry until I’m so unhinged I cannot calmly close a door
Watch you fill your tank and exit my life again
When I do get to go, I’m a smashed aluminum can
Recycling my self worth in muted conversation
Talk to myself, echoed seashells, this person I thought I knew
Brown beer bottles launched like road side bombs and I, grateful you’d glitter my cheeks with what is left, with what you didn’t drink, with what little you could freely give to me
And there are no apologies

Part II

With the land and loans, there wasn’t anything left of you
Casualties, hurled words, glass grazing my buckled body in your new truck and I don’t bother to get out of bed if you ever do trudge home
I taste the drowning of my voice, alone
I used to be John Henry, the folk legend hero, working my hammer hard on the rails
Proud and not black but blackened and red-hot-ready to dull or sharpen your blade, faded obscurity, I could have faded with you

I know you loved me a little

Bellow songs, breath on your broken back, I was a siren and you were once my most precious companion
Hop the braking trains, ride Iron horses, heavy legs weighted in oyster bays, big dreams together and for a moment I too was unafraid, like you

Part III

If I had a history book that told the story of me and you
I’d break the spine, fingers to set wide an old dog eared page
Maybe there would even be an ink illustration, a pop up picture displayed
And I could show you everything I tried to authentically say, the baggage I grasped knowing I’d keep waiting  

So the drawing is a large live oak tree, vegetation I doubt you’ve seen because you took your semi retirement and new life northwest, away from me
The tree is scarred and singularly standing
It’s on an island, grass covered, not sandy
Spanish moss drips like caramel strands pulled along thin lips, whispers of the women you fucked to make yourself taller and stronger, a better person I guess
Red bugs to burrow and winged cicadas to dance in your graying crocheted lace, aged, advanced, my body, ragged, and I am unbalanced

I thought I would be in the picture as I study it closer, the girl collecting daffodils barefoot in a stenciled shadow, climbing low lying branches, filet knife for a hand line of fish whose scales should shine in the sun
But I’m not

I’m dismembered, swollen limbs tossed in a Red Lobster dumpster where
Christmas gift cards are discarded, peppering the garbage like tensile, shiny, so I know you will pick those up
Tuck them into your rubber band wallet we both know was fattened by luck
But you love strippers and they love a free steak dinner so eat up
Whatever is easy, women who don’t ask you to analyze drawings in a book
An image you never cared to see, my prose, you were unable to read
You made an enemy out of me