by Michael Plante

Pink motels along the highway
fornication with a syringe
so blinded by the sickness I can’t see
any way around this life.
When I was a child I never had a gun
just a stone I threw through a window
I was just trying to wake you up
but you were passed out on the floor.

I remember you said, “there’s Cheez Whiz and bread, go make yourself dinner”
so I did
and as you smoked your cigarette I ate in silence.
I use to wonder why we never prayed,
or went to church on Sundays
I heard of this thing called God
but was never introduced.

My favorite thing was the magnet that was stuck on the fridge
it was a happy face with a bullet hole in the head
a little blood trickling down from the hole
and x‘s for eyes.
Maybe that’s where I adopted my god?
I think if I caught myself earlier in life
I could have been a good kid
but instead I became rotten like the rest of them.

I found you dead one morning laying on the couch,
the floor was littered with beer cans, the ashtray filled with butts.
I made myself a Cheez Whiz sandwich and called 911.
By the time they showed up me and my sandwich were gone.
I was 13 years old and dumb as shit back then
but I learned how to survive without you.
I pimped my own ass to fill my veins with the love I was missing.
It almost worked.

A decade later and I’m still here,
feeding Cheez Whiz sandwiches to my kid
who’s mother is out on the streets
earning cash to pay the rent in a pink motel.
I fill the ashtray like my mother use to
drink a beer and scratch my testicles.
I haven’t seen the sun in a week
or my wife for that matter.

The highway is quiet at night
I think I’m okay.

All compositions that appear on The Poet’s House are composed by Michael Plante and are subject to copyright.

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