The Wrong Bitch To Fuck With

My mom and I went out
driving around from bar to bar
a lot
looking for my old man.
Usually we’d find him pretty early on
the drive home, with my mom yelling at him
while my four-year-old ass sat in the backseat
having to listen t it all.

Those were the
good nights,
the easy & calm nights.

But this one night
I remember
better than others.
My mom went inside his favorite bar
with me on her hip.
The bartender told her he had just left.
with some blonde lady.
So we sat in the car and waited.
His Harley was parked out front
so we knew he’d be back.
My mom chain-smoked,
sipping at her icy Mountain Dew
from her green metal thermos.

She had fire in her eyes,
gasoline in her veins.
My mom was really gonna let him have it
and that blonde bitch, too, she said.

The bar was next door to a 7-11
Two lowlife motherfuckers were
Standing around
They saw my mom and I sitting there,
One of them yelled at her
“Whatcha lookin’ at bitch?”
“I ain’t lookin’ at you, shut the fuck up.”
My Mom spouted back, flicking her Marlboro.
They didn’t say anything,
Just started walkin’ away.

Out of nowhere though,
the shit-talkin’ lowlife was next to her window.
He reached in and grabbed my mom by the arm.
I was really scared, I remember.
“Whatcha got to say now? Huh bitch?”
My mom reached for her pistol
With her free hand
While the lowlife kept
talking, threatening to rape her in front of her son.
Within a matter of seconds
The black 9mm pistol
Was unholstered and shoved into his nose.
His eyes were as wide as they got.
His hands now up in the air,
he was shaking & trembling.
My mom pulled back the hammer,
it made that terrifying click.
His eyes shut tightly when
that sound came.
“I AM a bitch. The WRONG bitch to fuck with tonight.”
Be cool lady. Becoolladybecool. Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.”
The gun was now pressed into his sunburned, pockmarked, cheek.
“Get the fuck away from my car.”
And just like that, off he ran into the darkness.

I had fully expected her to
blow his head off, right there in front of me.
She asked if I was okay.
I nodded yes and she kissed my forehead.
She stood outside the car then
Next to his Harley
Pacing back and forth
Her adrenaline really pumping now,
smoking and drinking soda
from that green metal thermos.

I don’t know how much time passed,
but eventually
a little red car pulled up.
My dad and the blonde got out.
When he saw my mom he sighed and said,
“Ahhh fuck me.”
scratching his big biker beard
with his brown hands.
The blonde tried to go into the bar.
My mom blocked her entry saying,
“Uh ah! What the fuck were you doing with MY man, bitch?!”
The blonde looked to my dad for help.
“Danny?” she cried.
“Rhonda, nothing happened. I just got some coke from her. That’s all, now chill the fuck out...”
“Bullshit,” she yelled.
The blonde again tried to go into the bar.
And again my mom stood in the way.
Now the blonde was pissed. She screamed in fear & frustration,
“Bitch get the fuck outta my way."
“You fuckin’ whore,” my mom shrieked,
smashing the green metal thermos to her face.
Then she dropped it
and began throwing wild punches to the blonde’s face and head.
I unbuckled my car seat
and leaned out the window
watching my mom & the blonde
roll around on the ground.
My dad let her get in a few good hits,
then pulled her off.
The blonde’s face was
red, swollen, and bloodied.
My mom wore a lot of rings.
The blonde stumbled to her feet
and finally ran inside.

My parents argued all the way home
The old man stuck to his story,
that it was just a drug deal.
She wasn’t having it.
They told me to go to bed,
but I stayed up
peeking around the corner,
watching them argue.
The old man was too drunk & coked out.
He wasnt making any sense, the shit he was saying.
Finally she got tired of arguing in circles
and just threw a hard right
layed him out on the kitchen floor.
I ran as fast as I could back to my room.
I could hear her say,
"See? You fuckin' asshole! This is what you get!"
as I pulled my Batman blanket up to my chin.
Shit.
My mom was tougher than Batman.

Don't Think Twice It's Alright

There were many times
When I came close to leaving my wife.
I would take some clothes
and my favorite movies with me
to my parent’s house,
dead set on not going back.
But then she would come over
And talk me out of it.
When it finally happened though
this is how it went down:
It was the Fourth of July
and I was driving home
from my job at a group home for the developmentally disabled,
Fireworks bursting all around me
up in the Arizona sky.
I was caught up in a full-blown panic attack
from the thought of my twelve-hour shift
the next day with no pain pills or any relief
whatsoever.
I have a severe back injury from a car wreck
and that day I had hurt it worse
moving someone from their wheelchair into the shower.
It felt like a railroad spike
had been rammed into the center of my spine.
Driving home
then walking up the stairs to our apartment
I couldn’t stop crying.
I had lost all control.
Walking in the front door,
my wife was cooking and my son crawled on the floor.
I went straight to the bathroom,
Needed to calm down and compose myself,
but I just couldn’t stop crying.
Hell I couldn’t even catch my breath.
My wife walked in.
“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“I hurt my back really bad today at work … and I have a twelve-hour shift tomorrow
and no pain pills, no nothing. It just hurts so bad …”
She rolled her big blue eyes and scoffed at me.
“Ugh. That’s no reason to be fucking crying. Quit being a baby.”
Out the door she went with a slam.
THAT was my wife? My true love?
The thought drove me insane.
Growing old with her hateful eyes
always glaring at me.
I ate dinner in silence,
put the baby to bed
and smoked so much weed
I felt nothing
neither physical nor mental.
I couldn’t smoke weed before or at work, however,
I did have morals.
Those people in the group home were my responsibility.
The baby woke up crying around five a.m.
I had to start my shift at eight a.m.
It was the wife’s day off.
“Hey … hey … wake up. Can you get him? Please?”
“Arrgg. No. Just get up with him.” She groaned and rolled back over.
“Please? I gotta be up in two hours.”
“Ugh. NO. It’s my day off.”
“Exactly. You can take a nap with him later. I gotta work twelve hours today.”
“I said NO. I didn’t want a baby in the first place. Remember?”
She said that all the time. It made my blood fuckin’ boil.
“Then maybe you should’ve kept your fucking legs closed.”
I said
turning away from her, on my side
The baby kept crying,
screaming, now a blood-curdling sound.
The next thing I saw were
flashes
of red, black, and white
as her small, but bony,
rock hard fist
hit the side of my temple.
“YOU FUCKIN’ CUNT,” I screamed
jumping up and out of bed.
Picking the baby up,
he rested his little head on my shoulder,
and finally stopped crying.
I walked the floor,
pacing back and forth,
my back aching,
my head throbbing & pulsating
as the goose-egg lump
swelled.
She sat upright in bed.
Her arms crossed, her icy glare
burning a hole through my head.
She didn’t look the same anymore.
When we met
her eyes were full of good
burning churches
love.
Replaced now with
little saggy titties,
wiry, stringy, mess of hair—
like a Barbie doll left outside too long.
And that face
held so much hate.
My God, that face of hers.
She despised me.
Everything I did and said
just pissed her off.
From the bedroom window
I stood watching the cars
move along down the street,
thinking of it all.
The fights,
all the shiners, lumps, goose-eggs, cuts, and bruises
she had left on me over the past nine months.
When she used to look at me with those
big blue eyes,
there was love, lust, and a future.
Now it was hate, hate, hate
I thought of all this
watching those cars drive down the street
when it suddenly became clear to me,
I could be in one of those cars too.
Driving somewhere, anywhere, far from her.
My son, was my son
I'd always be there for him
and have my time with him.
But her time?
Our time?
It was up.
The switch in my mind was flipped. And broken off.
I kissed my son, put him on the bed and
went into the closet.
Getting my shit.
“No, no, no, no. You can’t leave. You CAN’T.”
She started to panic.
“Watch me. This is it, you hateful bitch. Get out of my way.”
She ran behind me,
followed me down the stairs, all the way to the car,
shrieking, screaming continuously,
and slobbering and gasping for air,
throwing herself in my path.
Tears flowed
From her over sized eyes,
now filled with tiny red veins.
“We can go to counseling, we can work it out.”
“I don’t WANT to work it out. I don’t love you anymore.
Now would you get back upstairs? You left the baby all by himself up there.”
She didn’t hear me.
Just kept on trying to convince me.
I managed to get my clothes in the car,
but then she wouldn’t let me
close my door.
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you. You’re just leaving your child?”
“No. I’m leaving YOU. Now get back upstairs and be a mother.
You’re done being a wife.”
I had to pry her claws off the driver’s side door to leave.
Looking in the rear view
I saw her skinny body running up the stairs
back to our apartment
and the baby.

My first meal as a free man
was an egg & cheese biscuit.
I sat in my parked car
in the parking lot of a park
listening to my iPod
on shuffle.
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan
suddenly came on.
I took it as a sign

Rainy Day Pomade Blues

Even though it was pouring rain outside
I rode the bus to Tempe anyways
desperate to get out of the house
dressed in the most typical looking
greaser cliche' clothing imaginable
black leather jacket
motorcycle boots
jeans
and a plain black t-shirt.
Get off the bus
and had to piss
so I walked up to a bar.
If you could even call it that.
Bahama Frank's or some cartoony shit.
My greasy hair was falling in my face
so I combed it back into place
finished and put the comb
away
before opening the door
the moment I stepped inside
the opening chords to
'Bad to the Bone' by George Thorogood
BLARED over the speakers in the bar.
"Da na na nah nu..."
the entire room erupted in laughter
blonde, docker wearing, polo shirted
bleached white teeth, all gleaming & laughing
shining in the too well-lit, franchised, themed bar.
"HEEEEEEYYYYYYYYY! FONZE!"
someone yelled
"STAY GOLD, PONYBOY!"
more laughter.
I went back out in the rain
and pissed behind the building of the bar.
One of the Mexican dishwashers came out to throw the trash
he saw my dick.
He laughed too.

Odyssey to Nowhere

Everyone said I was crazy.
“You’ll get arrested.”
“You’ll end up stranded in the middle of nowhere.
“You’ll starve.”
“This is how people turn into hobos.”
But I couldn’t listen to them.
I wouldn’t.
This had to be done.
My great grandmother had passed down to me an
old suitcase.
A Samsonite from the late fifties.
Not too big, not too small.
It held everything I would need.
Two pairs of slacks.
One white belt.
Two collared shirts.
One necktie.
Three cans of pomade & two combs.
In my bright pink coat
a .38 Special.
A gift from my mother.
She upgraded to a 9mm pistol,
didn’t need the little snub nose.
I paid to have it customized
with a TCB and a lightning bolt
pearl handle.
Even though I could only play one song,
“That’s Alright Mama,”
I slung an acoustic guitar over my back.
Scenarios and fantasies ran through my head.
All the colorful characters I’d meet,
all the wild adventures I’d have.
This would be my Great American Odyssey.
The spiritual quest to the American Mecca.
On the road
to the Rock'n'Roll Holy Land.
I was going home
to a place I’d never been before.
Standing in the kitchen of my father’s house,
writing on a piece of cardboard: MEMPHIS.
Sitting on the suitcase, at the edge of town,
between the confining city
and the vast, open, lonely desert.
Combed my hair, got it high
like The King.
Dug my finger into the crevice of my ducktail
and stood up, anticipating the approaching car.
When it passed me
the gust of wind felt like the heat from a blow dryer,
opening the oven door with your face too close.
The cars kept passing me
night and day.
No one would pick me up.
I waited all day in that Arizona sun
and all through the night.
When dawn came
and I realized no one was gonna pick me up

I walked back home
and continued the job search.