Twenty Five Years to Life
The morning after you told me –
your desperation weaving in
and out of a bad connection, that
you were up for twenty five years to life
for pissing in a 7-11 parking lot,
after a dinner of vodka,
the kind you could buy with the last
of yesterday’s panhandling;
arrested for stabbing yourself.
A repeat offender.
The morning after you told me –
the newspaper read:
Toughness on Crime Gives Way
To Fairness, and I remembered you,
in the car, singing Sympathy for
the Devil like when we were kids,
arm hanging out of the window,
hand-rolled cigarette in your lips,
bottle in your pocket;
your red eyes drowning in tears
born for Mary in her too-young grave.
As we inch closer to our
untapped truth, we repel –
we all start with a fear
of the darkness.
And you, with the strength of
a thousand torn men, wrestle in
endless circles of answers for
which there are no questions –
in trial after punishing trial;
and in it’s perfect sorrow
your stillness waits ... and weeps.