9.13.2020

I was free from the sharp tongue of the boot of life

Feelings seem like made-up things, 
though I know they’re not. 

I don’t understand why they lead me 
around, why I can’t explain to the cop 

how the pot got in my car, 
how my relationship 

with god resembled that 
of a prisoner and firing squad 

and how I felt after I was shot. 
Because then, the way I felt 

was feelingless. I had no further 
problems with authority. 

I was free from the sharp 
tongue of the boot of life, 

from its scuffed leather toe. 
My heart broken like a green bottle 

in a parking lot. My life a parking lot, 
ninety-eight degrees in the shade 

but there is no shade, 
never even a sliver. 

What if all possible 
pain was only the grief of truth? 

The throb lingering 
only in the exit wounds, 

though the entries were the ones 
that couldn’t close. As if either of those 

was the most real of an assortment 
of realities—existing, documented, 

hanging like the sentenced 
under one sky’s roof. 

But my feelings, well, 
they had no such proof. 

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