Detox

A lazy, brazen doe catches my headlights
while I blame myself for letting
the steel find my friend's arm again.
I'm driving to pay the bills
at an ungodly morning hour
with an empty passenger seat
and too much on my mind.
Those stacks of twenties
that called him back to the fix
came from my zealous hands.
He needed the work, we needed
old friends; too much needing is a curse.
The victims can verify that claim.

I wanted to believe that his
chemical struggle was behind him
just as much for myself as for the kid
who gave me my first cigarette
back when homework, curfews
and dirty knees
were the worst of the world's problems.
The first two disappeared.
Dirty knees are still an issue.

I take a turn too hard and crush a hubcap
in the shoulder. I took the news too hard
and hit the bottle like a champ.
There still may be some poison floating
in the shadows of my system.
We have our separate demons
but we're addicts just the same.

"Your past doesn't define you,"
lies a sarcastic roadside church sign.
A few miles down another congregation
promotes a pancake supper with black lettering.
Those Christfolk have it wrong:
Eggs are best for dinner
and the devil's not so bad.
It's we mere mortals who
mislead ourselves every day
into believing that we can change
a Goddamned thing
other than our clothing.
The skin we're stuck in's welded.
The cover's like the book.
There must be a thirteenth step
that's gone undiscovered.
Kid, we've let each other down again
and this time youth's no excuse.