The getaway By Mike Zone

 

Night shift

Past midnight near the witching hour collapsing nigh dead at the door as the sunrises

I’d hear her within an hour or two

talking loud on the balcony

lamenting lost youth and cracked beauty

sometimes she’d corner me in the parking lot with a bottle of whisky as I smoked pot behind the carport

“sometimes you just have to take things like a man”

“you need to be a man about it”

“throw her down and just take her.”

“I just need someone to use my body”

“I’m so lonely”

What I could I not do except not follow her into her place

the booze was expensive for her income bracket

leather face, sagging in all the right places, smelled like cancer but not quite

what did I do?

Went upstairs

there was no sex

as she undressed

three cigarettes in less than an hour and three cans of bud light with her whisky

even this was too low life for me

nude and battered she told me about the word of god

I told her I didn’t believe in god

“but you at least have a bible?”

No

“you’re fucking mean, get out of my house” she shrieked

Big black bible blues

Thank god I got out of that one

waited for the sun to go down

to be done for the day

assert myself back into the night

away from company

away from myself

loneliness

desperate yearning

Mike Zone is the author of A Farewell to Big Ideas, Void Beneath the Skin, Better than the Movie: 4 Screenplays and Fellow Passengers: Public Transit Poetry, Meditations and Musings. A contributing poet to Mad Swirl and contributing writer to the graphic novel series American Anti-hero by Alien Buddha Press. His poetry and stories have appeared in: Horror Sleaze Trash, The Daily Dope Fiend, Outlaw Poetry, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos and Triadæ Magazine