Excuses, Excuses

Dearest professor,
Im sure youve heard them all sickness, breakup,
death, family emergency (or just
emergency), which conveniently fall three
days prior to said students spring break in
Cancun. None of which I can tersely give
for my absence. Though, as the Good Book says,
The truth will set you free.
As such, I shall relate my own:
Thursdays twilight, a devil and angel
pitched tents on opposite shoulders. One seemed
to whisper, Live a little. The other
rambled like a Protestant smothered in
in the Holy Ghost. Then, I remembered that
T.S. Eliot line bout the awful daring of
a moments surrender.
So, I hop aboard a silver rocket,
springing o of semis on I-76
Head banging while my left-hand steers, devil horns
bent out on my right.
Sixty minutes later, skating into a
FedLoan-paid college apartment complex.
The clouds are sneezing and cant find a tissue,
and my patience thin gruel, so I corral
my Camry into an unauthorized
parking space. After which, my memory
flickers in misty, seven-second Vines.
Theres this booze connoisseur Jake (or Jack, James?),
ring like Coltrane on amphetamine
bout the pure-as-a-nuns-rapsheet moonshine
known only to the grizzled yinzers of
Southwestern Pennsylvania, how ten beers
in, hes sober as a pallbearer.
It tasted like lighter fluid to me.

Tumbling in a negative feedback loop

of another-another-and-another,
.00-to-.26 BAC
in thirty, a few I-love-you calls, some
moralistic notebook scribblings
on crunk-drummed grinding to Lil Johns Yeah bois.
My mud-crusted loafers jump on my minds
merry-go-round in falsetto, singing,
Turn, Turn Turn. The girl runs to the closet
and comes out wearing lion-tamer khakis.
Fist-bumped I-love-yous to contract Nice Guy
Dave, whose name I recall only cause he
looked like Diamond Dave Roth from Van Halen.
I trip out of his SUV, yelling
Dont come home a drinkin with lovin
on your mind, and shes grimacing in shame.
My alarm clocks a trucker-sized joe
mug smacking a glass tabletop. That white
henley I thought looked super-hip crusted
in jaundice-yellow vomit. A smeared
clock-hand informs me its 10:30.
I learned drunkards make terrible marksmen.
Everywhere but the bare, black trash can
muddy puddles, the acid rain of my
awful daring, and I cant help but ask:
Is this what a lobotomy feels like?
With arms crossed, those oceanic eyes growl,
Fuck you. Clean my floor. I failed art twice in
high school though I tried to smear every damn
inch of her living room hardwood canvas
with hues of blue sky Windex and lamb white bleach.
Apologies, hugs, kisses are walled by my
puke-stained clothes and little stomach-crystals
glued between my teeth, and Ive lost my keys
yet again.

One panic attack later, I squint like

a half-drunken vampire, navigating
confederate flag farm roads back home,
after my phone dies. My glasses lost
yet again.
And, while technically my coughing engine
passed the English hall fifteen minutes prior
to class, my eyes were chasing a distant
Promised Land in a cathartic shower,
mint toothpaste, and a geyser-hot French Press.
So, as I worry bout whether I fucked this
relationship thing up (yet again) and
a hive of sociopathic spring bees sting
my skull for fun, I pen this apology
to you. If it seems irresponsible,
I drop my saber and whisper touch,
oering but one humble retort:
At least, theres this poem.