The Great American Fairy Trail

Barboy hands me a fresh lime rum, asI reminisce about true love’s kiss andAll that other shit, which he eats with hisGrin and bears it, ‘cos I don’t think heReally speaks English, I open my mouth, and choked words come out,We were young, we were fun, back then,Future worried us not, just hoped we wouldn’t get caught,
As we hop skipped between different trains.She lay in my arms in the carriage, watching fields of stars, asWe escaped the night of the Sunshine State. With a fresh sun atop a field of crops,Hitting our eye lines,Mine blinded by beauty, hers wide open in awe,We came to a farm yard, somewhere in Kansas, when we madeLove to keep ourselves warm. On her raw back, the straw stuck,From heavy sweating in haystacks, and breathing heavy,A mist formed in the space between our faces. The barboy’s still nodding, so I sup downMy blues in another brown drink, which can’t be noAid to this muddy narration, but… Our skin was still clammy when we left the belfry,Of that parish in Chicago.That was the last time for us.Her skin was shaking like crepe paper in the Windy City cold,And watching her hungry I began to fold. We hitched to a truck stop near Virginia limits, and she told meThat frankly, her heart weren’t in it anymore, in muchStronger words, of course, and my heart hit the curb,My blood spilled down the drain, I said “What do you intend then? You got 10 dollars to your name,And it won’t last two nights, so indulge me with a swan song toOur love failed, halfway through this great American trail.”She said she was going back home, she had kept dimes aside for the phone,Wrapped in hankies for just such emergencies. Her mother, so eager to see her, andShe for a taste of the trust fund.Turning tail against my broken wishes,I guessed I could go back to washing dishes inSan Diego.Meanwhile I heard she just graduated high school. It wasn’t always like this, we had love,We were kids, we were going to turn out alright,I promised her riches, that I couldn’t deliverAt least in her cynical eyes.I tried to see past it, I couldn’t see past it,So I lost it in the parking lot she left me behind in.I took out a windshield with a well-aimed trash bin, andThirteen hours later I’m branded a sinner by aSheriff in West Virginia. I was locked in a cell for raising hell in my love drunk haze,While a dead drunk punch from my bad-ass cellmate,Left me T-1 tooth. I’m in court now, I’m black eyed and bleary,This cheap tie, I’m playing with nervously,Family nowhere near me, they’re shaking theirHeads, eyes sad with parental defeat,While the rest of the court stares me down likeCarrion birds in a field of filthy meat. Oh lord, won’t you let me sleep?This ground suck me in, and keep me pinned,Silenced from memories of soft skin and red hair,In the time before jail and before my failureCame to light in my short-so-far life.Oh lord, keep safe that girl who I failed, you swear to this,This Great American Fairy Trail…I’m just so pissed it doesn’t exist.