Roses on the Motel Bed

Roses on the Motel Bed

by

Matt McGuire

You worked hard to make sure that no one ever knew who you really were.
Six days a week and six cold blue ribbons a night
kept the demons away
and the jackals off the front lawn.
Mother's bone thin red dishpan hands,
nimble from secretarial work
and milk money embroidery
ran rough through your strawberry hair.
You sat in grim repose,
sucking on your solution
and us two round your ankles,
chaps and stirrups
in wide-eyed anticipation of a thunderbolt
or an affirmation from your Olympian refuge.

But those six days turned into four,
then three,
and instead of a half-dozen Pabst's
and The Troggs in your drag machine,
it became eighteen wheels, Fortune Brand,
California fast gak
and a hungering
for any road that ran away from a life of responsibility
and the eye teeth of boredom.

Poverty of every shade,
other women, extra time,
and double nickels on the dime
put the bullet in a doomed marriage.

And I remember clearly, Daddy,
as you walked away from us
in your torn Levis and your immeasurable boots,
and my hot baby tears ran down my cheeks
as I clutched the dingy, fly-beaten screen door
and pleaded with you not to go,
to stay, forever,
to take me with you wherever it was you were going that was more important than me,
what you said.

Son, someday you'll understand, and you can come with me.

I didn't understand then, but I sure as hell do now.
I'm still a cowboy.
I've been all the places you went
except for Vietnam and Chicago
and drank the dust of the road
and seen more tears fall in my behalf
than the savior.
What I don't understand
is why being a cowboy is a life sentence,
and how to silence the entreaties of that faceless whore
who waits on every tatteran barstool
from Wilmington to Barstow,
because I still can't measure up,
and I'm bone tired
of chasing Willie Nelson's refrain,
your fading exhaust
and your futile, hammer down gunslinger
and roses on the motel bed dynasty.