Adios, Felicia

When they couldn't sedate me And needed to cut strips of flesh From my eyelid, I heard the sizzle Smelled the scalpel burning as it sliced And glimpsed the steam rising Through a peephole under the Sterile towel tent covering my face Flesh harvested from my eyelid grafted into the cavern under my eye Pit left from digging the cancer filled One hundred and twenty three tiny stitches later an ice bag tapped to my head with a warning it would hurt like hell when the Lidocaine died I lied-I was going back to my hotel And on that dark highway in the pouring rain I could see well enough with one eye Until sixty miles west on I-80 Burning hot all consuming hell, stabbing, sharp, wish I were dead Pulled over into aq Wendover casino To kill the pain When I'm drinking and gambling, life doesn't hurt. Faded away until it really wasn't there Enough to sober up, get back in my truck Poorer than I was--but money Never made me happy. You did My emergency contact. My ride home Pathetic that this is your poem You are not a bad person. You gave yourself away. You took yourself back. And that's alright I take me back, too And like that, there's no emergency contact No one to drive me home And I wish you had a better poem Than this... I'm-hurt-you-should-feel-sorry-for-me and my wounded heart Attempt to what? Get you back? Hell-no Don't know what you were, or why But you had to be removed Just like the cancer in my eye--you had to go It's not pretty and leaves a big hole That some other part of me must fill It's uncomfortable And it hurts Yeah... and there's nobody to drive me home But I've been through worse I'm happy to turn the page If there's something better for you There's something better for me Something better than this Pain management poem. That you will never read, but somehow Makes me feel better Adios, Felicia