I hear the sliding ring of metal bootstraps on concrete
Where black leather shoes are met by a navy blue suit complete
With a side stripe running up to the waist holstered with pistol,
Clasped and fastened in,
Bellow a light blue button up,
Badge, shining golden
And ears receiving excuses by the fist full
? What a hideous din?
The cop,
Irritated and disgusted,
Puts pen to report, just moments after arrest
Filing fleeting charges of domestic violence
Thinking to himself,
? How seldom do they stick?

Alcohol just seeped from my pours
With a sweaty stench
And drooling all over myself,
I managed to mutter the words
“I did it… because, I love her”
In a slobbery mess

“You have the right to remain silent…” began the cop
As he turned in the car to face me
So drunk,
My body began to sway
Almost ready to flop into the window
Relinquishing my consciousness

“Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.” He continued.

But, I was well lit up
I couldn’t hear anymore
My body gave out from under me
And darkness overtook

Needed some time to drain

I woke late the next morning
On the jail floor, covered in piss
Blank headed, innocent, looking for immediate responses…

If I could have remembered,
I would have known that my wife Jill was hospitalized the night before
And was still in the emergency room fighting for her life,
Traumatized…
I would remember chocking her
Half to death
Before beating her senseless
Closed fist,
Under the premise
“She must want this…”
Ranting,
! “She knows how all that shit just makes me indignant! I’m the man, I had to hit her, I had to because I love her!”

? What a crock of shit?
I couldn’t even remember what she did
If she did anything at all
To think I used to believe that shit..

But unfortunately I couldn’t remember,
The night was a blur at best

Then as always Jill got out of the hospital and bailed me before I had court
She dropped all the charges
The system couldn’t do anything
Because it was well within her right to do so

I never did understand why she loved me the way she did
Nor why she put up with me

After these bouts with me
Jill, would have these Fights with her mother, Carla,
Claiming that it didn’t hurt…
Clearly lying
In pain
Both physically and spiritually

Carla wanted to help
But had long since given up
Trying to convince Jill that she made the wrong choice marrying me
She was just trying to console Jill as her life bellied up

Carla played the blame game
She ripped the house apart
From top to bottom
Pointing out everything that was wrong
! She had enough !
Jill had never been hurt so badly before
Yet, despite all her hard work,
Jill came back home
To find me drunk

The night I was arrested
I came home pissed about work
And I took it out on Jill
At first I was just yelling at her
But somehow I got violent
Jill got all upset
And called her mother crying
I freaked out and took off to the bar
Carla called the cops
One came by and took a report

I returned after the bar closed
And before she said to words
I laid right back into her

It was like I wasn’t me anymore

The cop knew I was coming back
And when they did their check
They heard the screaming
And they broke me off of her

No wonder,
Her mother was so agitated
I almost killed her daughter
Carla never understood why Jill ever took up me
Their family was one of those
Snooty, whose who
Big mansion at the end of the lake, families
She just knew that I was there for their money

When we first met
There was a time when we just made each other happy
We didn’t need anything else
But the more the drinking caught up with me
The worse things got

Still,
Jill stuck to her guns
And proclaimed that money didn’t make the man
Eventually, her mother had no choice left
But to let Jill meet her fate
She did everything else she could to stand in its gate
That must have been a sad day for her

Nothing meant so much to Jill
That, the children had a father
She would take all the beatings
If that’s what God had for his daughter
To Jill
Marriage was Holy Matrimony
Real, “Till death do we part.”
That’s why she stayed
And she also believed that one day I would pull out of it

But, I was growing worse
And I begun to lose heart
The will to live just wasn’t there
The drink gripped me and put a vice upon my soul
Then I fell ill
And still Jill waited on me with soup in bowl
Until the day I died due to my liver failing
And she mourned the weeping sun with great lament and wailing
Widowed, a young woman
With her honor held in tact
And she raised those children of ours
Whom had witnessed both ends of the track

Jill, was an amazing woman that I did not deserve
And if I had it all to take back, I would
She taught me the meaning of love
I just learned it too late…

Dear God,
If I would have only known then
What I know now
I would have been a better man…