Lord Deliver Me (A Gas Station Hot Dog)

I know the angels watch over me
I can smell their breath,
Desperate as death
For any opening to pounce, any bounced check
or ounce of questionable ethics,
So they can call in their debts.

I can’t handle the constant threat
That hangs over any step out of line.
I just want to shine,
Like the grease glistened hot dogs
Rolling in place,
Predators of poor impulse control
and I find myself as prey.

Pray for better days
for better ways
To process feeling
But kneeling locks me in place
Held under the same ceiling,
under the same questions, needling
the same pressures freezing me
In this headspace.

So tired of wasting grace
chasing meaning, in the wrong places.
It can be freeing, that feeling
that no one else is coming, to save me.
I’ll pick myself up, but leave the dust,
life would just replace it.
Scramble up some courage
my fried nerves crackling like bacon.

Put the armor on again,
for a fresh war of my own making
With the daily blasphemy of living,
the guilt of giving
self-kindness in a world built,
around taking.

From the collection Steer into the Skid

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