that evil bike

 
he’s got a so/so apartment
and a shit head for a parole officer
and a job at a muffler shop

he’s got an old Harley panhead locked away in a storage shed
and a two-hour drive in his 86 Toyota pickup
to visit his mother who just turned ninety-two
and among the things he knows for sure
is that she’ll call him a loser and a terrible son
and she’ll scowl at his tattoos
and she’ll demand to know if he ditched that evil girl friend
and she’ll demand to know if he sold that evil bike
and she’ll demand that he kneel so she can pray for his soul
right there in the dining room
in front of all the residents and the staff
because public devotion to her god is what keeps her alive

and there’s a cop in his rear-view mirror
and a slow-moving bicycle up ahead
and he’s afraid to make a move around the cyclist
and give the cop a reason to pull him over

and he’s torn between feeling that he’s the loser she says he is
and feeling deep down that she needs him to be a loser
so she can swell her heart with prideful judgement
and that he’s pissed away his whole life
waiting for her to die so he can feel free

and he slows the truck and eases around the bicycle
and the cop veers off down a side street
and he almost pukes with relief from the tension and the guilt
but he admits to himself what he never admitted before
that the old woman was always dead inside
the pious kind of dead that becomes a terrible lifetime prison
but he doesn’t have to die in that prison with her
and he vows that the panhead will see the road again