Okeechobee

If I had it in me I’d yell “Mop that up!” and pitch
a fistful of Circle K napkins at your head, instead of sitting
here, thinkin’ that I myself will hafta clean up the mud
prints your filthy, pointy-toed boots made on my dash.

If I had it in me, the next time you raised your
fist at me, I’d whip that big ugly buckle off your
belt and mash it into your thick skin so hard that
you’d be marked for life like Cain: initials blazing
on your forehead, everyone’d know just who you are.

If I had it in me I wouldn’t be driving your tobacco-stained,
skinny self all over Okeechobee ‘cause you lost your license-
I’d be riding my four wheeler over four hundred acres
of my own cattle ranch. You don’t think I could do it, but I could.

If I had it in me, or even knew what “it”
was, I’d pull this truck over faster than you could
slur “Three fingers a’ Jack Daniels”, and leave you
high but not-so-dry, to sleep it off in Del’s orange
grove or stumble into the alligator cove, I don’t care,
so long as you never come home.