D-I-V-O-R-C-E by Ben Myers

(from his ongoing work "I, Axl: An American Dream")

I was crazy about this girl;
for four years it was L-O-V-E, love.

I was a 24 year old hungry nothing
she a 19 year old model-slash-angel

two lost kids with
fuck-ups for parents.

She’s the chick I wrote
Sweet Child O’Mine for.

She’s the chick I quit drugs for
the chick I washed my clothes for.

One day I’m so overwhelmed, so consumed
by passion, I propose without thinking

I say to her, if you don’t marry me Erin
I’ll blow my brains out right now.

And she’s laughing and going, ‘Oh yeah? What with?
A hair-dryer?’; and though her sarcasm makes her cuter

and I’m laughing along too, deep down she knows I’m
packing, deep down she knows I’m serious about this

so a few days later we drive to the desert and have
ourselves a good old crummy Vegas shotgun wedding

in some tacky joint called the Cupid Wedding Chapel
somewhere just off The Strip at 4am.

We spend the wedding night shooting craps,
ordering beluga from room service and fucking noisily.

It was a time, man, but even then the arguments
were already commonplace; drunk, dumb shit

with lots of screaming and hurling of household
objects – just like all regular kids in love, you know?

But this girls, she’s a ball-breaker,
always all up in my shit so’s that sometimes

I can’t breath, can’t move, can’t think
and one day she’s cleaning my CDs

and I just snap: back off bitch – leave now
before I turn your ass out to the gang-bangers.

I mean, this chick made me feel like OJ
and all’s I knew was I didn’t want to see

myself on Fox News one day heading a
dumb-ass 20mph hour live TV car chase.

We reconciled, fought, reconciled again;
a spin-cycle of love and hate. I guess sometimes

my temper got the better of me.
When that red mist descended

like a curtain after an encore
I guess maybe I lashed out on occasion

but, you know, you got to understand
I was fronting the world’s biggest rock band.

I had big deals going down, people to keep in line,
songs to write, people to hire, people to hire.

When she miscarried I knew it was over.
The children in us were still best friends

but the adults had taken over, soured the mood,
spoiled the party. Everything was corrupt.

Everything was corrupt and everything was rotten;
everything had gotten crazy. We nearly killed those

crazy spirits that brought us together
but in the end it just couldn’t work.

Eight months later I had that shit annulled.
Filed for divorce and got myself a new girl.