For Samantha

We got married at the Church of Elvis
when I was twenty.

I should have told you then
and maybe I did casually
that I had a really fun time,
but the truth is that that sounds like some common phrase
for having sex and doing meth
like anybody else there
was interested in anything else
but sex and drugs

all i remember
was that our thing was making out
and being cheap
and drinking Gin
while waiting for the Present either to end
or ensconce us in rose petals
the hue of that weird morning
where you sent me to the store sans ID
to buy a bottle of merlot
and I didn't get carded.

You probably thought that I was a beggar
instead of a robber,
but I don't watch cowboy movies for nothing.
As a teenager
I had always understood that somehow
a couple could take a towne (or a city)
but that couple could never be apart,
because friends are a part of the scam
especially when they break in
for parties that never happened
when all we wanted
was to stare at each other
and make out in the back seat