Poem circa 1987
Live for the moment! That’s what she preaches
Moments with her, oh heavenly reaches
Until the next day, when reality shines
accusation in stripes through the closed window blinds
Well now I want more my urges have passed
you must tell me you love me, the die has been cast
You gave yourself to me and loved every bit
You started this chainsaw its no time to quit
After felling my oak tree you ask me to leave
Call me up soon! Okay?
Do you really believe I’ll get anything done
without hearing those words
digging hooks in my head and pulling me
toward the phone
Oh not yet I can’t call her now!
I just left her place
someone please tell me how to stop my head hurting
where’s the power to choose?
There’s a world full of women no way I can lose
Then why do I feel I’ve surrendered already
Reality wavers, my thoughts are unsteady
My universe now revolves around you
everything that you say, everything you don’t do
just pushes me farther away from the fact
that when I first met you I thought that you lacked
the qualities I decided I needed for a fulfilling relationship
then got stampeded
by all of your charms, your eyes and your style
No harm playing her game, at least for a while
You ask me what’s wrong
I say “nothing” and smile
To tell you the truth would mean baring my soul
I can’t afford that
not just for a roll in the hay
truth’s a needle you surely would find
to draw light from inside me
and I want you blind!
To emotions that dwell
just behind this facade
for to see them exposed you would think it quite odd
that a he-man like me has feelings so frail
“Like a girl” you would say
What hell to be male
Through rain sleet or snow he’ll uphold the law
lest the storm loose a teardrop
thus exposing a flaw in his manhood
You see now the curse I am under?
Perhaps self imposed, I often do wonder
what life would be like without such restriction
to say what my heart felt instead of this fiction
I’m no less a man if I take off this mask
this store dummy look isn’t up to the task
of anything other than photobooth grins
Taking snapshots with dates
and stick them with pins
But where do I turn to get off this ride?
This merry-go-round of ego and pride
At least falling over I’ll know where I stand
The dancing is over I must pay the band
and find my way home through these sinister streets
that would lead me to ruin with all of their treats
Now is the time that I just admitted
my guilt in this drama and call you acquitted
The mirror I’ve found is more than a tool
or gauging my current level of cool
It’s also a story, a book that I’m reading
in between bouts of conclusional breeding
I’m sorry to say that the story so far
is just a first chapter titled- “Me. In a Bar.”