I have a standing offer to anyone who uses me as a referral for a diaryland gold membership (which I truly and highly recommend) to write a poem for them on any topic they wish. Within reason of course. Well, gloomyalice was the first person to use me as a referral AND to tell me who they were.
She suggested I read through her site and write whatever I felt like, so I read her entire journal and proceeded to write.
Here is the poem:
�
this is not a love poem
She cries with a grudge
and loves with fewer conditions
-despises carrots and promises broken
plays bass practices her kung foo grip & tae kwon do kicks - boxing her frustrations away wanting to break them like a glass noodle
she tasted first on Valentines day in the distant memory of a restaurant she remembers:
Strawberries dipped in chocolate
masseuses with warm hands and oil
she spoons with the good times on a crushed velvet couch
and punches the air � letting loose jab after jab - uppercuts to her third boy�s chin while he sits in a smoke cloud at a 4am bar stool without her�
She and I are the same age.
Alice sits with a stranger wanting to move his hand higher than her knee � she plucks the thick string of a chord
wishing to fairy godmothers that never return their calls to make the boy stay home tonight
the note resonates reluctance�
I sit in a bar drinking the first beer quickly so the burning stops quicker
as Alice in Wonderland fancies herself a Cinderella
but she�s neither one to fall down a rabbit hole
nor prostrate herself among cinders and ash
she would run but she doesn�t run
give up and hop the loop to O�Hare � fly �outta here� but she doesn�t run away
she gardens she tends she mends hangovers and cuts the hair of her father
cooks eggs then makes sandwiches for people she doesn�t live with
eats little - goes home and does the same for the one she does�
I used to be the savior. Rescuing those who didn�t need saving but wanted it more than anything else.
Alice strums another chord. I wonder about not being a man, but her.
her progression is smooth
and I want to speak to this women � sing a conversation over her playing - tell her faith is a crutch used only by those who need it
my ideas of trust being already lost when for it you start to look
that spring lasting a single week is worth more than 3 years of Autumn
and I watch her hand slide up the bass. We are the same age � 29. Somehow I know we both wore plaid at 5.
Suddenly I want to be the one removing my hand from her knee - sliding my notions into her convictions - caressing her ego gently - and sending her satisfied past Brown Stones past rentals past the point of ever needing her resolve
and I am singing
�no man ever deserves his woman
and no man ever treats his woman with enough regard
and no man should ever say �my woman�
because we are only gifts - gifts we sometimes discard�
but she�s stopped playing.
so I want to ask her about this idea I've lost called God, wondering if she�ll say �I'm not sure how much faith I have anymore, but I'm working on it.�
but she�s already gone.
