Something to show for it

Oh, no! I’ll assume something totally wrong
For I lack self-control and I cannot deny it
My interests lean to the venal and long
May my silence continue, I’ll try to keep quiet

But sometimes the need to exclaim all at once
When my mouth gets ahead of my brain, I admit it
Can give the impression I’m thoughtless and dense
As words slip past my censor and blurt through my lipstick

I’m careful, not careless; I pay close attention
Avoiding glib phrases and skirting pretence
Sincere of ambition, diffusing all tension
A guard on my tongue but no end to offence

You’d never imagine… I couldn’t believe it!
My opening gambit, caught sight of a plate
An idiot’s here, I can scarcely conceive it
How could I come out with such ejaculate?

An ass just addressed in the major and minor
The whole of the room with today’s foolish bray
I don’t understand why my inner designer
Won’t work with my editing suite as they say

I’ll sit in the corner, projecting ambivalence
Try to ignore just how rosy the glow
My face is on fire with the sum of my brilliance
Perhaps I’d be better to grab coat and go?

We set up this meeting and hoped for clear visions
But as I just proved I’m inept and half-cocked
It might be more prudent to postpone decisions
Until I’ve recovered composure and tact

Nauseous with nostalgia

Why on earth is it that even years after the event, I still cannot let you go?  Your lopsided smile and ugly, grinning, gurning face plague me from hour to hour.  I cannot sit in a room without smiling at some returning memory, and as warmth returns to my frozen heart, I take stock.  Weighing all of my options carefully, I balance from foot to foot, leaning this way, then that.  I am a pendulum, wavering, uncertain whether or whither to swing.  I am a clock, stopped still the day you left me, and only now beginning to find my rhythm once more.  As the shallow tick-tock of life creeps up my spine and tickles my veins into action, so the thaw begins.  I must be wary, lest my wintry organs melt to a spring flood of love, and I, swept along by my own strong current, am drowned by it.  Suffocated, helpless.  A fisher, tangled and caught in my own nets and snared by traps of my own devising, struggling to break free.  Wary indeed.  As my love for you had become a mantra – words of comfort to be spoken before sleep and upon waking; My ‘I love you’s with their reedy echo in the damp morning air, somehow growing to a rope with which to hang myself – and swing I did, groaning in pain and tormenting myself minutely with your voice, your face, your scorn, derision, pity.  Tearing myself down, piece by piece, until I had ceased to be.  Where once I stood, proud and strong, shining brightly for all to see – lay a stone.  My rougher edges smoothed to a bland pebble.  My glittering core dulled by your swell and smashed on rocks of my own choosing.  Broken and without pattern, without hope of re-making, mending, rebirth.  I lie here, and I am troubled.  That I still harbour feelings for you does not pain me or even shame me to action.  Nothing I could do to myself or to others could change that fact.  That these feelings grow stronger despite our mutual distance frightens and excites me.  I thought I had no more tears, and now I often don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  I can feel again.  What I thought had to have gone forever has returned to me.  Now I find myself at a crossroads with a choice.  Do I go onward?  Or do I turn back?

The Saga of my Youth

I kissed a shadow for too long
Then woke to find him dead and gone
Yet I was sure, in him did trust
That what we’d shared was more than lust.
Imagine my dismay to find
I was the last thing on his mind.
His photograph to me was true
But not his self, for he had new
Loves lining up around the block.
When I returned it was a shock
To find my friends had all succumbed
To charms I long had thought my own.
Deceit, I feel, to tell the truth
Was part the product of my youth;
They feed to us those pretty lies
Of love so strong it never dies.
Though for a while I felt a fool,
I wonder was it me the crueller
Of the couple – for my doubt
In his sincerity throughout?
Or am I blameless in the role
Of wronged maid by real arsehole?
Perhaps the simplest and most true:
I fell in love, but not with you.
For my love was a fervent flame
That you felt not, so who’s to blame?
I cannot answer this, my duck,
But miss your kisses daily, fuck,
I crave your scent dear, even now.
And do not dare to question how
I feel your touch upon my skin
And still I must not, can’t give in.
For you are with another. She
Deserves not what you gave to me.