so i just started writing.
and i wrote while John Mellencamp rasped on
about love
and how it's not feeling like it should.
and i wondered
what if life
don't feel like it should?
do you have a little diddy
for that mister songspinster, sir?
and if so, maybe i could
crawl around to it
and swing my hair in tune
to some guitar solo
so loudly played and sprung from
a man
who hasn't got a clue.
and what if my days
start to resemble
B-movie scenes at best,
and the only lead they could get to play me
was the
Cher
of today,
who's not in her best era,
it seems safe to say.
And what if she's old enough
to be my grandma
like the woman-child in the booth
so rightly had phrased it...
she handed off a smoke, as she guzzled her wine
and she bragged
about being
so old
and so loving it.
as if i should suddenly be sorry
for my looks
and ashamed
of my youth
like a child, in a game
made for grown-ups and adults and the lame,
and the rest
who sit in booths that stand tall enough
to keep my bare feet from grazing the tacky
and sticky and hated
old carpet.
and if i didn't have 9-inch heels to my name
i'd be at a loss and out of luck
in their adult game.
and always i wonder if anyone else
thinks
i look as absurd
in these shoes
as the girl in the mirror does?
god help her, she needs it i say
to the reflection too tall and on stilts
and at play.
and their hacked-up old bodies,
they throw me for a loop.
if you're not trying to compete with me
for men and attention and a winning
reflection
than why do you spend
those dollars you wear on your hips and that hang
out from sweaty underwear...
on lines of white thin-making junk
and on doctors with scalpels who line up
to cut you just so
and then sew you back up
completely new and young and ready for
a crack-up?
i wondered then if i'd be sitting here
under the red lights and breathing in smoke
from the show and the show-stoppers alike
twenty years from now, in all my middle aged glory.
i'd be smiling, no doubt. a contrived smile
not unlike i will wear tonight
but this one with wrinkles
that i can't fake now.
funny
how age
is the last true thing
that my face
gives away
and the body
betrays
in every scene and
in every breathy laugh
not really my own
and with each curtain call
calling my name
or so you would think
by the way i appear
all fragile and
innocent-like,
and not fully grown
and you and you
and the rest of those
in the booths
know
better than to
question my age
or my name
and these indiscretions
which play out
in my play
in the act and the scene
where i'm stark
naked and exposing
the what
and i'm too young
to realize just how
i can't fake it,
so i just blink, and i try and i make it
less obvious
to you and the booth.
that my insides
are out
and i hope you don't notice
how badly i'm
shaking.
and then it comes down,
the curtain of things
and i'm young and i'm bitter
in my rehearsed tongue
and my name is not mine
and i can't find my own
it got lost in some booth
where i sipped on white wine
and i shake and i reek of
the what and the yolk
of youth rotted in
and innocence knocked out
i passed out in your car
i think it was there, at the bar
where we spoke of a death
and lost youth
and then we slid
hungry
into a booth.
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