Going to round off the minor poetry jamboree with this, which some may find a teench controversial. Let me piously state that I have never been in the situation described below, but I was motivated once to wonder what it might be like.
A Girl Like You
We meet in a glassy lobby
Outside are sunshine and plants
A scene of such clinical summer
That I fear butterflies
Dread the voices of children
For they will surely kill the deal.
Beneath our feet are plastic tiles
They whisper of office blocks and money
Your feet are wearing sandals
Your toenails are painted blue.
I repeat my name
You take my hand
A handshake, then, an introduction
Formal and weirdly firm
Like farmers down home I used to know.
We’re inside the hissy nowhere of a lift
We do not speak
I don’t dare look at you
Just the lights counting dead time.
Now we’re at your door
You keep your key on a wristband
Why am I surprised by that?
You bid me sit beside you on the bed
Knowing I am in your power
That the lobby was my last chance.
You take my hand again
Softly this time
With such skill of skin and nerve
That I can’t tell the difference
Or even if there is a difference.
You tell me I’m too pretty for this
Why should I need a girl like you?
I flush and blurt my domestic
My people’s republic from which sex
Was fairly tried and banished.
And you smile and say I’d be surprised
How often you’ve heard that, you know.
And I wonder if you say this
To all the desperate joes
The obese truckers the owl eyed geeks
The Polish brickies far from Catholic home
The dying men dying for one moment
When their bodies will cease to be hateful.
But it’s nice of you all the same
You didn’t have to say it.
In a voice from a daydream
You lisp out your specials
The candy and the capers
That can be mine for money.
You say you know I’m not ready
That we can take our time.
And I’m thinking that you remind me
Of someone I used to know.
Your eyes though hard are pleasant
There’s something about the way you size me
And the flowers around your breast.
But I bet you hear that all the time
And I bet that nothing bores you more
Makes you feel the creep of death
Than the throngs who want to know you.
Outside there are cars
And music that feels like violence.
Inside there is here,
Me on my journey
You on yours.
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