Yearning

Five a.m.

I force myself to rise.

With coffee brewing

I throw open the gate

Of my corralled emotions

So rarely loosed.

With nowhere to run,

Yearning 

For high pastures of the heart,

They thunder in circles

‘Round, around my little studio

Trailing dusty clouds of sadness.

I yearn

For a woman

With storms in her eyes,

The smell of sunlight caught

In fistfuls of her hair,

Her toenails unpainted.

The blood of breakups crusts

Beneath her fingers’ nails.

A cat who burgles hearts,

Lithe and sensuous, 

She slips through life

Jeweled with jangling silver 

At wrists and ears.

She yearns

To wear just one more tattoo, 

A final chapter of self

Completing her story 

To women and

To God.

To men her mysteries 

Remain unfinished

As shadows and secrets seated

In many a dark corner

Of many a dark bar.

Me?

Call me Mr. Soap.

I am next to nothing,

A bar of Ivory handed to

A little boy 

With his first jackknife.

A crude caricature of a man

Of weak crooked features,

Of even weaker character,

Colorless, soft,

Carved from a childhood

By unskilled parental fingers.

Or….

Call me Mr. Jello

For I am wiggly, without

Backbone when confronted.

Cheap like those boiled down scraps

Of horse,

I require bold additives 

Of flavor, of color,

To be palatable.

Like those weird, ubiquitous 

Jello salads of the 50’s and 60’s

That married vegetable to gelatin,

I was raised, molded, jelled

Around foul tasting assertions, exclamations,

Proclamations of my embarrassing uselessness,

Shamefulness, my undesirable existence 

As adopted offspring

Of Warren and Mona.

Me?

Who am I to want her?

Author's Note

My original inspiration and intent here was to expose the long lasting, often life-long, scars and deformities inflicted upon children by poor, even abusive, child rearing. I began writing only to have my loneliness creep in. I hate living alone, I hate being old. The poem took a hard ninety degree turn and began writing itself. The female figure in this poem is one part fantasy, two parts an amalgamation of numerous women encountered in bars during my decades of drinking. These women exude sexuality and partner with “bad boys,” never with a nerd like me. Such is life.

P.S. My description of Self is an extreme exaggeration.

Reviews

[Betty Hermelee]

Dear Michael
We all have needs and wants in our lifetimes, and each of us has different ones...you seem to put yourself down in this piece; perhaps as you allude to your upbringing as the culprit... your words are vivid and strong and I hope you find that perfect "tattooed" woman...
Warmly, B

[Michael Sun Bear]

Hi Betty, did you ever have a few seeds of inspiration but when you began putting down words discovered the piece had a mind of its own? That happened to me here, it took off in an entirely different direction so I just let it run as it seemed interesting. It is entirely exaggerated, almost fictional.