MORE EVIDENCE THAT I REALLY, REALLY SUCK.

mary ann



Her pain is a pressure in my chest, makes me breath faster
I am the one who causes this grieving in my lovers
Hurting most the ones I love most

What ape inside is this that comes out and embarrasses me?
How do I ever act like that?

These kind of thoughts come later
When the improv is over and I am left alone, stripped of character
Naked before her
A child
No
But something less than the mythic man
The well argued reasons are many and the excuses aplenty
Emotion overpowers reason, slashes that wenches throat and leaves her dead.


I am left with her hurting at my behest
She is caught in the problems of my failures like a fly in an old, unused spider’s web
She can fight here way out of this web, easily fly away.

Hurting the one I wish to bring only laughter and warmth and joy

If I could change the world…. But I can’t.
If I could change myself… But I can’t… though I can adjust
Perhaps enough for her love to ease my mind again

How does the story go from ‘I knew the first time I saw you’ to ‘I can’t anymore.’
that path where tender love and pits of punji sticks are arbitrarily dispersed


I don’t know don’t know don’t know what it was but I want to take it all back
Shift that and this incident into the corners of our minds
Look elsewhere, see ourselves as lovers again,
Art types taking on the world, suffering for our differences,
A bomb went off in New York and she lost her job in Chicago
And then there is me
Veering from the sane man
To a foolish boof,
Sometimes so diminished I use the shield of a braggart
Embarrass her.
Lie to her to keep the peace and then find she didn’t want that at all but the peace is somehow shattered by my telling her anyway… as I knew it would be

Love above and beyond all the petty
Keeps me deep in gray until she accepts me again