Why I Don’t Date, new poem
Why I Don’t Date
Lamp light leaning I wait
On your one headlight car
This nervous bike officer
His endless vulture circles
I’ll have none of your advice
It seems there is no place
For me yet to be anything
Other than disappointed
I can pace off the wind chill
Ten feet in either direction
Bum a bum a cigarette
Waiting always on money
On your black hood car
On the time it would take
A person to learn to flirt
After years of indifference
You know that I’ve tried
Nights in dance floor bars
Surprising years ago now
And stopped not by choice
Those months I spent
Trading six beds at least
I never told you about
The nine times in ten
I was too fat too poorly
Dressed too anything
At all and so desperate
I kept on and on asking
What solace they could
Afford me almost enough
Never never at all enough
Reason to keep it up
Even this sidewalk night
Let the Spanish moss to wag
The moon to shake itself
Awake again as always
A round vase faint of light
Never as shining perhaps
As might be true sometimes
When no one is looking
Eventually you learn
To give I suppose by
Rejecting everything
You’ve ever received
Eventually you learn
There are always strings
There are some things
You can never not be
