The Reader of Oneself, a poem on hope and loss

Ex libris

Browsing on the bargain shelf …

A school book anthology whose leaves

Thickened the dust on the shelves

Of adolescent minds in Tottenville High,

Staten Island 7, N.Y.

I see cheerleaders – rah-rah skirts,

Thighs as pink, as firm, as prosthetics.

I see jocks, jaws as square as photo-fits,

Lettermen strutting in their varsity jackets,

Their skin a size too small for their musculature,

Their minds gripped by the image of pudenda clutched

In taut white panty-gussets; Feminine rime

Grinding against the masculine scheme.

Such urgent, relentless desires:

Dreams scored in flesh and fire.

Turned cold now.  Lost your bottle;

Hope’s sunk like a ship scuttled.

Doctors now, teachers, fathers and mothers;

Or drug addicts, alcoholics, death-row murderers.

And the poetry’s mostly gone from our lives,

The lust too, though, maybe, some love survives,

And for those who moved on, who were dauntless,

Perhaps, they’ve acquired some rhythmic, prosaic happiness.

… I reveal something cheap about myself. 

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