Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Tatted On Memory

She was talking tattoos and indirectly said,
"Does Brian have a tat?" to which I responded
mine were scars from a reckless life
chasing balls, colliding with obstacles
but never fists, which I regretted, because
it is what I think she would have admired most.
My skin is pure and cut, muscles running deep,
which she may have acknowledged but
didn't seem to take in. My blue eyes always
intense could have revealed a moody one,
filled with angst to pain (but soft for her),
notes from my soul fill with refrains
never sung to her -- because she was looking
the other way, studding her nose daily,
killing pain with weed and beer nightly,
dancing until she had to be carried off,
staggering out night clubs and cars
to places now very far (and warm) from where
we once enjoyed a charade. She chirped
and I tuned in, hoping to reveal a side
she couldn't possibly fathom existed
in a tortured boy masquerading as a man.

We'll never come to that bridge, though.
I sing each night and day away as if she
will one day realize what she neglected to hear.


4.20.21

Not an unrequited love poem...just something I wrote about a seven year old
memory of someone who teased when she touched but never truly sought the
heart of a man, which might have been deeper than she could have understood.

and if she would ask me now, get to really know me rather than employ the
generational stereotypes, she'd see dimensions of a wonderful journey.