Histrionics

​

It’s a funny ritual

The way I feign indignance

When you offer an offense

And a stage alongside it

So we might play at drama,

Live a love outside our own

More blemished and molested;

I wonder why we do that.

 

Is our show some mockery,

A dark, burlesque absurdity

We stage to set by contrast

Ourselves against the hopeless,

Our lights against those shadows,

Our place amongst the lovely things?

Have I told you, Em, of Ralph?

His head repulsed his hair. (That’s just some fun trivia)

 

With language much more prudent

He called me a naïve fuck

Then, with a muscular stroke

That betrayed his didactics,

He circled my first B-plus

And moved to adjust his… scalp.

“You forgot to pen the scars;

Nothing sacred looks pristine.”

 

Why this backward alchemy,

This way we tarnish the gilt,

Beat the noble back to base

With hard words and harder heels

Until the floorboards might keen

Loudly enough to deafen

Us against our hearts revived,

To make discord of the hymn?

 

I've got four stanzas up there

Replete with contrived insights

And partial truths if any.

On a phone call yesterday

I asked you why we do it’

“Oneupsmanship is sexy

And we’ve both got big wit.”

… I can be homiletic. 

 

BUT! You needn’t make me out

To be some abstruse moron

By dropping sensible prose

In your self-satisfied way

After I’ve just devoted

Forty frickin’ lines of verse 

To our g*ddam relationship!

Why do you always do that?!