Odd Dreaming...

You boys (with your red-mask hats)
Play hate games in my backyard on guitars,
While here I sit and mull over
My barside depression/amusement.
Am I in this band, you ask?
My answer is as murky
As the dream you came from.

Now, I sit with you
On a red barstool,
Telling knock-knock jokes
To the frogs in my head
And the Elvis impersonators
That flock to my side.
I am so utterly alone in all this...

He startles me with his protection question,
Like a horror-movie shoulder-tap.
I brace myself for the honesty,
And yet, it doesn't knock me over as I feared.
It calms me, even.
Odd...

I see the green dry-erase insults
Written in neat list format.
(You, my lawyer, would whole-heartedly approve!)
The smirking snides slide it down the bar
And into my trembling hands,
Like fire and wisdom.
I smoke it down and save three words of it
In my brain for morning remembering:
"Skank," "Bitch," and "Whore"
...
It's far more than I deserve, I suppose.
But not more than expected...

And yet...
Though this unusually clear mist surprises me,
I am not troubled.
What's done is done.
I've lied to myself,
And I've done it grandly and frequently.
I've misplaced my modesty,
And given in to maladjusted self-pursuit.
Though I did not know the outcome,
I played each game willingly.
And when the die was cast,
I cast myself off.
And every time, I sold the home team,
Not knowing fully that sooner or later,
I'd buy another...
But at what price??

(sigh)

I just wish
(With all my lovely four-year old hope)
That I could make it right.
Oh that I could take those insults,
Those teams that put their trust in me
And ended up stranded, betrayed, and abandoned-
If only I could carry them in my arms
And sit them down in front of me
And love them all the same...
And they would be at peace with me.

But I fear that war is just as inevitable
As the waking from this dream...

:/