That Was Not Love

That was not love; it was only a spell
I cast, and on myself, victim and mage,
Placing my own soul in the golden cage
And tossing both keys in the wishing well,
Enduring more hard hours than I can tell,
More sadness than a man can ever gauge.
I finally agreed to turn the page
When you complained about the noise. Do tell.

I know that I was screaming, day and night.
I’m sorry that you had to suffer, too,
But that was unavoidable. You knew,
And could have quelled my fear, or used my fright,
By holding me too close, to make things right.
Instead you laughed, so that our troubles grew.

Praise

“I can’t praise you,” exclaimed the man of copper,
Burnished by his own empty self-praise.
“It’s early days,” he cried, “It’s early days,
And praise comes truest doled out by eyedropper.”
“Stop jumping round just like a damned grasshopper,”
She told him. “That old nonsense only plays
In Scottish castles: ‘All our yesterdays,’
And so on.” He swallowed down a huge gobstopper.

“You’re such a pig,” she told him. He demurred,
Saying the woman wasn’t beddable,
Plug-ugly, and her pies inedible,
And she responded with a filthy word,
Remarking she had never baked. “I heard,”
She said, “Your praise was never credible.”

I Won’t Explain

I could explain it, but I won’t explain.
Only a few men comprehend, distraught
By ignorance, their cool, searching minds caught
Needing to share what’s in their sharper brain.
A woman asked me once, “Have you gone sane?”
“Oh, I think not, my darling, I think not.
I think you’ve been reading Sir Walter Scott —
Rob Roy! Guy Mannering! Rob Roy again!”

Don’t listen to a woman’s maundering,
Her sad refrain a monument to smoke.
It’s a mere fool’s delight, a pig in a poke,
A female explanation; a loose string,
A vacuous performance, a bee sting
(Death being imminent), an empty joke.

Stop Thinking

Stop thinking now! Dismay disrupts my thoughts,
And I disparage those who practise it.
The man beside me has a coughing fit,
And tells me that his stomach is in knots,
But I don’t care, and, staring at his spots,
I wonder if it’s some fly that alit
And made a home there, a fine place to sit
For one long evening. I should have some shots.

Or drink some shots. I should imbibe much less,
But some days, when I just can’t stop the thinking,
Perhaps that my unwieldy brain is shrinking,
The choice narrows to this: Must I confess,
Or should I run away? It’s not a mess;
I will be happy. Maybe stop my drinking.