more man than you

Hair a toe head tangle,

shoulders much too thin.

The other boys played football

I had a piano, paper, and a pen.

dressed all wrong,

too sensitive, effeminate

not at all masculine or strong.

I was a writer…

and I’d act as such with too much to prove

(intelligible, pretentious, ostentatious…fool)

and while the guys drank beer, and smoked the green

I’d steal their girls, and smash the scene

but eventually take the beating…

a year I hid alone

(cigarettes, and pills to make me sleep)

 Then growing up, I’d come to find

that my love for words, and rhyme

were thought by mankind

to be a total heterosexual crime.

So I tried. I tried

to suppress that natural love of mine

all the while reading the measures of man’s own mind…

according to a subjective view of what I saw right.

So I grew quite strong, and gained some size,

learned NFL stats, bought my old metal tank

drank my coffee black, and whiskey straight.

vowed no man would beat me

shot for shot, beer for beer, fist for fist.

and so it went on; this absurd list.

until a muse one day stirred the Cummings inside.

She was beautiful, fake, coy, and kind.

and when she left I was stuck,

still writing words I couldn’t help,

but wishing I could cease the whole sensitive senseless hell.

So yeah, I s’pose I am a poet at twenty two

but I’ll be damned if I’m not more man than you.