Kinked Garden Hose 1

When my green grass has had enough water

to drown in the rough and be ready for slaughter

the little guy you like rises tonight

in the sheets and shades tight

with an anarchy heart and electric plating

at its light bulb circuit thighs,

saying life’s too short to waste just waiting

for the next best thing to come on stating its

greatness to your wandering eyes!

And when you’re reveling in this boy’s ruin

at the bedside and shaking your head to clue in

that “being a man” has nothing to do with

that whole “getting laid” myth—

what am I supposed to do when

it’s what you’re asking of me?

I guess I get rude and dumb and lazy,

I kid and horse around to make you crazy

‘cause being a man is such a mystery.

But when the sun can’t learn to rise for fun

we excuse it with lies set loose like a gun

and explore all your fears and

the testament of our years—

because as your time wears slow

your guiding light blinks, I know,

but it just kinks my garden-hose mind as you go

and cuts off my circulation so signals can’t flow

for my brain wires go unlinked!

Then when your moods get me in chains and

dictate the turnout flow of my virus strains,

and you send me back to my kind

for I'm the only guy you can find

like an object of some gender law,

one fatal flaw shines forth

yet it’s the only one you never saw—

the flaw okaying you to push past your jaw

other guys outside our party lines!

So when music plays in the bed half-awake

like a daydream when in my head you shake

and take that little morning pill

for the hole I'll never get to fill,

I’m already starting to stink—

I’m decomposing with time to spare, still,

you dull my mind when I’m starting to think

so to the bright light I won’t shed a wink or

to the ages have anything to share.

And when I’ve snapped my last soda can

finally on the road to being this “grown man,”

and yet inside I'm made strange

for my body has to change—

I go rearranging my anger to lust

to dust you off my shoulder blades,

and I’m getting excited in range of your thrusts

and going to the lav to flush out my guts

as the contents of this system fade.

NEXT

--Porter Daryl's Poems