Shame

Stand a bit straight,
Lose a bit of weight,
Hold your stomach in,
Just so you fit in.

That boy there wants you –
You sure think it’s true…
He looks at you and smiles;
The seeming truth beguiles.

So you stand a bit straight,
Hope he doesn’t notice the weight,
Hold your stomach in,
And hope you fit in
His idea of beautiful…
You know,
What he thinks is cool.

He says nice things,
Oh, the joy that brings!
Talks and walks follow,
It’s how it’s meant to be, no?

You look up at his eyes,
He says there are no lies,
You believe and give in,
You feel,
You have fit in.

You show him your flaws;
You retract your claws;
You bring out your inner clown,
And
You let your guard down.

But

It just takes a shrug,
It just takes a word,
It just takes a scoff,
Never meant to be heard.
A looking away
When you want those eyes,
A tender word
To ease your soul
Which never appears,
His backing off
As you lean closer,
His being sated
And your hunger,
He has found himself,
All you are is lost.

So you cannot stand straight,
Hate your own weight,
Look at your body, face, hair
And you stare and stare and stare.
All you see looking back is you;
Try to recall whomsoever liked you;
If any of it was ever really true
And blame the answer standing before you.

The Breath I Breathe

I am tired of writing about love and being loved,
I have seen it all and yet, I keep trying;
My heart never learned and now neither does the brain –
It is a limitless rigmarole of lying!

Maybe I confuse love with acceptance:
Seeing myself as Perfect, in the eyes of a lover;
But, eventually, I see myself as lacking
Remorse is what I eventually discover.

Ironic sure that the last who loved me
When I was young, now wants someone younger;
Ironic more that he who says loves me now,
Professed cluelessly, quite the same hunger.

Confessions and cheatings have torn my soul apart,
So much so that I have no soul left to bare;
I truly wish I had no use for this miserable heart:
All it has conferred on me is dead-ended despair.

Somewhere delving deeper than heart sinew,
I must have found some self worth, some strength;
But all love does is push it right back in
And holds me up to ridicule and judgement.

Words, when spoken by those I love, shatter
Good, vain preconceptions I have fostered of me;
So I pick and dissect all those that matter
Yet relegate each to just horned-up sexuality.

I really thought I had pushed love out of my system,
Look to the mirror for that is what they all see!
But time makes me commit the same mistake over
And think that love finally wanted the heart in me.

If you want the heart it lies in a body just as mine
And is this not love to love both just the same
My heart has grown older with my body over time
And both still respond to the very same name.

But I am tired of writing about being unloved,
I have seen it all and yet I keep trying,
And I know now that love will not stop
Until the breath I breathe before dying.