Expectations

Blood run down centuries finally found in today's young men is damned.
DNA floods and wants its' family tree to grow, its' seeds purposefully sown,
given to live in the streams it's delivered, flowing as a continual river.

Ancestors of whores were sold by their fathers to the best buyers.
A hymen was a tested seal of freshness; were it absent the deal's undone,
the daughter a wastrel and no gained son.
No man, not one wanted to waste his funds on a spoiled product.
Now a man whoremongers daughters who're NBO no longer.
An easy lay is the highest romantic aspiration in the western nations.
Winning with twins at an inn is a double score.
Who dares ask for more?
Mo' lasses laid, legs splayed forthwith with width for their only lover,
ready to become mothers as owed in old betrothal's convenient nuptial covenant rituals,
than modern legions of lady collegians who are so wet for debt they race against regret
to win their bellies from would-be infant company.

Every date is a gamble at the slots, a lottery ticket bought.
Try before you buy is the marketing strategy hopefully succeeding in bringing breeding to vacant wombs.
Soon some rooms are rented but they're not protected nor parented as no contract backed the temporary merger.
Dowries are still paid but they've been made larger and post-matrimonial.
How could a girl, long-forgot maiden-knot broken with a vow unspoken,
now bring more than disloyal strife to the role of wife?
Self-control shunned, naught but openness known,
what fool anticipates temperance to be learned at home?
A collector may as well feel elated picking up a coin long circulated though the mint's printing condition can't be returned.
Word has spread so buyers dread signing the dotted line below which fine print reads:
a woman's needs limit your property to the half she charitably leaves
and any son he sires will become a stranger only touched by income.

In ancient times this desert clime was a merry marital riverbed.

Unveiled

My heart is worn
with love's flow.
Here it was,
there it goes.

To feel eros in error is worse than dumb silence or numb blankness.
We toil and leisure in gloom when the clouds hang thick and no pinprick
of that celestial giant can be seen.
Were the cost to keep her eternal winter,
nocturne never quite turning to day,
I would walk that way with a smile.

To learn the belief -mutual adoration- on which your joy was built,
was false, by the discovery of a dagger's chill hilt, and know:
long ago she chose another (if ever she selected ye) so the pleasure
you felt was a phantom, a false reality's illusion,
is to find each glimmer of joy thereafter suspect.

Keeping Company

While Autumn air pinched us with frost,
I told my cousin of my girlfriend.
She was a different breed:
one on whom I could depend.
She had the love I need.

Where leaves descend to die,
my cousin and I,
shared in tales of women,
with beer-wet lips.

I said how she was loyal.
He said how his was faithful and each of us thought in silence.
Those moments, for which I'm grateful,
crystallize as powdery dew on bark's dark side,
in a mind grey with age.

My girl was too shy to display her love publicly.
It was something too personal to bare before any witness but me.
Less joy I had known, less warmth I could conceive, 'fore her's was shown.
Hands worn from a day's chopping, muscles torn, she massaged the weariness away.
My body barely settled in its' chair before a hot meal was laid there at our table.

His girl was his lap-warmer.
He would fall on his couch from a salesman's day of walking.
Then his boots were gone and her arms encircled his shoulders.
She'd hear his jokes and they'd share a laugh.
He loved to light candles and join her bubble bath.

The wind pressed us, trying to enter our thoughts.
We enjoyed recalled feelings for a while more.
Finally we rejoined everyone.

Your Traitor Forever

Who opened our slumber-heavy hearts and left us love to keep?
Who raised high his banner, now unfurled, on his castle above the deep?
Where and why the dears disappeared gurgle drowning in our sleep?
What took our lost and left us loss too great to weep?
Wilting eyes bespy dark tides and rest never one peep.
My shy looked-for Sheen of Days sand to sea's surely a tiny leap.

More than I knew want before I desirably want you,
past feelings weak foreshadowings of something new.
Presenters played their trumpets; (horns whispers in your call)
To live without you while about you I'ven't the wherewithal.

I know the cause, knew the monster, my father fought her on this shore.
Yet blackest blame come take me, heavens soon unmake me, I'll be your paramour.