Noel Negele- A Poem

This Girl

I left a woman for this girl

I don’t know what it is

There is a certain way she comes out of the shower

The towel around her breasts

The smile, the way her hair falls on the side of her face

As she puts her shoes on

Or the way she rubs my balls with her feet so very often

You know there are these creatures that you are certain

Will never fall in love,

They will only produce the feeling to others

Like a chain around the soul

Squeezing all the kindness and generosity left in you

But of course in the meanwhile

It is a blast and very much worth it

The only problem is

She prefers to watch me slew in the darkness

Drowning

Coming home with bruises from fights

And brag about it

She doesn’t realize

That youth has a finite line

Madness ought to subside 

In order for us to become more human than this

And work our way to the things we want

As I try to be good and drink very little

She taunts these efforts

And puts pressure on me

Whines about not having friends

Although loneliness is something 

She knows very little about

She is hungry for the tales of the night

Those times I slithered in the cracks of the pavements

Where I used to dine with roachers

Cracks that are so much deeper than the oceans she is fond of

But how can I ever narrate those nights and days

Where I pretended to be alive

In rooms with no furniture

Behind shutters

Amongst people that reduced their souls

Around burning pipes of getaway

She wants a man with more hatred than love

More death than life

She wants me to stare back at her and say

“hey I’ve hit rock bottom, come join me”

Such is the way with women of this kind

Beautiful and mean and unspoiled

She never worked a day in her life

Never had to land a fist on a nose

Or wake up to an alarm clock screaming at six in the morning

Still

When I wake up in the afternoon

And watch her beautiful ass move

As proudly as a waving flag

I know

I’m caught in this

And will stay here

Enslaved by her fire

Until she will suck the last drop of me

And bored and quenched

Hunt for another poor soul

That right about now

Knows nothing

Of this.

Sometimes you look

At the moth heading straight to the flame

And it makes perfect sense.