Part I -You are my top drawer man
Well I have to confess, my life has turned out quite nice to be fair.
Don’t think for one minute that I am not deeply thankful; do you think I don’t care?
There’s money in the bank and look even a new convertible outside
Zero Percent how could I resist, you would do it too if you could just feel the ride
The mortgage is all paid, so the money that’s left, it is all mine
My poor dad he worked so hard, he did lots of overtime
He held down two jobs just to make end
s meet,
And then they left and they left it all for me to spend
Bless
So I’m determined, the way they scrimped, I will not do the same
I won’t squander my life for that would be such a shame
So tonight I'm off, heading once more to one of those exotic places
Places where mankind has so far left very few traces
When one day I lie on my deathbed, Wracked by Disease and Succumbing to Pain
I will remember all those places and how I wish I could go there again
Nowhere will be where I haven’t been
On this earth there will be no wonderful sight that I have not seen
I am going now, I must get my flight
It’s the jet setters life for me, oh my what a delight,
But I just have to go and you knew this time would come, so no reason for tears
Promise to stay faithful and allay all my fears
You are the only man for me, and when I get back you and I can love again
You are my dream man and my life without you would be such a pain
You know how much I love painting the town red
We could do dinners and theatres, wine tastings and afterwards to bed
When we go out for a drink, as always you can drive
and as for me, well I will be alongside
Oh bear in mind, cash will be tight, these trips cost the earth you know
There won’t be much spare, so maybe we could just catch a late night TV show
Oh darling you definitely have a place in my life of that you can be glad
But there are things I must do and places I must go so please you mustn’t be sad
I know a man, he will come along, and luckily he lives in a drawer just below yours
I intend to open it before I head off and out he will come crawling on all fours,
I know it’s awkward but you will just have to get back inside
I won’t be gone long and when I come back you can pop out and come for a ride.
Oh and when you come over, you can put balm on my back
And afterwards who knows, you and me could even end up in the sack
What an odd question “Are you left or right handed” gosh indeed why do you enquire?
Well how should I know, I haven’t been watching and to respond to silliness I lack all desire
After all I don’t think you and I have been together for very long
Six years in June or was it April and oh my your love for me it is still so strong.
Reflective Commentary
I began writing to release myself from the ******* affair in which I was embroiled. I had always entertained grandiose ideas of the type of lover I was going to meet, blissfully unaware that my heart had its own ideas and wouldn’t see reason or comply with fantasy. I now find myself in one of the bottom corners of an Isosceles love triangle; me being deeply in love with another person who takes self-obsession to new heights; one who neither sees, understands and indeed is incapable of acknowledging anyone besides herself. I'm ashamed to admit, she is seeing someone else as well.
This was just to be a trail run, chiefly intended to be cathartic. I wanted to help myself understand my feelings of self-loathing and jealousy; why I seem to be stuck in this awful place, why can’t I just move on, find someone else, get a life, get a new lover, get some inertia and move on. None of the self-help books about ending relationships came close to pulling me up out of my prison.
So one January night I began writing, I had a burning passion to imbibe some “healing medicine”. Thoughts were running through my head like a snake winding its way deep within me. I had to let it out, give it “air-time”. I wanted to understand my weaknesses and see them in “daylight”.
I wrote through the night and when I was done, I realised I was no longer in pieces, letting my heart flow to my fingers had somehow changed me; I was now an accomplished artist who could sing from his own soul.
It was then, however, I realised that I actually hark back to an “old school” one that is described in BRB as “Northern Ireland Rhyming”. I felt compelled to make each couplet rhyme according to some old fashioned scripture that is rarely used today. Free-form didn’t do it for me, who would know it was a poem, it could be anything? I needed to ensure that mine looked and read like a poem. In hindsight, I actually think I lacked the confidence to let it exist in free-form.
Initially the first stanza of my poem looked lame: -
Well life is pretty good to me
Money in the bank
A flash new convertible
Mortgage is all paid
And here I was hoping to make the first stanza rhyme and take it from there, well good luck I thought.
After much persistence and juggling words, I managed to get the last words on each couplet to rhyme. I did have to sacrifice one verse, which I had grown attached to, being unable to find matching pairs that delivered the same blows of arrogance: -
So I'm determined not to die,
Not to die without having lived
I painstakingly avoided “We” or “Us” and especially eschewed the word “ours”.
I devoted time agonising over “Ends” and “Spend” in the second stanza, but came up with a workaround by playing with “Form”. So the “s” at the end of ends, ended up on the next line, as her parents were unable to make ends meet hence the “end” and its “s” don’t meet.