Do not lance your hair

Just to satisfy those men in suits,

Or your woman, sat there with that expectant gaze

Reserved for only you.



Let your image be cultivated

Through the culture of the downstroke.

The lazy thick steel on the neck of the guitar

That shudders at your touch

And responds with the readiness of one thousand ******

Cooing their broken sounded and false approvals.



I see your fingers fumble across the chipped mahogany

And I recall on the benefit of all men

The first and forgotten lovers,

Buried beneath years of clumsy ***

And vicious disregard.



And from the shadows in the archives of your grey matter

You remember every wince of self-doubt,

Etched across the faces of your women

That you never cared to notice in the dizzy ecstasy

Of your youthful wantonness

And the hardness of your ****.



So age will bite at your features,

And you will squint in the wind,

Cowering at the cold that clings to your bones.

At some age you will cut your hair

And iron your shirt.

Nurse your whiskey

And find yourself in receipt of all those women

Still tangled in the hotel sheets

In the back lodgings of your mind

And everything they did to shape you.



And you pick up that old acoustic

And play the tune of one thousands odes.