Surprise your own self
By doing the scary thing

You will never find yourself if you choose to hide from everyone else

We're all headed to the same destination.
Why not take the scenic route?

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

I try so hard to be loving
But there are a folks
That I just don’t like.
I mean it, no jokes.
They’re mean and nasty
And loudly unkind.
To like such people means
I would need to be blind
And deaf and mute and
Completely out of my head.
So, I think I’ll just go on
Disliking them instead.

I mean, what the heck?
I’m not all that spiritual.
It’s not like I am a very
Overtly saintly individual.
On a scale of one to ten
I’m probably an eight
And most of my neighbors
Aren’t even that great.
And it’s not really a contest
From the very beginning
So what sense is there
In working hard at winning?

Some believe in heaven
And others believe in hell.
Well, I know both of those
Two places very well.
I used to live in the Midwest;
‘******’ was a polite word.
Just about the nicest version
Ot that epithet I ever heard.
Where gays and Jews
Might just as well go die
Because all good Midwesterners
Would sneer as they went by.

Oh, and if you were a Christian
You had better be the right sect.
Don’t try to pass as godly
If you religion ever genuflects.
And don’t be a Democrat there
Because that is plainly wrong.
And marrying between races
Bubba beats your head like a gong.
I think it might be better
For me to just be who I am.
Trying to act like a Republican
Just gets me into a big jam.

I don’t want to go to heaven
If hypocrites get to go there.
I’d get thrown right out
I’d knock them off the stair.
Of course, if they get in
That means something is awry.
So, maybe Saint Peter
Had better just pass me by.
Anyway, I sort of found heaven
In a chocolate cheesecake.
Just leave me alone with one.
That’s about all it takes.

My darling once asked
“What'd happen to a guy if he made me cry?"
I wasn’t in any rush
so right then and there I started to gush:

I’d knock him onto the concrete
Introduce his skull to my feet

No one hurts my baby girl

I’d take a knife and puncture his lungs
Slice off the entirety of his rude tongue

No one hurts my baby girl

I’d shove my thumbs down his eyes
As he’d see the price of heavy lies
"Why?"

**Because no one ever hurts my baby girl