Muscle Poems

He let himself tell her

What was going on

In his mind.

She left him after that,

Too vapid and fickle

To find him attractive,

She left him behind.

 

But it seemed that if

He told her,

It was all she wanted.

She could not handle

The complexity of his wounds,

The places his imagination went,

How he comforted himself,

And the safety he needed

Just to vent.

 

The pressure had been mounting.

He didn’t feel he was amounting.

 He gave his life to her direction.

 

Before, he just wanted to be

Surrounded by her ambient light,

To push the door open and be home.

She stayed put, tuned out in isolation

Harvesting the love for the other man

In her world.

 

When he knew, he knew they had to fight

She was losing air for words,

They were trembling in fervency.

She was twisting round verbs

Hoping she would turn it to soul.

Too late, because children

Are the best way to lose control.

 

With his body shoring strength

From the foreshadowing

Of a long necessary event,

Divorce loomed in the room,

Seething regret.

It used to be that inside her

Was a quivering heart with

Enchantment and a fairy tale hope,

Mass agenda was put in place

In a genuine space of expectation.

Love was

Leading to the great reveal.

Yet it may have been

Because they fed themselves

When they were only

Half hungry, eyes bigger

Than their stomachs,

Consuming each other.

 

He remembered his friends,

From the life they’d been hiding.

All his friends seemed to be characters

And he knew them as much as he tried.

All her friends, must have known,

In his head, his hell was turned up high.

They were pretty and they lied.

 

He’s had a big issue with freedom,

And he can’t go out.

He has a big issue with that, he found out.

 

Inside us are quivering hearts,

So hopeful for the big reveal.

A heart half shattered, half-hungry,

And at peace with the deal.

 

He has time to find direction,

To make his way to the ambient light.

Memories are stored in the tissues,

She’ll use those in the shrink’s office.

Issues become conditioned reflexes

He’ll use hers for reflection.

The children are already hard wired for life

The story of a man who didn’t have a good wife.