As I sit here with my right testicle hanging out of my shorts...

There's a select breed of them I've known
who stand apart in a seemingly backwards
scenario: they tire of their men
who are in turn frightened away from them
for one reason or fifty.

Watercolors remind me of them
and ponchos
and poetry from the heart
and anything bright
or dull or dead.

Somehow, when talent and wit were being doled out
their pregnant mothers sold their souls
to get to the front of the line, but for naught.

Ever since being birthed back in the Eighties
it's as if they've tried sucking up the world
in an attempt to portray or perfect it, but forgot to live in it
in the process; like my mother said of my father's type:
"So Heavenly bound that they're of no Earthly good."

Eating ribs in a white T-shirt and cursing at other motorists
and spitting on bugs when the childishly cruel urge comes up--

It's all OK, kids--

at least to these whelmingly human eyes and hands and feet

this Cowboy more free than anyone else claiming to be.

But don't let their alleged innocence fool you, Pilgrim:

Not that I'd know any better
than the next poor bastard
(this old dog found new tricks
less painful to the joints)
but something tells me if one brave enough to bed
one of these beauties lifted her sleeping hand
from the sheets the next morning
he'd find paint chips, sheet rock dust, and some of his skin
under her fingernails.

It's not their faults, they mean well most times.
It's like that one about the scorpion who stings the frog
as the latter gives the former a ride across the river
and they both drown-- it's just in their nature.
Still, they're the kind of women who
if they don't slow down
will end up aging less than gracefully;
smelling of their India ink
and wet clothes locked in a trunk to grow musty;
looking like a sadist tried shucking an oyster
with a baseball bat.

If you're wondering if this was all supposed to be
a pro or con statement, you are not alone.
I'm not even sure what I meant by any of it, I just know
that it's in the limbo where some memories live.

I can't argue with the fact that they've served a function
that I thought was impossible:
they've made me feel sane, by comparison.
After some of the charades, firsthand and otherwise
it's hard not to feel baffled
like a helicopter pilot after an F-16 flashes by
asking himself, "Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?!"

And maybe all this is just a projection of my bitter envy
over the fact that any given one of them
could write circles around me without trying, instantly
reducing me to a wanna-be version of my obvious literary anti-hero
a lacking facsimile of one who lived it more
and bitched about it less.

Eh, whatever. It killed twenty-seven minutes
while waiting for home to get here.