Nineteen

Have you been, nine-teen?

Have you felt the liquor drop
Deep into you and then stop?

Have you diced away your life
Caring not for kids or wife?

Have you been with older men
No longer destined for the pen?

I have not, for I’m eighteen,
These places I have never been.

Nor will I.

Aged Trees and Young Saplings

Free of old marriage he wishes to be,
His wand’rin’ eyes have spotted another,
His eyes, he finds, are too stubborn to see,
A quiet beauty – his children’s mother.

His wife has become his full crescent moon,
Her beauty waxing and waning so fast,
A new wife would sing a lovelier tune,
A new wife – her beauty, would always last.

A younger wife owns a beautiful face,
Pale skin, blue eyes, and full red lips,
His own wife’s skin and thickening waist,
Cannot compare to that girl’s thin hips.

And yet when he looks into his wife’s eyes,
He does not care ‘bout the size of her thighs.