I knew at eighteen
Life would be a struggle
Always too much yin
In with the yang
Maybe a few days good
Then the rest of the month bad
Tried to keep up a good attitude
I still beam out smiles
Laugh at myself
Look for fun things to do
But that pre-dawn
I took the elevator
Up to William Penn’s statue
Atop City Hall
Wrote my name in Magic Marker
On the wall
“CS heart Chaos”
Gazed down at the street grid
That now looked so clean
Showered in pink and blue daybreak
After fleeing Greenwich Village
In a snit
At four in the morning
Because my love life
Was never going to be good
Because of the invisible sign
That only men could see
Those attracted to me
Always the wrong kind
Left New York via
Greyhound bus
Coffee to go
Watched the sun rise
In Philly’s Rittenhouse Square
Hippie male trying to convince me
To come to his pad for breakfast
He was kind, though
As we watched iridescent pigeons flit
He wiped the bird shit out of my hair
With his handkerchief
Do men still carry those white linen squares?
Maybe the Universe was offering me
A good mate for my soul
But I refused both the man and
The Universe’s plan
As I blindly ran down the wrong paths
Time after time after time…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Image: William Penn statue, Philadelphia City Hall
poeturja 
I am thinking we need to bring back the chivalry of handkerchiefs 🙂
Very interesting, bittersweet poem 🙂
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Love that (“the chivalry of handkerchiefs”). Yes, I agree! 😀
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I think our short lives are primarily to experience the making of mistakes. After it’s over and we get a chance to look back, maybe we’ll be able to get something out of it. Maybe, and that’s final.
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Yes, that is the expectation, the hope!
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