
The Kelly Song Collective
Regina’s Shoes
In a city park, on a wooden bench
I’m swimming in the dark. The moon is speaking French.
Every word I wrote gathers like a warm
perfect castle moat, and I refuse to storm
the walls she lies behind, the bed I need to make,
the faulds she’ll never find, the keep I cannot take.
I don’t want to be. I don’t want to see.
I am not amused. Those weren’t Regina’s shoes.
I could make her smile about an arrow slit.
And I would run a mile if the shoes would fit.
Am I just a fool, a fracture in her fort,
exception to her rule, a jester in her court?
Allegiances I pledge are a poison moss
on the wooden edge of the threshold I won’t cross.
I know this bridge I drew is mine.
I keep the picture in my mind.
I don’t think that she could ever understand
I could never be someone’s other man.
The armour’s never shone, but I could never trust
her autumn coat of arms, that it wouldn’t rust.
The songs that I would place on her parapet
wither like her face in my oubliette.
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© Audsongs 2018
