A married man in a bachelor pad

 

Should I be a married man in a bachelor pad?

or be with grandchildren playing nice old granddad?  

Should I be someone's estranged husband living like a single man

Or a Grandpa where the children sleep and go off to school?

Work on writing stories, poems and books to publish

Teaching what's cool and keeps me ruled 

Loved with a woman's youthful fountain  

Or a man kept alive like a mothered orphan

Or cashed out in his clinging wife's coffin 

 

Am I sick yet of living in the replica of China

The make believe republic of independent living

With a native spouse calling the convenient shots?

When will I get sick of this lonely expat life?

Uninterested in other expats appropriated lives

To live my life like passing clouds that never threatened rain

But filter sunlight through the smog of an unpredictable brain

Should I sit on airs that slowly float away?

And not stare back at natives that don't care what I say?

 

I am not in a hurry to move this way or worry

About what will be tomorrow to end my sorrow

For sorrowful days may not have to come

As meteors graze past the edge of the sun

But she may end up with the pinball library

Most of which she cannot read or enjoy

In a condo she got to be happy and happy we will be

If manners and habits this foreigner displays disagreeably

Resolve her disenchantment hygienically.

For I may end up being a grandpa on the lam

Heading back disillusioned to Uncle Sam

Writing about his life's wham-bam

Up against a legal eagle establishing order

What he brought back from a distance

And another child all love no resistance  

Maybe I should become a monk

Have women treat me like a skunk

Stay away from bars and cars bras and debunk stars

 

So as I take the slow train south

Like the birds in the park that shake off louse

Take this verse and make it better than worse

What a difference the lonely evening cursed

With no cats or newsman lighting with distraction

Appeasing a disenchanted wife with no satisfaction

It would be better to polish towel racks and rings

Soap dishes, toothbrush holders, and other rusty things

The drape hem let down lengthened to the floor bring

 

What could be worse than sitting alone in wreckage?

Glad to be breathing while fingers aren’t leaving

They feel connected with no correction needed

It would be easy for Grandpa to scratch fleas

Basket weaving in the playground sitting reading

But is that the life I long for; how long would it endure?

This expat used to strangers and strange places

Could find such happiness on his back pages

With familiar faces he's loved for ages.

 

April 15, 2021