Secrets

Here we are again
I'm up here
All alone
Your out there
Staring at me
Wanting a show

some of you have drinks
In your hands
A few of you are smoking
A few more are wishing
You still smoked

You say you want
Some poetry
Bullshit
You want me to bear my soul
Share all of my secrets,
My fears, my dreams,
Nasty things I only let go
Of when
I write
Admit

I could tell you about
Murder,
Sex, or love
Shall we discuss the
Hemingway solution
Or why I awake in the
Middle of the night
Thinking about it

You want my thoughts on
The death penalty?
Or just my thoughts on death?

I could tell you all
Of this and more
How about the time I
Killed a man in the
Desert
Or was that just a dream?
Shall I describe for you in
Exquisite detail every inch
of the body I'll lay with
Tonight

Would you hear of our
Love or our lust?
No shame
We're all Closet
Voyeur's

I can tell you all
Bare my soul to you
Tell you everything you
Ever wanted to know about
Me and things you may not
Want to know

I will do this for that is why
I'm here
And you will listen
That is why
Your there

But at the end
You will owe me
A secret
Are you ready

Let's begin

I wrote this poem as an opening for a reading I did at the South Country Fair last summer (a local folk music festival). the scene opens with a stool and a mic, beside the stool is a table on wich stands an ashtray, a bottle of Jack daniels, a glass of ice, and a 3 foot statue of an African warior cradling in his arms my childhood teddy bear. I enter weraing all black, sit dowm pour a shot of jack, take a sip and proceed to read this poem. At the end I drain my glass deliver the last line, at which time in the background Miles Davis Kind of blue starts playing and I launch into an hour long poetry reading. Man what a great day.