POEM - A Romantic Comedy

Shortly after the romantic comedy machine

Churned out its latest

Touchingly sweet commercial

She turns to me

With those eyes

I have loved for millennia

Turns and says longingly

She should have fought for me

She should have tried harder to understand me

That these problems we have,

Why don’t we face them

Why can’t we handle them head on

Like those people over there

And so I say something sensitive and heartfelt

Something to salvage our fragile time together

Something like,

“You have got to be kidding me!”

The reason we don’t fight harder for each other

Is we don’t have those problems

We are not complicated

We are just a couple . . .  

“A couple of what?” she asks, backing it with venom

A couple

That’s it, that’s the end of it, the whole statement

We are a couple without questions

But look how good they look

They still have problems

They are beautiful and muscular

Full of life and vigor and frivolity

Charming and brash and demure

And so interesting with their issues

Their complicated and interwoven lives

What kind of world is this

Where intriguing hot bods

Can’t find answers?

Can’t find true happiness?

Because my dear,

They don’t know what we know

They aren’t privileged

To live our great story

This legendary tale of love

And endless joy

Full of certainty

And a small sampling

Of several of the deadly sins

See, drama, we are sinners, there you go

But why don’t I look like that

With all the problems I seem to have?

It is precisely because we don’t look like that

That I have to make up problems

Just for your benefit

It’s because we look like this

That we are happy

And it is how we discovered such blissful serenity

“Oh shut up!” she says

With the launching of a pillow

And a roll towards me

To rest her head against my shoulder

Like some cheesy do-wop ballad

Wrapped in the comfort of middle-age