Dan Williams

High School

He was short on smoothness with the ladies,

but he sure knew how to dress.

When looks were gone he had nothing left to lose,

was for his age dressed multi-fashionably,

feet that had walked him well, he confessed,

deserved those new expensive Wingtip spit shined shoes.

 

Desperate for acceptability, ignoring simple truths,

recognition he had been deprived of

somehow gifted to him from some adolescent hero

that Promethius would approve of,

somehow self-approval is enlivened,

though the chances of it lasting are close to zero.

 

Much later, after romance had undone him yet again,

Seems Fortune had been misspelled, just for him,

unable to ask and no one able to choose for him.

Before now he would always have begun again

but expensive had lost its luster by then,

nobody left to supply those expensive shoes for him.

 

He fell before the first wave of the onslaught,

sword in sheath, hung on nail just out of reach.

Paid in skin for choices in self-respect for the ruse,

but even those who found him hidebound

still unpracticing what he preached,

could still respect those spit shined Wingtip shoes.