Since Time Began

Men have been doing stupid things
for women
since time began.

Adam had a garden
and everything he needed
but one woman handed him a piece of fruit
and that was that.
Samson could tear a lion
apart with his bare hands
but couldn't tear himself away from Delilah.
Under a spell, fool for
the pussy.
David had a kingdom,
soldiers,
wives,
everything a man could want,
then he looked over a wall
and saw Bathsheba.
A naked woman
can make a wise man forget what he knows.

I've done it.
I thought with my dick
and called it love.
I saw a beautiful face
and assumed there was something beautiful
behind it. Sometimes there was.
Sometimes there wasn't.
I got involved with married women,
women already tangled in somebody else's life,
women with bottles on the counter
and lies in the mirror.
I knew better.
I didn't care.
Or maybe I cared
and wanted what I wanted
more than I cared about the cost.
That's the part nobody tells you.
Sex doesn't make a bad situation good.
It just makes a bad situation feel good
for a while.
Then the clothes go back on.
The phone starts ringing.
Somebody gets hurt.
Somebody leaves.
And you're standing there
with your great romance in pieces
on the floor,
empty bottles and broken dreams.

So I drank.
That's what I did with the wreckage.
I drank to forget the woman,
then drank to forget what I'd done
for the woman.
And drinking, being what it is,
didn't blur reality
at the end of those twisted nights.
It just gave me more wreckage.
More bad decisions.
More mornings when I couldn't explain
this sickness away.
More women I thought I could save
or who I thought could save me.
They couldn't.
I couldn't.
Maybe that's the oldest story we have.
A man sees something beautiful
and decides he has to have it.
He reaches for it.
He ruins something.
Then he spends the rest of his life
trying to understand why wanting something
so badly didn't make it right.

Adam knew.
Samson knew.
David knew.
And somewhere along the way,
so did I.