Without Regard

She sashays like she knows something

Like she knows nothing

About how things got this way

Like nothing has anything to do

With everything

She feels objectified by

Life

Which made her this way

And neglected by whoever should have cared 

Unsatisfied

Unappreciated

She’s got those walking blues

Like walking pneumonia

Contagious

She spreads infection

I don’t believe a word she says

She’s too full of doubt

Mysterious expressions

Her face is book

Her eyes look at what she's

Doing 

At the floor or at anything 

But me

I don't know how she sees herself

Maybe that downward glance is introspective

Her body is full of stories

A sentence at a time

Absent of forty bar solos

Jazz without horn lines

When I was young I used to dance

For her thinking her silence was music 

I used to bend in ways my body resisted

My soul regretted 

My mind rebelled against

Trying to imagine what she wanted from me

I used to misinterpret freedom

And self-determination

I used to think I belonged to somebody else

Somebody like her

Who was given directions  

To places without her stain

Or sympathy for the woman

She wants to be

I was given bad directions too

And went awry

Stayed zigzag for decades

I’m casting no stones

I know fluctuation of truth

Oblique trajectory of trouble

And disbelief

Hard blues of tuff love

Skewed angles life takes

Without permission or regard