Do not conclude I'm engaged. Do not hold your breath. I always thought marriage was pragmatic A property contract and maybe a tax cut And I'd always resented pragmatism I admired bohemians-- with their trysts and their wine and their rejection of all the convention I couldn't live up to Until I saw that rejection was just as dogmatic as convention The outer circle was as much a circle as any of the fuddy duddy cliques Trysts could be just as cold as marriages And wine makes you as fantastically sick as it does fantastically drunk I rejected diplomacy because I saw examples of its misuse I confused truth with a reckless ceaseless outpouring of any and every half baked thought or feeling And with no regard to others or to myself I thought that disregard was brave I thought being stubborn was brave I was told it was brave-- and I'd reply it was easy And maybe they thought it was modesty or boastfulness, depending on my delivery But no one really believed me Some of the things I've done may have looked drastic and emotional from a distance but I was in the eye of the storm-- I wasn't taking it in. It was all decidedly one way and in the opposite direction. It felt easy. Ask any child--screaming is easy, keeping your mouth shut is not. There is feeling and beauty in what I once thought was frigid, ugly practicality. And marriage doesn't seem so foreboding anymore either. |