X AND Y

It horrifies you that I tell the truth
Because you look much better in a mask.
You’ve worn that mask since early in your youth.
It horrifies you that I tell the truth
When you’d prefer the gleaming photo booth,
And how it lets you look just as you ask.
It horrifies you that I tell the truth,
Because you look much better in a mask.

My view of you creates embarrassment,
Because I can’t blur certain features out.
Your soul wears earrings. I see where you’re bent.
My view of you creates embarrassment.
You wish you were a straight line, and you meant
To smirk, but all you managed was a pout.
My view of you creates embarrassment
Because I can’t blur certain features out.

If only I were not born to describe.
If only I could learn to shut my mouth.
But then, I couldn’t serve you the sweet bribe.
If only I were not born to describe,
To testify, to witness for the tribe.
But then I couldn’t kiss you North and South.
If only I were not born to describe.
If only I could learn to shut my mouth.

You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills.
You couldn’t stay and risk being exposed.
I take a sip, and swallow my nerve pills.
You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills;
I pleasured you. But talking, talking kills.
My mouth kept moving. So your door was closed.
You’ve moved along. I’m sure you miss my skills.
You couldn’t stay and risk being exposed.

To see you now, I’d have to close my eyes.
But I’d still see you stripped of your disguise.


-- © 2009 by Jack Veasey


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This one is a sort of hybrid of petry forms. I used the triolet for the stanza form, then concluded it with a heroic couplet, like you would a sonnet. I like writing blatantly about sexual situations in forms -- there's a tension between the technical control and the subject matter.

The "mask" in this situation is a metaphor, not literal. This nameless guy from my checkered past is "straight" to his family and most of his friends.

X and Y is a play on words -- it refers to Ex and Why.