Tuesday Poem: "Friday Night Babel"

like a felled tree

I am showing my age

but counting the rings

is a different game when

you are long past the innocence

my fingers wrapped around a cold stem

when they would rather be tangled

in the forest of tresses that

bounce and swish and shimmy past

in a plethora of cocktail dresses

Friday night Babel

stallions and mares

growing hoarse in conversation

pressing like a perfumed wave

against the glittering bar

where many a hope has been dashed

strip away the comedy of manners

to its raw and primal engine

the seething sexual search of pheromones

looking for a home

if we were honest with ourselves

we'd rather be home with our feet up

and a nice cup of Earl Grey

I wrote this poem after separating from my first wife and returning to my homeland after an absence of nine years. I was 38 and I had not been on the dating/courting scene since my early twenties so it was all very strange and discombobulating. I very soon re-discovered something I had known all along: for a large number of reasons, bars are not good places to try and establish a relationship.