Time travel with unknown cheerleaders

Upon awakening from Monday's Platonic form,
I am driven back in time,
 
by those free floating emotions who carry
as their side arms six inch bowie knives,
 
thrust deep within the lining of my belly ache,
intent on a fatal stab into my heart,
 
providing me within enough pain to sleep
with a light in my room.
 
When you appear to me from some dust off yearbook,
young arms resting on your slender hips,
 
you gaze forever embedded in my mind,
resistant to medication,
therapy,
and most of the major spirit world,
 
Summertime late.
You skin is tanned as if a five star chef has pasted
your gentle sin with just the right amount of ultra-violet
seductive, then thirty years later,
 
you and that fading photograph
still takes my breath away.
 
that playful yet nostalgic look on
your face,
your smile that offer insecure boys
hope and a pass for an evening swim
in Melancholy Bay,
 
Today is not kind to these misfiring synapses,
housed in aging medulla ganglia,
nothing I can do will wash away the smell of that special body
lotion you baptized me with
that sweet fall night
when my virginity and sadness was offered
 
to the tomb of the beautiful cheerleader.
 
God, please rest gentle on my past,
no man deserves this kind of punishment,
for I have begged more than once
to be rid of the one whose face
greets me this morning.
 
All my insecurities have been let loose from
the barn,
 
who says time travel is not possible,
for it has always been with me,
and I ride its train,
 
glued to the images of all those
I loved,
 
yet, could not remember their names.
 
Let me down easy, young cheerleader,
for it is getting harder
to put the horses
 
back in the barn.


Copyright, William "Wild Bill" Taylor, April, 2000