Toughkenamon Girl

Toughkenamon Girl

With your hand-me-down looks

punching the factory serf card

and your kids in diapers

waiting for their father

who ran off with the neighbor

and your house made of sticks

everything seems so second rate or lower

depending on who had it last.

And you try to pull up

without showing any traces

of the past and other lover's faces

in a town

where they judge the man

by the size of his wheel

and the whiskey in his water

Sleepy young men

who can't speak the language

but work

and pay taxes

with their Saturday night girls in curlers

who say, "Ain't gonna."

And as I spoke Toughkenamon Girl

you did not understand

with the trembling hand

and your lonesome yearning

of a woman dousing the torch

on a rocking-horse front porch

in the night of your youth.

But I do not curse

the street chromed marauders

who put your children in the crib

They are your gold in the stocking

Morning Misty Crusader

Toughkenamon Girl go back to sleep

your children will soon awaken

and cry for their half-moon mother.

Written August 1975; published in The Edge and The Sheared (Out of print) in 1980.