Reckless

 

I wanted to be reckless . . . no, I wanted

that reputation — a little crazy,

that bad-ass kind of cool with a jaunty

disregard for rules, a look that says:

touch me at your peril even though you

do want to touch me, don’t you, girl — you fool.

Spell my name trouble. Black leather and blue

jeans, the scent of tobacco and taboo,

languid, smoldering . . .

                                       But I was a good

kid, defeated by forethought, by a sense

of consequences, by shackles of should

and shouldn’t and shame, by the prod of mens

sana in corpore sano. And so

were you, my love . . . yet here we are. Let’s go.

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

October 2010

 

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