Awkward Guy And Ann Poem by jim hogg

Between the work and vain ideals
there was a little envy too.
Those guys who seemed to know no fear
of girls: I envied what they knew,

and envied most their confidence.
Their snogging skills and chat up lines
were mysteries beyond my ken.
A mutual crush in sixty nine

resulted in a crushing thrill;
we must have eyed each other up
a thousand times to no avail.
I never could get close enough

to say a single loving word
because I made a run for it,
each time our longing eyes were locked
in pointless, gorgeous agony.

That storm of ecstacy and hell
blew over by the spring, and took
the pressure off for quite a spell,
and so I took up reading books

until the spring of seventy one,
when all at once a pencilled note
quite stopped me in my bookish tracks.
It seems I floated some girl's boat.

And so I did what I was told,
and met her face to face next day,
when she adroitly used a hold
that drove my lips towards her face,

and less adroitly did we kiss,
for I was inexperienced.
I might have blown it, might have missed,
but still remember where and when

my lips first kissed a young girl's lips.
Yet after merely four short weeks
it seems she thought it fit to quit,
a guy so shy he couldn't speak!

Or, not with verve enough to spark
the kind of thrill she wanted then.
But in the Kinema we danced
and many times we seemed to spend

the sweetest moments arm in arm
and underneath the late May sun
we lay stretched out on new mown grass,
although I wasn't up to snuff! .

Yes, I was disappointed, but
the offers started coming through,
and bit by bit I made the cut,
though even yet, amongst the few

I think of fondly from the past,
that certain girl who kissed me first,
and held me tight, and took my hand,
still holds a place where flames still burn.