Scabbed Over Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

We've had some space now,
time has evaporated, strangely
I had expected to be sitting here
moping about, your name on lips
that would prefer to 've been,
then and now, appreciated, and used.
But wounds have scabbed over,
an uneventful, as they say, recovery.

You were a phony, though, oh yes,
looking for entertainment, and love
outside the home and far away,
while telling me a wondrous story,
and then proclaiming honour,
and integrity, purity of soul, oh yes.
You flashed all your desirables,
from various angles and at times
when balmy air was warming me
and my own heart was feeling young,
and up to anything that was required
or vaguely, innocently, somewhat desired.
You led my trembling hand inside you,
and promised all the taste my heart desired,
you let me float on carpets made of pheromones.

And then you pounced on me, so hard
they must have heard the sounds at number ten,
and scolded me with righteousness,
and indignation, and in the end,
with open disapproval, somewhat publicly,
I was not good enough you said,
in words that were both fog and darkness,
and when the dart had penetrated
you did commence, in seriousness
and with the face and voice of altruism
and lots of goodwill which would save,
perhaps re-build this frazzled soul.
It was, I smelled the rat, a matter of
the carrot and the stick, good cop, bad cop,
only the objects were not carrots, not at all.

It did not work, this scheme of yours,
but not to worry, you must have tried,
by now, the game with someone else,
so many fishes in the waters of the world,
and all of them with very hungry mouths.
You did not take it well, my shouting HALT,
but all the flashing and the words of sweet
and so familiar and desirable Manuka
could not convince me that the whispers,
the ones you sent in sometimes histrionic
and often soothing and seductive tones,
were genuine, because they weren't.

And when I told you about lies and how their legs
are always short, too short to run from our truth,
you laughed the laugh of arrogance and fear
and then returned into the world of bitter boredom.
And that was it, you said you'd 'never let me go',
and then you had to when the whole kit 'n caboodle
blew up across the waters and the pieces
fell rather quickly and unnoticed, then they drowned.

And I am happy that it wasn't love that drowned,
but something else, a little phony, that is all, oh yes.