I’m apt to say I can’t afford car insurance
in front of your shiny friends,
push the pea onto the fork with my finger
at lunch with your parents.
              Different colored socks, yes.
I sing with The Beatles at stop lights.
I’m a take-me-as-I-am kind of guy
with a chip on my shoulder,
monkey on my back, fly in my soup,
egg on my face and foot in my mouth.
I once told a woman
a mutual friend beats her husband.
I was kidding, but she gasped “I knew it!”

If I displease you, leave.
Join the line of women who’ve high-tailed it out of here,
left without a Dear John, put up the gone fishin’ sign,
ditched me, said adios, see ya, eat my dust.
I won’t let the door hit me in the ass, can’t say that it’s been nice,
bye-bye in German and Japanese,
women who’ve given me the heave-ho, the 88 and skidoo.

Many of them slept with my friends.
Joann fucked my roommate on the couch
while I was in my room pretending to be asleep.
Girlfriends have tried and failed
to sculpt me into the perfect playmate,
sophisticated Neanderthal with ability to shoulder ennui,
migraines, broken hearts.
They and you, can try to find David in the stone,
the man you want and need me to be:
father, prince, white knight, dreamy, respectful,
polite and well-mannered
vibrator.

Lenny DellaRocca is founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. His latest collection is Festival of Dangerous Ideas (Unsolicited Press, 2019). His chapbook, Things I See in the Fire, is winner of the 2018 Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest. Since 1980, his poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including 2River View, Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Fairy Tale Review and Nimrod.