Wood Chipper, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet On FB/META and @brianrrs37 on Twitter)


She once wrote
She ate them like air
The same could be said
Of me, to be fair

I think of the fair
I longed for, dreamed of
Entangled in embrace
They’d all have shredded me

Put me in my place
Jaclyn I’d meet at a bar
She’d look at me
I’d not get that far

Bacall, would roll her eyes
Or say, “Well thank you
You seem like a nice guy
But”

Tanya and her red hair
Streetwise Julie
Killer view, she knew
A wood chipper

She’d put me through
Plath would read
My poetry too
“Brian, Brian

What did you do?”
If I ran into them
In my youth
In my twenties

I’d be confetti
Dead brush, sawed off
Limbs, buzzsaw, sawdust
With soft lips

A wisp soft blow
Into the wind
I would float
On the ocean

Adrift, not noticed
Nowhere to go
Mulch in the garden
Blooming with “no”.
(end)

I am not putting myself down, but just being honest, I was not a good looking teen, or in my twenties. I was very intimidated by attractive women. I suffered lots of rejection in high school and in my 20s.

But the good thing about getting old is that you outgrow those things. I wasn’t always rejected, I did have 4 girlfriends at different times for different lengths before meeting my now x wife. I haven’t dated in 22 years. I look back at all that now, and I really was not being put through a “wood chipper”

It simply amounted to you cant help whom you are initially attracted to and you cant force someone to be attracted to you.

But when I did see someone I was attracted to, I really felt scared in approaching them. That was not them, that was me, that was my insecurity. The fact that I finally did date and get married means that being rejected isn’t the worst thing in the world, and it does not make them a bad person for turning you down.

I can say however. Even if got to just say hi to Jacklyn Smith or Tanya Roberts, I would still get tongue tied. Just like I did when I met Christopher Hitchens. In this case now, it would not be sexual attraction, just admiration of their work. Same with Plath and Sexton.

This poem is more satire than anything now. It more reflects looking back at how cruel my own insecurities caused me self inflicted pain, but I had no way of knowing what I know now.

“A wisp, soft blow”

Is like when you get some sort of dust on your hands and blow it away off your hands. The quick rejection of “no thanks” felt like being that dust or baking flower in the palm of her hands just blowing me off politely. Not mean just, being gentle. It would still feel like a wood chipper to me though.