At That Age

Like an injured animal I’ve been licking my wounds

It seems the end can’t come too soon

Maybe I’ll sit here howling at the moon

Or perhaps listen to some old favorite tune,

It’s the life that rejection makes

An unsure existence of floods and earthquakes

Dealing with liars and snakes

When women never give you a break,

At that age I entered “No Man’s Land”

Not quite old enough to die in the sand

Not young enough to keep from being banned

Just the right age to be hanging on by a strand,

She had all the right moves

That slander shape and all the grooves

The kind of answers that were hard to prove

Little did I expect that I would be easily removed,

Another shot heard deep in the woods

Trying to survive as best as I could

Wounded again from where I stood

How could this bring about anything good?

The smoke that came from her words

All hurtful and sounding so absurd

Everything so unclear and blurred

With a kiss my bloody corpse you might have stirred,

But only for a moment before the truth set in

In “No Man’s Land” the bullets have us pinned

Broken promises like rusted tin

Three in the morning you smell of booze and sin,

Now, living like a wounded animal

As opposed to a life that seemed half full

My expectations are cynical and dull

Picked clean on the frothy shore by a flock of seagulls.