true love waits

[leisureanimal]

the south is a shocking, marvelous place
where my hand is shook one hundred times a day
and I walk around marveling at the good food and weather
where everyone I meet is sweet and polite
and forced into a strict mould at a very young age
I wander downtown Greenville and my mouth hangs open
because, as my mother and the gent say, it's a foreign country
the south is unfazed by the modernity of the west
it goose-steps along in a straight line from the first settlement
building a culture on the backs of women and slaves
but hot damn, this is some good food.
I am struck over and over again, pummeled even,
at the madness of myself in the confederate country
a college graduate with a taste for the gents
wandering a fundamentalist college campus gleefully
but this is the time in my life
when my Myspace account only brings up ads for alcoholism treatment
and I am stricken with paranoia that I might fail spectacularly
at rending a good life and a calm death out of me
but for now there is sweet tea on the veranda
and southerners intent on charming me
and, good lord in heaven, barbeque to eat.