To the used and abandoned condom on the sidewalk outside my apartment

[monkeypudding]

I know
That you’re acting out
You’re craving attention

You want someone
To love you
For whom you are
On the inside

(Well maybe not right now
Since your insides
Are you know, full of semen)

But you wish everyone
Wasn’t so ashamed of you
From the grade 9
High school boys
All the way to the Pope

And I can tell you’re tired
Of having to live up
To an image you didn’t invent

To all the advertising
That demands you succumb
To the good times implied

But that end in violence
In bathrooms, in graveyards
And foreign youth hostels

But really, on the
Sidewalk outside my apartment?

You’re embarrassing me
In public by telling the world
You’re having more sex than I am

Even if it’s only one time
And with some guy who
Has two car seats
In his mini van

And I wonder what
He’s seeking
And can it be found
In the places
That he’s looking?

What was he promised
By his father, his teacher
The beatings in gym class,
What was he promised
By the movies and the novels
And every pop song on the radio?

And when he spills
All his secrets inside you
Do they speak of a love
That extends beyond touching
To a place where expectations
Are the only things undressed and
How they all resemble
The first thing that ever hurt him

Do any of them tell
Of the one time that he found it
And how it filled him
With a glory so emotionally
Overpowering
That no matter how hard
He keeps on searching
He will never experience it
Ever again