He by Victor Henry

“A man is responsible for his ignorance.”
                                                             Milan Kundera

He’s aggressive, aloof, arrogant, and belligerent.
Coy even. He’s everything you never saw in him
During the first three months
Of your coming-out-of-your-skin relationship,

Elements of sexual energy bursting
From remnants of a supernova that exploded long ago.

You get wet just thinking about him.
Ride your mythological orgasm for hours in your mind,
Wanting him so much your thighs go numb.

You believed the things your girlfriends and family
Told you about men.
Naively, you thought it was the truth.
But it wasn’t.

Men didn’t lie; they just didn’t tell the truth.

How long did it take you to notice he was
A little too self-centered, a little too domineering,
A little too demanding?  When did you realize
He was a little too thick and a little too simpleminded?

But that didn’t matter at the time. You were obsessed.
You would have given him anything?

And to prove it, you sold your soul to him,
Sold it for your chance at eternity.

He was a bad boy,
Possessing traits nice guys don’t have,
Always making sure his needs were met first.

He could be cruel like Ike Turner was to Tina.
Laughing deeply from his throat, quoting Ike:
“I got mine, I hope you got yours.”

In the end, he didn’t care if you liked him or not.
If you didn’t, it was your loss, not his.

Then one night after he demeaned and humiliated you,
You saw him for what he was,
A one-dimensional man,

A man with no depth, no scope.

My poetry and prose poems have appeared in Misfit Magazine, Dead Snakes, Homestead Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Red River Review, and Slipstream, among others. My book What They Wanted was published last November 11th, Veterans Day, by FutureCycle Press in Lexington, Kentucky. http://victor-henry.net/