T Wignesan Poet Dramatic Monologue

Growing Up Too Soon

growing up too soon

	you said: is there anything more excruciating than lagging behind
						being passed by
	a hasbeen
				still knocking on portals
twitching toes twirling thumbs
         in fidgety drawn-curtained waiting rooms

and the always taken-for-granted toiling mothers maimed in mid-life stoopbent under rotting burdens eternally putting-up with their disgruntled men pining for fresh meat their children far too busy suckling roaming the woods for stray milch cows

	are parents less prone to feeling deserted or girls when young given to much  much too much   you know to what  the side-saddle bum flabs the hangdog lips and nose-tips and nostrils sore grainy
red
			innocence crushed
(wu wang  hexagram 25)
		the conning leer lurking behind the simulated ******
		blazé finicky  O dear my split varnished nail	
the mignardise

	growing up too soon
leaves you a little behind  hesitant  no fresh tarts nor the leisure of making belief the privilege of mending emotional fences	nor the time to toast things over in the backburner or prepare for the day when you may retire in style proclaim to the world your ardent wishes
		convictions
			reforms
				revolutions

	growing up too soon
leaves you a toddler thrusting up in the hunched back  regrets simmering in the bitterly polluted taste buds chewing the tongue neither the leisure to pipedream  muted laughing peels reverberating rocambolesque within soiled sheets  keeping the persona humoured  till you stand up wide awake stripped
	nor the frolicking   flaming female mid-summer fudge

	growing up too soon
is not just bypassing a whole generation of ghosts  you look back dazed to watch grand nephews and nieces twittering in space-curved time living in a sort of limbo  in a cramped attic crib snorting the crawling dust unread books breed  heating for the third time your oat meal porridge  casting stolen looks from behind drawn curtains  wondering who’s going to benefit from your garnered gains  watch callow lads and frisky girls and wonder when was it you last grew up dallied amongst them 
	unsure you knew any of the kind you see as women today

	growing up too soon
is to forfeit something you never had nor can ever have  yet you refuse to let it go  even as unwon bread  all through your teens  seizing handouts the rightful boon  until the recurring pain of tendons exploding make you see round the foreshadowed corner  round the spacetime’s curve 
		and know
	there’s really nothing to cry about
nor there’s anything you can do without
	the damn thing which slips through the thinning crop straggly on your bald pate

	growing up too soon’s
  a blessing
	you know you want
		for the maimed
		    for the gnarled and contorted
			for the ill-provided
		for the luckless
	   for the inglorious
    damned to a vapid existence
	in the cave of their shameful lameness

how you’d wished you were so blighted 

1997
© T. Wignesan – Paris, re-worked from: longhand notes, 1999

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