Love Poem: The Drums and I

The Drums and I

There are three of us in this romance
It’s a strained love triangle between you
And me
And that gleaming set of drums lurking in your spare room
However much you may try to deny it
To say that I am the only one for you
That instrument knows better

She can see right through your carefully constructed assurances
She watches you touch me
And she laughs her mocking silent laugh
Because she feels a stronger caress every night when I’m away
When she embraces you in her steely grip
And transports you back to the realm of your youth
A place I can never go with you

Whenever I walk into her domain I feel her brooding mockery
The bronzed Halloween mouth of the hi-hat flaps in an abrasive chuckle
Taunting my fragile mortality
Reminding me that she was here long before me
And she’ll live on long after I’m cold in the ground

She knows she was your first and truest love
She exposes me as a pitiful flesh-and-blood copy of her dominatrix allure
My eyes don’t shine like her shimmering paint
My curves don’t hold a candle to her solid voluptuous shape
And the sweet whispers and cries of passion that escape my tender lips –
She drowns them out with her thundering primal roars

Sometimes in my braver moments I think that I can beat her
That I can prise you away with my brittle white fingers
But then I see you sitting in the midst of her glory
Like a powerful exotic king 
With your hair flowing free and your eyes ablaze
I hear the erotic melodies that pound through your fists 
Into her metallic belly

And it is then that the realization sinks in
In this weird love triangle of three
You are the husband and she is your steely wife
And as for me -- I am the other woman
Forever perched precariously on the edge
A mistress beside your instrumental queen…