The Wise One

She was wise, but wasn’t happy.

I think she knew too much.

All that knowledge made her sappy.

Alone and sad and such.

She was searching for the common.

Someone plain and twice as thick.

I slid down from the tree tops.

But my sight just made her sick.

So I went back to the jungle.

God knows I really tried.

Left her reading at the library.

Laughed so hard, I almost cried.

Dennis Mantin

Rear View

I tried to be a passenger, in this thing that they call love.

I couldn’t get too comfortable in what I knew so little of.

I know now, what I didn’t know, and for that there is a price.

I am just a little jaded now but I’m probably twice as nice.

There is a freedom in the knowledge that looks like you don’t care.

You look so cold and selfish, but you never learned to share.

I knew you, like few do, and there’s no prize for that.

Just older in the knowledge, that we’ve had this little chat.

Dennis Mantin

Off The Hook

I was awake when she said it. “I think you are off the hook.

I felt like I was floating, and so my time was all it took.

And some money and my pain, but I make that everyday.

Today they let me off the hook; at least that’s what they say.

I’m still a little frazzled, my nerves are raw and worn.

I’m not saying I won’t recover but I’m battered bruised and torn.

I’d like to thank the jokers and that Lady in my dreams.

I was dying there of laughter, almost bursting at the seams.

Dennis Mantin

THE MYTH-MEN

Batman going crazy, he’s been angered since his youth.

And Superboy came out as gay, saying goodbye old phone booth.

The Joker feels normal now, like Matthew Mathers spitting truth.

The Myth-Men seem so human.

Clarke Kent hides behind a curl.

The Aliens are all the rage.

Only Star-Lord gets the girl.

Dennis Mantin

Summit

I could get no higher.

Then that summit that we climbed.

I swear there was a choir

Singing joys and words of kind.

There were trials, tribulations.

There was blue and fresh clean air.

Like some drug induced sensations.

No more need to stand and stare.

All over but the crying.

Now is the time to say so long.

I just got sick of trying.

It’s not the singer, it’s the song.

Dennis Mantin

Respect

I have reached a point in life where I value my opinion above most others.

In any large decision I ask 3 people there opinion before I act.

If I am asking you for your opinion understand I respect you.

Dennis Mantin

The Economist and a Changing World

My friend David likens it to when the European Christians came to North America and tried to convince a native population that their Christian God would save the natives souls and everything that they previously believed was wrong and the Missionaries believed what they were saying and in this country Canada 🇨🇦, they removed these native children from their parents and put them in ‘Residential Schools’ with often disastrous results.

The article in the Economist stated that several independent reports came to the same conclusion that no benefits are evident from gender reassignment surgeries. However, apparently, there’s still raging debates on the issue.

I’ve heard it said that there are no more girls and no more boys. From children’s points of view, they are all just one.

I have trouble with the last one…

It occurs to me that certain individuals and powers that be have been successful in promoting the ideas that not having children is a great thing and that men are inherently evil. However, from this vantage point, it appears that these changes originate from different sources than the patriarchy.

Dennis Mantin

I Don’t Know Bukowski

I don’t know what it is, however… Whenever I read Bukowski… I want to write.

Maybe it’s one alcoholic speaking to another, I don’t know. A safe place for a sober, dare I say recovered alcoholic; hearing tales from a dead man?

No, it’s the courage that I lacked when I was down the rabbit hole that he possessed. To be so honest in and about his addictions, maybe that’s the identification that happens?

Dennis Mantin