November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Angie Blue

Image by Alexander Lesnitsky from Pixabay

in a time that came and went long ago

whether I was taking down my walking cane and hat

or wrapped up in my bell-bottom blues

I guess you could call me Angie Blue

I was that girl who lived my life in the songs I heard

on the rock and roll radio

I dreamed of wide spaces and endless love

and maybe if I'd been pretty

instead of an ugly duckling girl

maybe I'd have found something more

than fire that quickly turned to ice

and shallow-hearted boys looking for a hookup

that didn't last any longer than a song

you could call me Angie Blue

the ugly duckling girl who learned the truth

that there will never be a prince who rides along the sea and the mountain

my collection of colorful hats now sit collecting dust

my walking cane is now used to support

a body that doesn't work very well

the boys who wanted a good-time girl

are now middle-aged men cheating on their wives

with foolish young women not much older than I was then

I suppose it was better to live my truth

then to get caught up in a web

of love that was no more than lies

but I have been lonely

there is no one and only

unless you count only lonely me

footloose in my mind

with a body that can't dance in reality

and not so fancy or free at all

~Cie~

Note:

The November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt for today asked for a poem about an article of clothing. I thought about the song Rubber Band Man which begins: "hand me down my walking cane, hand me down my hat" and of another favorite song from the same era, Bell Bottom Blues. The rest of it just flowed. The other songs referenced are Albatross, Angie Baby, At Seventeen, Endless Love, Factory Girl, Fire and Ice, Footloose, Jackie Blue, and Only the Lonely.

I was never the pretty girl that all the boys wanted to take to the dance. I was always the ugly duckling that sat on the sidelines, and guys sometimes asked me to dance if they thought that someone as dowdy as me would be desperate enough to do what they wanted. Usually, I knew better, which made them angry.