Stan

 

Young Stan was a man with a musical sound

Whose adroitness with girls took them, all at a bound,

To the bed, to the shed, to the top of the stair. . .

He could get them to do it while hanging in air.

 

He was suave. He was smooth. He was graceful and charming,

With style, and a smile that was swiftly disarming.

He had verve. He had nerve, and a head full of plans.

When he looked at a woman, his eyeballs had hands.

 

At a party he’d find him a girl of the sort

Who was sans any visible means of support,

And ply her with booze. If he ran out of brandy,

He’d soften her heart with whatever was handy.

 

And if later, at dawn in his ivy clad pad,

She awoke with the thought in her head she’d been had,

He’d promise her anything: love evermore,

Ply her with kisses and show her the door.

 

But just at the peak of his life as a swinger

Stan suffered the tickle of fate’s fickle finger.

And though he denied that he’d done what he’d done,

He surrendered his heart at the point of a gun,

 

And married a lady with hair on her lip,

Armored in plate like a fine battleship.

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes;

With balls in her earlobes and runs in her hose.

 

She had fire in her furnace and teeth in her trap,

And with Stan in her clutches she’d sanction no crap.

Since Stan was no match for his bride in a brawl

He deciphered the message writ large on the wall,

 

And turned from his wickedness: burned his black book,

De-listed his telephone, locked out his cook,

Fired his chambermaid, looked up “restraint,”

Mastered its meaning, and lived like a saint.

 

Till one day, in a fit of professional pride,

Stan bragged of his prowess and skill to his bride.

But his wife, with a singular absence of awe

Decked Stan with her poodle and stiffened his jaw.

 

Now Stan is a hobo, and this is the end

Of Stan’s story, the moral of which is, my friend:

 

If it’s your turn at bat, and there’s sap in your cup,

Keep your eye on the baseball and don’t knock it up.

 

© Russ Lewis December, 1975