Be Careful, It’s My Heart

it’s Bing Crosby in blackface in a movie about Christmas
it’s everybody dancing and smiling like umbrellas
ashtrays on every table
it’s clever people acting yokel, talkin’ homesy
it’s everything corny and good old days
it’s stretching a rhyme, working a bit
it’s not my watch you’re holding, it’s my heart

it’s home cooking and production numbers
taxis and telegrams and New York over the holidays
shiny shoes and hidden string selections and cigarettes
fake-snow machines, empty dance floors, perfect
choreography—boy meets girl, boy dances with girl

it’s the manic smiles, the constant mugging for invisible
cameras, it’s the smugness and the white-bread
the high-riding trousers, the pie-plate ties
all that pomade, those demure manners, the hip lingo
wasted on squares

it’s a world of fairy tales without any dragons, but
with plenty of evil queens, everyone is gay and that’s not queer
it’s singing in the rain, dancing in the dark, till the clouds roll by
me and my gal

who could ask for anything more?

—PATRICK RAWLEY

(Originally published summer, 2008.)