Your Cheeks Ablush

I thought when you came in you looked like some disgraced charioteer

A strange image but with an imagination like mine you got off light

Your hair was ruffled, your cheeks ablush

You knew I was staring at you like the public would a disgraced charioteer

Back in old time Rome… back in antiquity

Don’t you love that word? Antiquity?

It was the very reason I went to University

That was where I met Kitty and Charles

And slept with a Polish man whose name I can’t remember

That was where I learnt of charioteers

And disgrace, my own and others, in the present and past

And now here you are looking disgraced

Like a Disgraced Roman Charioteer

Perhaps one who has very lately been caught mid coitus

With a servant boy

Or slowly pleasuring yourself beneath your toga

When you should have been dealing with, other, statelier matters

Either way you are coming in now looking very guilty,

Very disgraced and very blushed

Yet, I see in you, still, some ancient nobility

A pleasant regality

And the blush across your cheeks only enforces it

So raise your eyes

Lift your chin

Pay no heed to rumour and gossip

I studied antiquity and all the great men of history

Each one was fond of disgrace and chariots

You’ll conquer what you have to

And perhaps in time this disgrace will become your own special page in antiquity

One for future students to study

And then leave for cigarettes, ale and Polish men

(the painting is by Felix Deon, A very cool Artist whose page is at www.felixdeon.com)