Curse the Puppet Show

Ah Karen-
fictitious ghost
haunting a beautiful
idea
in my mind,
you can feel the falsity
of all this
yearning
of all this
anticipation,
you come from a clan
which fights this nonsense
with razor sarcasm
and a bitter, bitter love,
all of you
with your poor caged hearts,
growing tenderer by the minute;
overprotected,
yes, your smothered heart
and my naked infant one,
bouncing off each other now
with a sound louder than fate
and much louder than tendency
and much more painful than both.

Ah Karen,
we suffer the bondage
of slot car tracks
and curse the puppet strings
that we actually hold
ourselves.