Rapunzel, A Folk Tale for Grown Ups.

You crouch alone in deep monastic shadow
Combing your thick blonde hair hour by hour
With a kind of wild obsession,
Much like a child addicted to self harming.

Both pain and joy are equal in our living,
And it is true that separation nearly killed us
When we were prised apart.
But self pity and despair must not deceive us.

That ivory tower in which you long have lived
Can only give an incomplete protection
Against hard blows from day to day existence,
Sacrifices we incur to stay alive.

Propriety decreed you should remain in ignorance
Of wars and poverty, the profit margins of your kind;
Your heroic dishonesty was meant to stay inviolate
To impress the highest bidder.

It was a secret that one time I was your lover,
And to shut me out your aunt designed a tower
In which you sit and grieve. It was a secret that
This witch would bed you nightly after supper,

Then kick you back to your room with the dawn.
And now you crouch alone beside the  mirror
Combing your golden locks hour after hour;
Songs of heart break shivering on your lips.

But if you accept a less self conscious world view,
My reluctance to play the great romantic hero
Will not seem quite so strange. I will scale the granite walls
Up to your chamber, but not with ropes of hair

I have more sense, and will not risk my neck
even for you. But now it seems this tower is merely virtual
And can be turned off with a simple switch. This I will do
Provided you will grant me one small favour,

That is to marry me as once you promised,
Before you fled back to your childhood dreams
And became entrapped inside a lonely castle
Built by a maiden aunt, who was, I think, a fable.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. - 25th. - July 7th. 2015.