Tape Deck Blues

By Kevin Ridgeway

I could not afford CDs growing up
and had to listen to my brother’s
old cassette tapes,
the Pixies and the Beatles and Nirvana
roaring out of a paint stained boom box
as I paced back and forth dreaming
of CDs and girls clad in only my silk Gucci
dress shirts dancing with me
to “I Wanna Sex You Up”
just like in those R&B videos I used to watch
I was king of the world in my imagination
but I had to make sure I had plenty of pencils
when the cassette tapes got eaten inside
the tape deck, and the second hand store t-shirts
I wore with their stains did not impress any
of the girls at school who listened to Blink-182
and Limp Bizkit and all of those
other strange bands
and they did not want to sex me up.

*originally published by Turbulence Magazine (UK)