The Boy With The Blue Bandanna Poem by Christopher McInnes

You were the boy next door
with the blue bandanna and the rugged looks,
the drown-me dark eyes and the strong arms
of the long-sought friend of my dreams
and I loved you like a brother.

But then you sang to me
and I was enrapt,
your eyes turned dreamy
and the bandanna unwrapped
and became a magic carpet.

It stole me away on zephyrs of song
to foreign skies in a balmy south
and I feared you were an elfin-boy,
the Erl-King come to carry off another soul
and consume my heart in unearthly flame.

Flame – the hopeless fire of a mortal’s love
for a god who sings all the day long
and rivals the sun with the ardour of his song,
the heat of his attraction, melting my heart to wax
and moulding it into a tear-stained puppet.