You may think: you have done everything under the sun
that’s immoral,
Like running a red light, or taking out someone else’s
goral,
Or carrying matches,
But have you, when they at last aren’t worth any more
patches,
Been forced to toss in the rag-bag your last pair of
pajamas
And have to sleep so that your conscience goes after
you with tongs and hammas?
Surely no one ever felt less unexposed than I without
my pajama pants, sir–
No, not even a nudist or an artist’s model or a dyedin-
the-flesh fan-dantsir.
There is something I can’t explain, quite
About this being unclothed in the night;
It may be true I can’t be seen; yet if the walls have
ears,
May not the pictures on my walls have eyes, and the
eyes have jeers?
I fear so, and though you prate that what matters it
once I get to sleep?–
I reply that I can dream can’t I–and still feel cheap?
And I maintain there is nothing so degrading as gallopping
about in nightmares
If one must be always stealing things off clothes lines
so as to dodge peoples’ stares.
I would even settle for having a suit that made me look
like Gen. Homma,
If only some kind soul would sell or will me a pair,
or even a single, pajomma!
by Ray Romine Friday, August 2, 1946
