ABOUT THE POEM: This is Ronie Dinosaur’s savage parable of modern masculinity crucified on the cross of its own honor. The Flute Player – once the mythic snake-charmer drifting like Shiva – now reduced to a paying customer in a rigged marketplace of flesh and feeling. Two “buffaloes” stand in for every woman who has ever weaponized desire: one a crude, cattle-minded whore who flaunts her engineered udders as leverage; the other a premium call girl who rents affection and sympathy by the hour. Both are puppets – mouths, moods, bodies leashed to unseen owners and inner snakes that corrupt every honest impulse into manipulation. He pays upfront, plays the flute as agreed, keeps his word like a fool with character. In return he gets teased, denied, laughed at, and handed the receipt. The shame is total. While he was busy declaring war on the universe, its cheapest mercenaries – women and their hidden directors – bled him dry and left him crawling from the porch in utter disgrace. The poem ends where every man of unbreakable principle ends: hunted, half-dead in the gutter women dug for him, punished like the worst sinner simply for refusing to lie or walk away. The beast wins. The buffalo laughs. The Flute Player rots – still clutching his worthless honor.He pipes his flute-or been-before the buffalo,
then dares blame her for “not understanding.”
Her mouth, her mood, her flesh-
all chained to the owner’s wrist.
All theatre. All script.
But the snakes are the real directors:
they crawl inside her hunger,
coil around the raw fire,
turn honest want into grotesque burlesque.
She smirks: “These udders didn’t swell on their own,”
flings it like a favor and ultimatum-
milk me or lose me, peasant.
Another whines: “I’ve grown meaner than before,”
lodging her complaint at my feet like I’m the manager.
Same deformation.
Two postures.
One sells the swelling,
the other sells the sob story.
Nothing innocent.
Nothing saintly.
Just rage, lust, survival-
naked, sweating, transactional.
And yes-
I paid both buffaloes upfront,
exactly as agreed.
Yet I’m still only the customer,
the temporary fool with cash and flute.
One is pure cattle-brain whore-
stones for neurons, pasture for thoughts.
The other just needed ears to rent-
premium-rate but affectionate call girl.
I played.
They teased.
Neither let me milk.
Now I envy the owners,
the snakes,
the boyfriends (if any).
They get the cream.
I get the receipt.
Like a man,
I got played by puppets
while I was busy fist-fighting the universe.
The shame tastes exactly like their laughter.
I left your porch having been utterly disgraced.
Every man born with real character
ends up hunted,
half-dead in the gutter women carved for him-
because character won’t let him walk away
from a commitment
even when it’s a trap
even when it kills him.
The Flute Player doesn’t get the girl,
nor does he get enlightenment.
He gets the receipt,
the shame, and the gutter-
the gutter-
specifically because he refused to break his word,
as if he had done all the crimes and sins
for time-pass.
