Thinking about women

 

 

Lostness   (59)

 

 

Entangled by illness, yet still thinking about women…

 

If only I didn’t adore them so much.

 

I am mired here
amid lingering discontents
of the unloved

Alone
in a city filled with strangers
its female population
imagined
uttering many thousand variations
on “No”.

Recollecting times
women have given me a challenging look
and feeling uncertain whether it meant
“Don’t you dare speak to me!”
or
“Speak to me: I dare you!”

Then breaking eye-contact
over fear of offence.

 

Even beauty
can intimidate.

 

Recalling
when well enough for travel by bus
occasionally seated next to women
like a hungry man ignoring food
faking nonchalance
avoiding her gaze
or potential discomfort
should any trace of desire
leak from this empty chamber
called a heart.

 

Suffering an invisible disability
enables my passing as “normal”
although it shows no reason
to be lacking status

That happens once maleness
(valued through doing
rather than being)
becomes too sick for achievement
hence seen as socially useless.

 

Just fantasies persist
around she who might love me
as I would love her

Which never occurs.

 

How difficult
transcending pain
where it clings to us
like slime.

 

Now I visualise myself
sitting outside
on the doorstep of life
hoping someone turns up with a key

Passing couples laugh
but nobody wants me
in their world

So I rest there
smiling
across despair

while the portal
remains

closed.

 

 

 

 

(1993-1994)

 

(art/blogging/depression/loneliness/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)