Should you be allowed sole privilege
of unconscionable martyrdom?
This affliction is self-pity brought by suffering
as penitent to unrequited lust.
Private sexuality has you bound
In bonds no-one devised,
in silent bondage languishing,
abject, victimised and anguishing,
yet victor in the sum.
None but the coarsest heart could feign
to feel in simple kind and heed
the cry you echo in your need.
There is no escape from conscience,
there is no conscience in escape.
But why the female classic, why the passive role?
You know better life
with purer soul unwrought by self-despair,
your pride is signal, sentient,
not wifely, reviling humble care.
You can return; you held it by the ears
and heard the fiery words it uttered in your loins,
it is not the furnace in your mind
consuming passion blindly
but self-fulfilment by bodily design.
© I.D. Carswell
