AND IF I REFUSE

And if I refuse to be the kind of man

who walks around with his dick in his hand

like a starving baby bird

in the begging bowl

of a burning nest,

petitioning alms from impoverished women,

its mouth open to cloud after cloud of delusion,

and the fool still unconvinced

it’s not a witching wand or a sceptre,

does that make me more of a clown than you

whose blood rushs like an ambulance

to the emergency of every erection?

What kind of medicine man,

what kind of black magician

mistakes his penis for a voodoo doll

and sticks needles through it like women

and then bitches it hurts,

that all his feelings

lie shredded all around him

like a ticker-tape parade,

like the secret documents of a retreating embassy,

and then hauls himself like a hearse

to the courts of blame

and impeaches his own stars

before the fraudulent judiciary of his own curse,

claiming he was the victim of worse?

Hey, stud, it’s not a woman, or love, or even sex

that has unmastered you:

it’s that funky wand

between your legs

that keeps turning you into a toad

everytime you try to kiss the princess.

PATRICK WHITE