I cannot read the angry words of other angry men.
I cannot get inside their heads or empathise their pain.
I don't use their vocabulary,
Recoil from its brutality
And fear the latent anger of the spaces in between.
You would think me sympathetic
To the laments of the poetic
And I am no heartless critic of the places they have been.
I just cannot read the angry words of other angry men.
I could not write a diary of such personal despair
Such depths of self-enquiry and the beasts you find down there.
I could neither brave the darkness
Nor the sweaty light of frankness,
The inner sibling rivalry with my schizophrenic frère.
I would wrap myself in fiction,
Using metaphor and diction,
Cowering in a library on a wonky-legged chair,
But I couldn't write a diary of such personal despair.
