DEFINE BAD FOR ME
Your blind discrimination
in the cold and the dark of nights
brings me to feel that
you do not know it but you sound
like farewell to sombre judges past
who knew not how to bend the rules to suit
other women in judgement.
This is not the wildest of times,
this is buccaneering for the first time
this autumn, while you sit and I watch
them all beside the lake
and I realise that they are kids
and I am young enough to
play with.
I don’t ask that you should marry me
so it is without being in the wrong
that I plead: do not go to the fortune teller
as he will tell you about me
and that will start you on this quest
to define me as beyond calling
bad.