_88. Women

There are some days, like today,
when the gray air is threatening to condense
to rain around me and my only sanctuary is the
fresh outdoors,
that I wish women didn’t exist, that
my wet solitude would be more rapturous
if I were not haunted by the thought of who
I did or did not kiss the night before.
I wish I didn’t find myself routinely trying to impress
some uninteresting character simply because she
is more attractive than I am, that I were
not powerless to defend myself
from persuasive charms, that I
were not such a dog,
but then I reach the cathedral
and ascend its belltower to be closer
to God and further from this wordly dismay,
only to find the roof scratched with lovers’ graffiti
and my wounds singing laugher
remembering how this misery is an awfully joyful
kind of hopelessness.