At a bar or the like, surrounded by a crowd
that glances and smiles at me,
as if its sole purpose in the world
was to benefit me with the pleasure
of keeping me company,
I feel awkwardly kind of obliged
to have an erection…
I suppose any badge-carrying shrink would think
of my case as an instance of perversion,
already described or to be baptised,
but I stick to considering it as a response
imposed by some sort of social-self-conditioning,
designed only to set me in
(I who am as desperately shy
as a catholic school grant child)
such a too social mode….
The same when I find myself at a table,
and the talking has broken down all around,
so we just keep on seeping from our glasses,
as helpless as a leaking sink.
For such occasions I have learned by drill
a congenial array of jokes, purport
to be used as a last resort, but of that sort
that would drive a stevedore
all blushed in the face.
And I swear I will hava them told
even to sophisticated elderly ladies
I had never met before.
The boundaries between
pleasure and social-appropriateness
have already engendered
many a treatise.
Bur how to explain
the strange acquaintance
of old-aged social graces
with ever-renewed rule-breaking?
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