Women Can'T Be Compassionate

WOMEN CAN’T BE COMPASSIONATE Women can’t be compassionate, or their reputation’s dead Can’t comfort the lost tourist, he’s the surrogate lover As he sits on the theatre steps, wearing loud red Checks and braces, bewildered when the play is over. Women must be professional and never huddle In doorways after rain, like an angel in a stupor With life’s rejects, looking for a cuddle Sad casualities of money, or of having worn Lee Cooper*. Women can’t be friends with male novelists, or film-makers Or poets, who want to define mistresses, and wives, Leaving creativity to the movers and the shakers, Taking dignitas and money out of women’s lives. This narrows the field to the tycoon, or the bore – Feminists – choose death first! Webster’s honest whore. *Apologies to Lee Cooper – I couldn’t resist the rhyme, in fact their jeans are as good as anyone else’s – at one time they were very cool indeed. from IN MEMORY OF HER, 2004, 2008