The face appears as if upon a screen.
The image taunts me every night in bed.
The Muse personified, a handsome man
with lips that all the women ache to feed.
‘O will you be my Muse personified
and let me touch your mystery with my pen?’
I warble, when, inside my errant head,
the face appears as if upon a screen.
I gaze in supplication at my phone.
Sweet Sylvia Plath just killed herself instead.
Ms Greer snarls, ‘You’re stronger on your own!’
The image taunts me every night in bed.
His inky eyes are vortices of need.
‘Don’t look!’ I tell the girl inside my brain.
He stares at me from everything I read:
the Muse personified, a handsome man.
Even if I made myself a nun
and gave my nights to contemplating God,
that sucker wouldn’t leave my soul alone.
With lips that all the women ache to feed,
the face appears.
(First published in Jukebox (Out of the Asylum Writers, Fremantle, 2013))