some women
don’t take kindly to frustration
it drains their souls of meaning
leaving them gasping
accumulating
obsessive symptoms in Vienna
or running
helpless before disordered fantasies
their stockings down they had no
Shakespeare to make them heroes
they have left
case histories
in the struggle for understanding
hysterical women
were in the front line
women have sought safety
in their bedrooms
this has resulted in a terrible magnifying of disorders
Freud shakes his head
why are they so bewildered
why do they throw themselves
symbolically downward
out of trams off bridges and railway stations
out of windows
why are they trying
symbolically to murder their fathers?
their bill paying worrying fathers
lost in collective fantasies
of top hats and weddings and grandchildren running smiling
in blameless suburban gardens
as they give away their daughters
whose faces are so round and eyes so innocent
that a delicious agony is wrung
from thinking of those lambs going to the slaughter
despite themselves they hope it will be painful
helpless alike before money and time
little T.C. abandons her pleasures
her face a forgotten masterpiece
she waits with the shopping
in a queue for the millenium
