By Alan Cohen
PROMPT — If only ...
There are more scars on my heart inflicted by women
Than there are days in the year
It is better not to love them
Helplessly vulnerable throughout my youth
I obsessively bloodied myself
Upon the pitiless rock of beauty
Now from the vantage of my happy marriage
I look back on each such trauma
And wince again with phantom pain
My heart deformed by my abject acquiescence
In the repeated violation of my humanity
By rapacious, proud, clueless, and predatory young women
At the time they all looked to me like angels
But I realize now
They were ordinary females
To whom I had ceded too much power
They walked on me like a floor
Put out their cigarettes on me as in an ashtray
I was nearly broken
The person I was never recovered
Though the person I am rose from the ashes
And sees women without illusions
Without desire or animosity
As just another part of the landscape
One possible category of partner in life and procreation
A being distinct and unpredictable
For better or worse
Alan Cohen was a poet before beginning his career as a Primary Care MD, teacher, and manager. He has been living a full and varied life. Alan has been writing poems for 60 years and is beginning now to share some of his discoveries. He has been married to Anita for 41 years. They have lived in Eugene, Oregon for the past 11.