For a Woman to Notice me

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3yWo5hOdk

For a woman to notice me I have to

wear the right collar, flash some Yankee dollar,

roast an armadillo in some esoteric pasta,

memorise the plot of every movie ever shot

with well-informed opinions on each director and actor.

For a woman to notice me I have to

swim with baboons in a Bolivian lagoon,

stand in front of tanks outside a nuclear reactor,

rescue headscarfed milkmaids from a drunken corporal’s switchblade

and dance the lindy-hop beside the tomb of Zoroaster.

For a woman to notice me I have to

hypnotise a tiger with a twelve-string balalaika

played with one foot, and pull a handbraked orange tractor

from Southampton Dock to Scotland, with my cock,

while cradling a blind arthritic one-eared baby hamster.

For a woman to notice me I have to

dig Mohenjo-Daro, climb Kilimanjaro

with a tablespoon, raise the velociraptor,

carve haikus in French into a metal bench

and update Communism with a shoe-collecting chapter.

For a woman to notice me I have to

pretend I hardly drink, pretend that I don’t think

that French is the gayest tongue in which I could lambast her,

pretend I’ve never farted or been so broken-hearted

I could’ve cut my head off with a rusty blunt protractor,

pretend I’ve never hated or sadly masturbated

or failed to break the manacles of an emotional captor,

pretend I glide through life like a butter-knife

through milk, and every morning chant the bourgeois Feminist mantra

(while begging for forgiveness for possessing a penis)

that every pale-faced man on Earth’s a privileged sexist wanker.

For me to notice a woman she has to

be pretty and kind, with real thoughts in her mind

and passion in her heart that I can feel with every touch.

But clearly, as my life has shown, I ask for far too much.