#MeToo Complications

Feeling light and debonair  
he threw all caution to the air  
and strode across the ballroom floor  
to ask again to dance some more  
and she said “spontaneity  
frivolity and gaiety  
are only fine when you’re mature -  
your body-language makes me sure  
your youtube moves are just a hack…”;  
refusing him she turned her back  
which he accepted gracefully  
was now the way things have to be  
for in these days of hash-me-too  
one treads on eggshells with the view  
that asking for a hand in dance  
is fraught with complications, chance  
the one who’s asked suspects a move  
that is not clean, and so to prove  
requests have motives simple, pure  
the one approached effects the cure  
conflicted by polite requests  
to analyse intentions vexed  
and so distorted it becomes  
with conversation going numb  
that courtship is a dying art  
where neither party knows their part  
and simple fun of girl-meets-boy  
is agonisingly destroyed.