A 05:00 AM Bleeding

I don’t look back with fondness at
my age of innocence, the early 2000s,
the years of wars for oil and reality TV.
The birth and ominous teethings
of social media. The feelings
that should come when called,
when calling childhood to mind,
have left me cold and far behind.

What I recall are petty grievances
(or so they seem when stacked against
a life of thirst and hunger and illness).
The many times that I was beaten up,
by other kids, an older sibling and
my mother once, when I was barely out
of romper suits. My dad’s mum’s joke
that she’d lend me her bras.

How I became and tried to live the joke.
A sadomasochistic turning out
of all my self-esteem, destined to be
the sensitive child, regarded with disgust
but sometimes tolerant humour. How love
seemed like the need I’d always have
to beg and bleed and grovel for, since who
will otherwise enjoy an ugly homosexual?

I translate all of this in bald pentameter.
The less than healthy impulses remain,
Wet nursed in adolescence by
the early internet, chat rooms unleashed
on a generation as yet unformed,
and so destined to be malformed.
But as bald as my poetry is, it's what I use
to bleed the 05:00 AM humours.