Male Gaze

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

You see the people in the April rain.

Perhaps they are umbrellas, not much more

To you, or raincoats.  They are like a stain

On retinas and not much more.  They score

Your mind as nothing more than scrapes or blips

You barely notice since you stare like God

Filled up with too much data.  Hidden hips

Reduce your interest in them — nothing odd

In that, these people not much more than bits

Of data passing, not much more than bytes

At most since, after all, you can’t see tits

Or shoulders, lacking cause of lust’s slick flights.

   The raincoats hide the most, the bodies’ grace.

      Umbrellas sometimes move.  You grasp a face.