We can ask.

It’s a question we always ask: which one is better, safer-

Confronting or ignoring?

Perhaps I should crowdsource the answer:

What would harassers like better?

Or perhaps they can’t be generalised, like the rest of us. 

Let us take a nuanced, case-by-case approach. 

When someone accosts you on the street, blocks your path with their car, 

demands your number as price for your freedom, 

Whip out your survey form. 

If he cannot be shamed, let us name, place, animal and thing him

Let us drown him in nouns and adjectives, 

Pin him and predict him and molest him with our microscope

Let us debate him at dinner tables and on primetime TV

To make ourselves feel better: contributing to #EndSexualViolence

While ignoring that our nephew (/uncle/cousin) does some rather strange things when drunk;

One of the older males must be asked to speak to him one of these days,

Otherwise one of these girls nowadays—you know what they are—will MeToo him. 

Potential energy

I like the idea of potential energy:

Shock absorbers, 

Vigilant grand-aunts;

A world where consequence lies in wait.

The dam’s face, mighty and ordered,

The waiting lake that drowns dissent,

The steady releases the turbines run on,

The hungry deluge when the storm comes.

I relate to it—

An appearance of composure

And a store of suffering 

Have their uses.

Explanations

You’re too smart to be religious, people have said.

I know you wanted to, other people have said. 

Yet other people, with Grade-x subtlety,

Wheedle, ‘Apparently so-and-so and you…’

Mind-reading is cultural competence hereabouts,

And I’m often scolded by those who see it 

As also Love’s labour. 

Sometimes I wish I were more adept at picking up 

The shot blanks, the loneliness. 

At other times, I am offended by the claim. 

Beneath my ego’s visor, my heart jittery and swollen,

I offer my best silences, reverence for your unknown, 

Restraint of the grasping, fumbling guesses:

So that you can speak and be learnt from.

‘No, thank you’ is fine. ‘What a fool’ is unacceptable.