At the outset yes
It could have been a woman
These bad habits so devilishly resistant
The insensitive reflex for example
Wishing above all to be approved of
Even by those whom one disdains
And what amounts to the same thing
The craving to plug in an image
Amid all the vacuous abstraction
So what’s the point
Of all the rhetorical posturing

To begin with the charade
Of the third-person reference
The pretense that everybody
Doesn’t already know
When in fact the knowledge of that knowledge
Itself motivates the attempted deception
And to conclude
Venting spleen and the hypocrisy
Of dressing as an aesthetic object
The stupid naive homespun therapy
Of venting spleen