dirty old men

Read a lot of writing by dirty old men
seen a lot of movies about dirty old men who wrote

they weren’t really just
“dirty old men”

they were poets

they had hearts and souls
and minds and emotions

they couldn’t have
written anything I’d want to read
or lived anything I’d want to see
if they hadn’t

but there’s a gaping hole
that Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin,
and Sylvia Plath just can’t fill

even Audre Lorde, Cherie Moraga,
Gloria Anzaldua don’t quite
give me what I’m looking for–

the kind of abandon that comes,
perhaps, from being a free man

from being a man in a world
made for men (but made by women as much as men)

The world is different now
(because we are making it different
because we can
because we must)

the void can be filled

I just have to find it
or be it.