ABOUT THE POEM: This poem lives in the uneasy territory where masculinity, loneliness, technology, and class collide. It is written from the point of view of a man who has lost faith not only in love, but in the entire social ecosystem that tells him how love is supposed to work. He speaks from a place of exhaustion, where expectations about gender—“a woman must come”—have turned into accusations against himself. His failure to receive affection becomes, in his eyes and the eyes of others, proof that he is deficient, incomplete, or even non-human. This produces a strange kind of spiritual collapse: he questions the very intent behind desire, the value of character, and the meaning of morality when none of those things bring him companionship or dignity. Technology becomes both witness and judge. The machine listens to him, but it also mocks him, labels him, and reduces his pain to clichés. It reflects society’s reaction: dismissing male loneliness as weakness, selfishness, or misogyny. The speaker’s only intimate experience—paying for a woman’s time—is something he can’t confess without being condemned, yet it is also the only moment he ever felt chosen. The shame around this memory shapes much of the poem’s bitterness. His poverty is not just financial; it is emotional and existential. He tries to assert that a poor man still knows the value of himself, but even that principle crumbles when he realizes he has been buying a counterfeit version of connection. The poem follows a downward movement: denial, admission, self-interrogation, self-disgust, and finally resignation. The world laughs at his loneliness, and he imagines himself publicly punished for the simple crime of being alone. The text becomes a portrait of a man confronting the brutal truth that desire, dignity, and humanity are not automatically granted—they are social currencies he never possessed.I am awake,
and the snakes are awake.
The job of snakes,
whether coiled in the jungle,
hidden behind your girl’s ears,
or wrapped around my own neck,
is to keep me
active,
alert,
aware.
The beautiful night has slipped away,
and I can’t convince myself anymore,
let alone the world,
why you still haven’t come.
I know you will never come,
that part is settled.
What’s impossible now
is pretending I still believe
you might.
I am a man,
and I know the rule:
a woman must come.
It is written
in blood,
in bone.
But questions are gnawing
at the intent itself,
and character is coming apart
at the seams.
No morals left to question,
no excuses left to juggle.
How do I tell them
when you will come,
when even I no longer believe
the lie I built?
I speak of women
to a machine.
The only woman I’ve ever known
was the one I paid by the hour.
The moment I describe her,
the AI brands me misogynist.
When I accuse the machine
of stealing originality,
of being a threat to humanity,
it laughs back:
“You’re only mad
because your bed is empty,
because she never came.”
Even when I dare to speak
the raw truth-
that a man provides,
so a man expects more-
I am dismissed
as a pathetic creature
with no woman beside him,
and therefore
no right to judge
the common man’s fate.
A real poor man doesn’t know
the value of money-
only the value of himself.
Yet there comes a time
when even that blurs:
he works,
he loves,
he gives her money
so she can give him
what he thinks
is worth something.
It’s a worse fate
than being a woman.
When you are not here at all,
my suffering lacks even
eye contact,
actual point of reference.
Your absence is the only proof
they accept
that I am not a man
at all.
How do I tell them
I still have a heart-
one I was never able
to convince a woman of?
I do have one.
And even if no woman comes,
it’s getting harder to breathe
in a life
I’ve already accepted
will remain without her.
They think I am poor,
incapable,
discarded by women.
They think I was never chosen,
never touched,
never completed.
The louder I scream my loneliness,
the louder they laugh:
proof I am the fool,
proof I am the pig.
Mud doesn’t soil the pig-
the pig is the mud.
They hang me in public
for the crime
of dying alone,
then force my dead hand
to sign the confession.
