Why I Hate Poetry

You force me to say if I accept your dare.
I mumble something in my beard.
Is it fair

of you to set snares
for my feelings like this? Sure, I’m weird,
but does that entitle you to dare

me to share
my soul with you?—as I’ve always feared
closeness. It isn’t fair

to lay wait for me in the thoroughfare
and make me encounter you in the nude—
my own normal state of attire, I dare

say. I don’t care
who’s in the wrong who's in the clear,
but it doesn’t feel fair

to be reduced to prayer
by your imperative life circumstances so dire.
So, mostly, I refuse the dare.
It isn’t fair.