affection

You speak as if I were still a prep-schoolboy,

fooling around, to be soundly reprimanded -

slandered with pedagogic abuse and futile

(puerile) threats looming unstated in the air.

I glare with rage as you ruffle my adult dignity,

triggering instincts of revolt. I won't stand

for such grand disparagement, vented in men's

presence for my public rebuke and humiliation.

Impatiently military, you strut with a general's gait,

adulating fascist heroes, whose brash

poses you like to strike - pinning your image

to some tin-pot dictator from a banana republic.

But any more of this, and then you'll see

I play the bully just as easily!