Sociophathic Patriarchy
Scroll or swipe
He calls it order and means silence,
a ledger of who owes what,
paid in flinches.
In the boardroom light,
empathy is treated like a leak:
sealed, painted over,
then blamed for the mould.
The father smiles for the photo,
thumb firm on a shoulder,
a gentle clamp.
They teach boys to split themselves early:
one half to want,
one half to watch wanting as a weakness.
“Be a man” is said like a diagnosis,
and the cure is always another person’s discomfort.
At dinner,
the joke lands and nobody laughs,
but the plates keep moving as if laughter were optional
and breathing were not.
He never shouts;
he just sets the temperature so low
everyone learns to live in coats indoors.
Policies arrive in clean fonts,
polite as hospital sheets,
covering bruises without asking how they happened.
Love becomes a performance review:
meet the target,
keep the peace,
do not mention pain in front of clients.
When a woman speaks plainly,
it is labelled “tone”,
as if truth were a stain on the carpet.
The men who cannot feel
still demand feeling from others,
like tribute: tears, apologies, smaller dreams.
Control wears aftershave and calls itself care,
counting exits, checking locks,
hiding keys in compliments.
At night he sleeps easily,
not because he is innocent,
but because his conscience
was outsourced years ago.
In the morning,
the kettle boils and nobody says what is obvious:
the house is organised around one person’s emptiness.
