A Poem About Tea, Time, Bald Spots, and the Unbearable Weight of Maybe
ABS Believes:
Some love songs serenade others. This one apologizes to itself before saying hello.
Poetry doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it just measures life in spoons and sighs.
Meet Prufrock: The Man Who Overthought Breathing
If Hamlet got older, balder, and started shopping for suspenders instead of revenge, you’d get Prufrock.
This isn’t a love song—it’s a social panic attack disguised as verse. T.S. Eliot gifted us a narrator who walks through foggy streets and his own insecurities with equal dread. He wants to propose. Or at least connect. Or maybe just ask a woman something about peach-eating without combusting emotionally.
He never gets there.
Instead, he spirals.
“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table…”
And we’re off. Most poems start with nature, birds, or longing. Eliot starts with surgery and emotional paralysis. Evening isn’t beautiful—it’s drugged. And so is Prufrock’s courage.
Time, Tea, and Too Much Thinking
Prufrock is the poet laureate of second-guessing.
“There will be time, there will be time…”
Spoiler: there won’t. Or worse—there’ll be too much time to overthink every single word, glance, and emotional blink. This is a man who would RSVP “maybe” to his own birthday.
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
Translation: I never lived loudly, but my teaspoon drawer is very well-stocked. Emotional milestones: zero. Caffeine: excessive.
Hair Loss, Hamlet, and the Peach Problem
This isn’t aging gracefully—it’s aging nervously. Prufrock watches his hair thin and his soul retract like a turtle. He wonders if people notice his bald spot. Then worries about whether worrying about that makes him ridiculous.
“Do I dare to eat a peach?”
Sir, that peach is not just fruit. It’s sensuality. It’s risk. It’s the potential of juice on your shirt and feelings on your sleeve. Prufrock doesn’t bite. He monologues.
ABS Commentary & Neurotic Quotables
“In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.”
ABS says: “Translation: Intellectuals are mingling. Prufrock is Googling how to look deep in a waistcoat.”
“I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.”
ABS notes: “Don’t worry, Prufrock. Even Hamlet would ghost this gathering.”
“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”
ABS replies: “Next up: ‘Shall I apologize to the wind for existing too audibly?’”
“Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
ABS whispers: “The poetic equivalent of exiting the party quietly, then collapsing in a puddle of unresolved feelings.”
Why We Still Love Prufrock (Even If He Doesn’t Love Himself)
Because we are him.
He is every overthinker who’s ever drafted a message 17 times and then deleted it.
He is every dinner guest who wanted to be profound but settled for refilling the butter dish.
He is the quiet cry of modern man wondering if anyone even wants to hear a love song anymore.
ABS folds the scroll with cautious fingertips, then hesitates—rethinks the fold—then folds it anyway, slowly, with a spoon.
Signed,
ABS
The Literary Scholar
Where poems whisper louder than people ever dare
Where anxiety is beautifully metered and heartbreak brews in porcelain cups
Share this post / Spread the witty word / Let the echo wander / Bookmark the brilliance