Becoming an animal is not so bad
when your wings are humming, singing,
when the passionate mane is yours,
There’s something you have of me
The memory of dark skies
Trapped in words faded, unspoken
And a letter soaked in tears
Burn that soft paper return me, o what is mine
Sixteen years after Buggles’ one-hit wonder,
we were still smacking snooze-buttons on clock radios,
jarred awake by Top 40 and traffic on the nines.
We listened on the bus going to and from school.
We listened in the locker room.
It happened beneath a picture of a saint
The night HE showed no restraint
HE is a common coward, a rapist, a diseased pig
It’s not about those who get flushed out surreptitiously
as a scarlet blob between thighs
Neither is it about those who are scraped out of wombs
With rusty tools of quacks in back alley
Stomach
divided from itself,
a walling off of that most
primal of desires. A journey that will take her
through scalpels and recovery rooms, leave her body
Women are silent flowers
Prettiest when quiet
We do not wilt
She is shiny
with accomplishment,
easily mobile,
made up and done up
Dopamine blocked
Hindering you
To tremble
each mouthful a creation, of
chaos + war + destruction
within.
Cliché to say they’re gone, wings pinned
behind the supple backs, longings fled
with the Steller jays’ flitting from porch to branch.
I find you years before you become admirable.
You were given to me without choice.
With force I tried to hide the weakness,
arbitrary rules, the double edged blade that you came with.
what happens when
you discover that
when I yell
I yell
really really loud
Girls made of thick thread,
with hearts that chase desires
Come to drum this metal roof in sixteenth
and thirty-second notes, to puddle, gouge
a dirt road that spins the tires’ worn teeth.
I sit with the girls that hide behind their books,
and hurry through the hallways hoping no one would look
The girls that stand in front of mirrors
someone has fashioned me
with a wretched beehive
and left me to tend it
If she squeezes me any tighter
I’ll burst
I was just a pink water balloon,