Thursday, September 7, 2017

My buttons got pushed

==================================================================
Your Mom

Things don't have to be new to hurt.
Things don't have to be old to matter.
Beauty and history are different things --
Shooting stars last
Barely for a minute.

My glimmer of hope;
My gales of unexpected comfort;
My struggle to keep my feet on the ground
Just how he would have liked
Because intelligent intellectual modern men
Like stable women sure of their worth,
Because intelligent intellectual modern men
Should like the woman I want to be...!
My discomfort
With who I sometimes am not
Fits nowhere.
Men of yore will stifle and ask for surrender,
Men of now will drown you in rightful care,
Men in the middle will laugh --

And I haven't hugged a woman in ages.
I haven't felt solidarity
Because we all hide vulnerability
Because vulnerability is feminine and feminine is hate.
Weak women are subhuman toys for the boys.
Strong women are superhuman machines
Whose existence is evidence that we don't need feminism.

Your mother raised you to speak your mind to men and women alike
And so the whole world must be fine now for women like me
Because equality is warped to mean we all must hide our souls.
Respected women are women who act like the men of yore
And other women,
Like the one disgusted you sometimes suspects I am,
Are your guilty muses,
To be moulded into art or sculpture or fantasy or bedclothes
Or queens or goddesses or porn
Or your mother --

And I say it should be simpler.
No rules to laugh, rules to speak,
Rules around
Who to be around,
About the right amount of fear,
Whom to let yourself be near,
Rules to hug, to shed a tear,
Rules to love.
Love
Should be allowed:
On both sides, and as it is;
On both sides, crazy or sane;
On both sides, brave and sweet --

And a man should be allowed
To be swept off his feet.
==================================================================

I wrote this a long time ago after binging on slam poetry videos. I didn't think it was any good but I kept it. Today, I wanted to post because it's been a while, and had nothing else to post, so I finally folded and posted the longest complete piece from my Google Keep.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Speak and you will be heard.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...