the last blue summer i dripped
               sulfur from a bottom lip
               you found an eyelash
                in your cheerios
and we danced
all winter
                into the next blue summer
                  then it was rhubarb and honey
      The First Man came to stab
           his tongue in my mouth
             i,
the very silk sheet of femininity
         let him puncture inside with the chewed
            embittered nails
this is a girl in holy conversion
           she convulses at the right times
           for dramatic effect
                     the blood on the bed is as christ
                      a symbol of sacrifice
         back when men played gods
and i let them

The Second Men
            are numerous skin lesions
             diseases from stepping in the wrong
                 swamplands
         they smell always of
            peppercorn or gin&tonic;
                     their ***** sense a tenderness inside
                      like dogs they sniff it out
                to bury it with the one large hand
       that wraps around the throat every
       time
       that same ******* line
                  you like it rough you little **** like it rough
    i am on my back on the bed
           that rocks from him ******* into
           my girlhood
                            i think of what my mother said when she found
                     the box of condoms i keep with me
                     "i would just hope these men care about you."
she doesn't understand
          these delicate men look for women to care
           about them
in the lily morning
          they want to get breakfast
                             text me their problems
                i'm the man on the sidewalk
              curling my lips into each other at their texts
"what are you doing tonight?"
           "hey haven't heard from you for a while"
   "hi :)"

I am on my back in bed
              wondering if I can hail a cab from delancey St
               while he licks and ***** at my **** and I feel nothing
               but I play the parts
I know my lines
                and the Second Men could have done well in the spotlight
                only they wanted a girl and by then I was decidely
       not human

The Men
                     can smell it
                      when you've been taken before
           a goodbye kiss on the cheek i grant
             in a moment of kindness
             and it becomes his tongue in my mouth
i am paralyzed in honesty
in the remaining threads of the docile sweetness
                mom says it is feminine to be kind
              that it is not a weakness
I think of this again when I am on all fours
                        hair pulled back by his hands
                  I think of it when the door closes and the other he
              wouldn't take no for an answer
how many times did I tell myself
I wanted this?
                              every time

The Dream Men
                   take me in my bed
                   in the house with grapevines and white shutters
         they stuff their hands down my throat
          they **** me from all sides
I spend the dream trying to scream
                and when I wake it is always sunny outside so I never feel
                 good about crying

Moms at the foot of my sadness
                              brush my hair braid it
                        we are in flower fields with magnets
             painted lilac and baby pink
                              im stomping around in the garden they hush me
              quiet
                              we are born into these love traps
                     these delicate sentiments
                     tricked to think we are heiress to sloppy emotion
        but the women ring the rags
     pluck the tomatos off the plants
                        the men see ghosts and weep
                          into their coffee
                  weep on the shoulders of their women
         who lie on their backs in bed
                         wait for it to be over

It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
I don't like it I don't like this
Did you come? Yes I came
Yes it's all taken care of
Is that blood? Are you okay?
Sorry I forgot I'm on the last day
You sure? Yeah It was great
I want to go again
Ok Baby


The Women
                 taste different
                   feel safer
                              their histories and mine are reflective
          they know what it means to be taken
         but their hands
                       do not hurt enough
                        don't leave behind blisters
                        i begin to come into someone else
                 never satisfied enough
                  to settle
                  to build a home



            
          Men and their history of abusing women
          Me and my history of being abused
We'll never understand each other
We'll never love each other either




The Men have taken
                everything from my Women
                my Grandmother barren
                 my Mother so close to death
             I was born into the locked
             door
             The history of Women who stayed
                   tender and delicate


I am tired of being taken

Today she fell
Out of our grasp
Into white
She now is dressed


Her father shakes
Her mother cries
Her brother learns
To hate goodbyes

Hold your sobs
Hold yourself
You must stay strong
For someone else

Close your eyes
Say not a word
Hope for peace
In their broken world

'Cause today she fell
Out of their grasp
Into white
She'll 'ever be dressed

Her father shakes
Her mother cries
Her brother now
Hates goodbyes

But he'll hold his sobs
He'll hold himself
He will stay strong
For everyone else

He'll close his eyes
Say not a word
Pray for peace
In his broken world

Because she fell
Out of his grasp
Her perfect heart
Locked in a casket

His father sleeps
His mother cries
Says shes fine
But he hears her lies

Now he holds his sobs
While he holds himself
He cant stay strong
For everyone else

Now he closes his eyes
He says not a word
He's lost hope for peace
In his broken world


Today he fell
Out of our grasp
Next to his sister
In a field of new grass

-ARI

I have been silent.
I have been silent not for loss
Or mourning
For those drag words from me
With or without my consent.
I have been silent because I am trying to be
Gentle
In love
When I am a thunderstorm made flesh,
A hurricane,
A seismic wave of passion and pain.
Inside
I burn
And it has been a long time
Since I have loved so deeply
As to press my sizzling hands to my own stomach
Just to keep another person from burning their fingers on the love I hold beneath my skin.
I have been silent
But I have not been extinguished-
Far from it, I have risen.
I have gone blue and white with heat.
I have wandered through the blackened trees in the ghostly calm of the night
And kindled them to flames with my palms.
I have left embers
Shifting and sighing in my footprints
And the earth has learned a new name to score into its stone and treebark when I travel through the darkness
Searching for a rest I will not find.
And there is joy in this,
There is such joy!
Although the heat presses,
Although the light licks at my ankles when I wade too far into my own heart's dreams.
I leave joy in these silent places, black and velvety and slumbering in the night-
I wake them
I wake them because I have been woken
And my heart has become something that melts
Something that burns
Something that hungers and consumes
And glows with shimmering reds and golds no matter how tightly I curl around it and hush its hissing whispers.
I leave joy because I can't contain it
And it reaches roots into the ground with every step I take-
A fearful joy,
A joy that knows its hunger
Will be its starvation.
A joy that breathes light and grasps at shadows
Because that is all it knows how to do.
A joy that turns its face up to the rain
To feel a moment's peace and cooling clarity.

Oh, I may have been silent
But I have not been quiet.