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Nat Lipstadt Mar 2014
for her


no special expertise claimed,
if anything, les contraries,
my non-expertise,
but nothing forbids
my heart from trying
red crossing,
rebuilding just this young one

build from the corners in,
like one starts a jigsaw puzzle,
the human, moving parts,
thus harder,
but eminently doable

the corners are straight edged, linear,
easier to spot, easier to start,
but for you to find them within,
go outside, and window winnow in
you will know them as your
truest words

pick the picture
of you,
you know
you must pick,
the puzzle picture
of you

that favorite one
when completed,
will, though cracked,
as jigsaw puzzles
by nature wont,
as all humans
are wont,
will be the one
that brings smiles
first, foremost

she asks:
"Where are these edges that define me,
help me to construct and the where to begin?"*

after sixty years more on this planet,
have been torn apart,
reconstructed, deconstructed,
more then ten finger and ten toe times
this I know,
there is but one beauty
in this crueled worn
every day weary-world,
it is you,
you words that betray
Beautiful You
oh so well

you see I have your picture,
you see I have your words,
deconstructed, reconstructed,
I love your picture,
I love your words,
start with me, start at the corners,
show me the pieces,
tho the world see the ex
terior,
I see the in
terior,
the shiny new
true sides, so beautiful,
wake knowing that
not just me dearest Chalsey,
I have found your chalice,
and  your grail,
and I say,
this is just one man,
this can be where you start,

this then be your mirror,
let us from the corners in,
from the eyes that penetrate,
accept that this is not debatable,
this is my poem where I do not lie,
this is my piece of you,
from inside of me
my straight edge piece was
born in your beautiful words,
and I say,
can you, see a voice,
can you, touch a voice,
no one can

but I can

your voice is transcendent,
it is the cover photo of a glossy mag,
this is the photo, the puzzle I see,
and heart each and every word
Sorry I took so long

Read this poet, this woman, this woman's beauty
in her every word
Life's a Beach Dec 2014
Sleep paralysis, like your body
is wearing a ice-en straight jacket
and your mouth is laced up with skin.
I could see the blanket, the pillow, I could feel
myself trapped within layers of
suffocating covers, every neurone struggling to
free my trapped limbs
sapped of strength
As though my spine had snapped, and the
length of Central Nervous System had
strapped itself to the base of my bones
I tried to yell, to scream to moan
MOVE
WAKE UP
at my body
couldn't sob
robbed of movement

I sank into the silence of a nightmare

This is what I saw there:

My childhood home, demolished, my accommodation
stood sturdy on it's grave as though it had
never existed
My Lady and My Mother were there, and they
resisted my protests, laughed cruelly in jest as they
marched into my flatmates room
I ran after them as their voices loomed like
mocking magpies
Every word a jab and peck

Then

An awful clarity
In hilarity, my flatmate jested that 'junk' had
been left in his room, but as I looked in, expecting gloom, I
saw, instead, the living room of my childhood home
Nailed down where it stood by the
additives of a university life.
I didn't see the past strife, but photographs of happy
times lay scattered or enlarged, their presence
marred by the fact
that, if they were here,
then no-one had wanted them
No one had cared
They had been left
lost
littered
scattered into the breeze of
demolition

Then calm
By the fireplace that had never been used
The adopted Nan sat and soothed by her
Life torn husband's side
Fire resided beside them as she and he
coaxed the flames across the wall
missing the grating
Every flickering flame pressed into a ball
as it spread
I lost my head staring at her peaceful white hair
She wasn't stuck in her chair
Or swathed in blankets
She looked right how she was
And I felt bad because I took a foam and
dampened the flame from the walls loam
Fearing injury I stole her
warmth
But she was always so exothermic
She doesn't haunt she fills

Willed forward with affection
But her questions sank into
a sudden guilt of my self-neglection
and as I tried
to hold
myself
together
I found my breath
was snatched
I didn't want to let her down
Couldn't bear for an
angel to see
a frown
so
I tried to catch
the tip of my mouth
and force myself to smile

But she knew all, of course she did,
and as I was marched up the aisle of
wakefulness

A single tear slid down my cheek
An emotion was allowed
to leak

Loss and Shame
Guilt and Pain

You shouldn't be like this
*Take care of yourself
I had an incredibly vivid dream yesterday, it really shook me, so I wanted to get it out somewhere. The woman I call Nan was honestly one of the most beautiful human beings. She's the grandmother of my platonic other half. Seeing her so clearly and finding myself unable to tell her something positive about how I was, well, it completely ate me up. If she's watching me, then this isn't what I want her to be seeing, she deserves to see happiness.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2017
i can't believe i came across this today,
but i am certain did...
   an experience so vague i couldn't believe,
i actually experienced dyslexia,
call it quasi call it pseduo... but it was very
much akin... from the book's narrative...
but not from the footnotes, i read the footnotes
at perfect cognitive speed, but perhaps
returning to the narrative i did experience
a slack of the + (add) of how words are
dissected and quickly put back together...
  yes, that other arithmetic with very little
breathing room, yes, that thing without
a soul... the word... or god...
    i turned custard brain, fudge...
     i felt like watching the gymnastics at
the para-olympics... and if i was going for a cheap
joke / english black humor i'd probably
laugh at that... but since this is the most
perfect ideal, i can't only make that comparison.

and so it was, i sat there doing nothing productive,
nothing... counting sheep to encourage
day-dreaming...
       so i said: 'i'll read a book', like i might do
on the whim in my grandparent's house
(one of the many reasons i decided to be "canadian" -
and establish a firm belief in bilingualism -
since if i didn't speak the tribal tongue
i wouldn't be rummaging in my grandfather's
library... and stealing books from him...
  well, exporting them to england, where he said
on my last visit: your library is bigger than
mine, isn't? well... it can fill a double-bed
   and be stacked at about 300cm up...)
    maybe the fact that being immersed in the tribe:
polish on the radio, on the television,
the fact that i can be without the internet for
weeks on end and have no quick-canvas outlet for
my earned tongue is the reason i could read
Kraszewski's* Dei Ira / bozy gniew / god's wrath...
    (there is too much subtle differences between
capital iota and little-town lambda -
   or why iota had to have the dot above it, anyway) -
so dei ira looks better... which is why i'm
not orthodox about using capital instances all the time...
   what a whirlwind...
         but prior to that i was watching
a david jacoby film - love is the devil: study for
a portrait by francis bacon...
                                         and all i could think of:
what marvel, to have a **** shoved up your ***
and speak so beautifully...
  have such a vast array of narratives...
     i can only assume that experiencing **** ***
gives you the other man's **** shoved into
your mouth that acts like a tongue and speaks
      so many truths as could be possible,
as in Freudian dream: when a woman wears a hat...
a talking ****** on her head from slurping
at the vaginal grotto of another woman...
     such a marvel though, homosexuality, esp.
the type of homosexuality that has art to express
rather than a civil partnership, civil rights...
  i mean, i could watch this stuff for days and never
yawn or need to watch protests and marches...
  just the image of what is best described
   john william waterhouse's
   painting hypnos and thanatos...
      i can't help but see it like that...
         francis plays the female role, his model the evident
dominant male... and sure, francis having his
**** punctured for what could be best described
as diarhhea either side of the equator does so...
it's as if he is eloquent enough / intelligent to allow
this to happen, for another man to speak through
him somehow... the model's phallus in francis' ****
becomes the model's tongue in francis' mouth...
    which becomes the stage for hypnos and thanatos...
in that francis' tongue becomes a phallus in
the mind of the model: and it whispers him nightmares
in his sleep... a vicious cycle indeed...
           that's the homosexuality that's highly regarded
by me, not the confetti functional type that
    exploits science and social norms and can no longer
lend itself to art, to transcending the taboo...
      with homosexuality divorced from art...
i can't see anything profound by gays from now on...
i really can't... if there is no art in this deviant
love, no art is worth being expressed by this
once glorious realm that has grovelled into the gutter...
so let's start once more: with Onan!

and everyday i awake wake with only one identifiable
fear: will i not write a single verse as of today?
it's not a case of a single day encapsulating my
fear, but that that crux day: furthered into a silence
that can't compensate the act of writing with
anything, other than sleep... i just can't seem
to smarten up concerning this very rational phobia...
    and having said that: here is the incision mark
denoting an interlude, and how: what are originally
intended to be of enso quality, cannot
   stand up to the biological tick-tock of needing
the loo...
     and do i think o'keefe's music foundation
by children is so much better than the original
done by tool concerning the song forty six & two?
yes, yes i do... just look at the kid on the bass guitar,
the fact that bass guitar is allowed to state a layer
of cake just above drums to set the rhythm
means the rhythm guitar doesn't have to solipsistic
******* and scale the everest of solo...
   it can remain in the rhythm section,
actually be worth a rhythm,
   the guitar doesn't need to overload into a solo...
the vocals belong to that domain...
   as long as the bass guitar is allowed to be heard
(unlike in metallica) - then i must be tone deaf!
revise me!
                    jazz knew the importance of every instrument,
and the need to be spontaneous, but also
the need to be anti-synchronisation,
  and therefore anti-muddle tsunami of:
all together now!
            n'ah, **** that **** (yes, the Vulgate is
coming along, i like the pooch, i don't care what things
i might say, the rude growl-bark is coming along:
so we can admire him licking his *****, and for no
other reason he's coming):
as in the birth of sexes... which the animals don't
seem to comprehend that much intently...
                 i can't like my ******* or **** one off...
but i know i can abstract a woman into
a hand and just pretend it's me doing the ****
crap with her... than myself included,
   or as i might add: never drink or *******
before the mirror... soon enough your reflection
becomes a bit odd, not because of what you do,
but because you hide so much perplexity before
you in Lucifer's daylight with which
  the moon Narcissus governs the moods...
that you start to look at your actual shadow
   with more clarity and fact...
  looking in the mirror is the reverse of looking
at your shadow under a street-lamp at night...
the mirror sort of becomes a shadow...
             the form becomes a bit (ha ha, what
an exagerration) vague... i look into
a mirror and i am but looking into shadow...
                   and i can't exactly recognise the eyes,
or make our geometric approximations
of a skull...
                      it's not even a case of a poor Yorrick
blah blah.
    or as the new governing body put it:
there are to be no mirrors contained within
the gates of Pandemonium...
        each to his own shadow, each to his own abstract...
   for the shadow will be deemed the new mirror...
   the new found glacier of, yes:
when salt water freezes, comes pure white floating
on the oceans... but must you freeze fresh water
and there's this matrix...
as in icecubes...
       dropping from a vendor machine...
and i knew i shouldn't have digressed so much,
but then again, if there was no ****** tick-tock
       rebellion, i probably wouldn't have revealed this much...
with ancient lore...
    who'd use the word Pandemonium these days,
if you're merely trying to call it: the Houses of Westminster...
well sure, accusation due: i prefer
a bunch of kids feeding me a nostalgia over a song
i heard aged 14... such is the power of the song 46 & 2
done to a... wait wait...
  i was talking about bass guitars and jazz...
(i could never get to like rap...
            i liked when the blacks deconstructed classical
music, but they did after: i'll never like,
mainly people of blackies and that general fanfare
of rap feeding tribalism) -
          the greatest aspect of jazz:
that on some recordings there's a chance to hear all
the instruments having a solo moment...
you'll hear a quintent solo:
  the piano, the drum, the saxophone, the horn,
the double-bass solo... each doing a solo...
not some erectile dysfunction of rock music from the 1980s...
i mean: each one will do a solo...
  and **** me, that's grand... and given there's no vocals
makes it all the better... but where, the ****, can i hear
jazz music being kept with such high regard as i
might find mozart pickled and even mummified
     to suddenly rise again and compose like i might hear
it on classical.fm... maybe acid jazz killed it...
   i can't seem to hear of one place where i can hear
the range of jazz music i have in my collection...
which probably mean's i'm lazy and don't fiddle about
with the radio fm and am channels... to "look" for jazz...
  i'm all applause though: jazz allowed for
deconstruction of classical music and paved the way
for the current state of polyphony in plateau...
    meaning: too much drum, too much ump-pst-ump-pst...
   jazz paved the wsay from orchestra,
   and yes, maybe because it was too impromptu
as it was necessary, that there was no jazz composer...
  there could have been no jazz script... no pre
           to what was otherwise alway and only: uno...
a once...
    sure Thelonious Monk did use an orchestra at some time...
  but if only someone decided to do a solipsism
and write out jazz like mozart wrote out
      concerto... but no... jazz descending from on high
and invoking african villages could never do to
its practitioners the deadly fate of breeding a jazz
composer...
                   it was the communal idea, the musketeer
unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno:
   you could never allow a silent dictator like
a mozart dictating to a throng of people contained
within an orchestra... which later made the once
silent dictators very very vocal... speeches in Munich
alike...
           the fact that jazz has no script,
and the fact that if someone tries to play a Miles Davis
from script... is completely an ***...
     put him on a donkey (backwards)
                     donning a sanbenito and lynch him
to the nearest traffic junction to **** louder than
a car klaxon... that will do the trick...
       they did bother to script led zeppelin though...
    maybe it was the stiff competition that did it:
jazz. airy... breezy... but what a quick moment it was...
i'm almost jealous of the beat poets experimenting
with jazz musicians... but then i'm not:
i like to think of them as parasites...
   you know... those things feeding of spontaneity...
parasites... or dare i say: plagiarising leeches...
plagiarisng what? well, not the content, the context:
feeding of jazz spontaneity... not working from
old composers like Milton or Dante...
thank god for Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath.

seems i have a ****** for a larynx...

perhaps i just seem to mean: i am a firm believer
in bilingualism... perhaps that's based on
some sort of religiosity,
    and let me tell you: it's born with
a schismatic nature, siamese, but not like a
siamese twin, in that it really needs a surgeon...
  it's a nucleus that's inherently schismatic...
i can't blame the english nation being
so lazy in its multicultural ethos,
i quiet like it: i don't live in a ghetto...
but forgetting my native tongue just so i could
sing a national anthem with conviction?
na'ah, that's not me...
            we'll come to Kraszewski's rex piast
in a minute, and it really was a genuine
experience of placebo dyslexia,
the one on the other side: should i have written
zilch...
      i believe in something quiet Canadian...
i don't believe in isolated communities,
   or ghetto tactic... i am a firm disciple of the advent
of bilingualism: forget the *** for just one day,
your genitals won't suddenly drop off with
gangrene scabs... you don't need a doctor
to say that...
                i mean: bilingualism as a concern
for incorporated culture, and the culture you were
born in... why can't these people just care to juggle
three testicles?
                   oh, elaphantisis got in the way...
sure, two oranges and a watermelon: makes sense...
no!
      have mutual respect, you come to me sprechen
Piast i'll speak Piast to you...
   well: given that polish and polish aren't that far apart,
i'd feel inclined to utilise
           idiosyncratic lingo...
   lingua genesis...
                children are so much easier to utilise than
angels: they have yet to experience anything at all
on the Socratic basis...
            so if i talk Piast to me, you will know what
i'm talking about?
     it doesn't matter if you do... i chose to be
a library, rather than an encyclopoedia of immigrants...
    there's not need to test me on general knowledge:
the stuff i "know" already gives me membrane...
     i respect both the culture of my birth and the skin
i am sometimes told to make sure is called tattoo,
and what i see before me, and quiet frankly:
i see nothing before me... a turban here,
    a sausage & mash there, a pint of guinness there,
noodles elsewhere... all in all: globalisation
and the elements: earthquakes... torandos...
   there isn't much to see in a poly-ethnic society...
there are too many major changes taking place
in a pyramid of non-ethnic ascriptive
         non-this-and-that pawns...
  it's not even painful: just a bit disgusting to watch...
  and yes i have access to a voult of monochromatic
society:
   you know how many ethnic minorities i spotted
in a train station in Warsaw? three...
two asians and one black woman...
              i haven't experienced the cold winters in Poland:
but i knew there was a limit...
         only about three apaches in a crowd of
albinos... which doesn't translate as:
    i was somehow content, it just meant
that most signs in Warsaw are written with a bilingual
bridge of Polish... and Ukranian Cyrillic...
plenty of Ukranian Mecca-bandits, for sure,
     but that's the end of the line with what
western Europe is doing to itself...
        every time i come back from Poland
i'm smeared with a rainbow of variety,
   it's either: i want to **** all these girlies
or i want to **** them... mostly the former,
  but you get the picture of experiencing the alternative
of the western experiment: since marxist economy
was "doomed" or simply expected to fail...
the economy finally seems reasonable with safety
for the old and the pension plans...
that marxist-culturalism had to emerge... if we are not
on the same dough plan of being content with a table and
a chair: might as well say we're all prone to don
a ******* afro.
                ***** are naturally curly, no?
going back "home" is always a weird experience, i tend
to read books there... like Kraszewski (who,
even the locals **** as being an unbearable bore
and joke that Joyce is easier read)... with his dei ire...
my grandfather just dropped it into my hands
as an experiment, thinking i wouldn't read it...
    well, in terms of translation Kraszewski is a myth-broker...
no one would read him,
  meaning: i'm kind of grateful that poles
seem to sorta: not exist, when it comes to citing examples
that include modernity and the history being
formed... i could sorta believe it if i were Estonian
or Lithuanian, or from Liechtenstein...
          but we're talking about a place with a large
enough population to be a major player in some
wordly conflict... Poland isn't that small...
    but yet it appears like it appeared from
the 18th century onwards... a state partitioned...
    and what i love about remaining tactifully bilingual?
i can talk about my native in a "colonial" tongue...
hence the " " definition: self-acquired...
             that's why i became spastic-fantastic reading
Kraszewski's rex piast - nothing came in,
i lost all trace of syllable construction, i read the books
so slowly i had one page done in about 10 minutes:
prolonging my musing of world powers, thrones
and crowns on a toilet...
        *******... another interlude.

can anyone see the, dodo project? i really just see a dodo project, yes: eine dodo projekt... i'm white, i'm male: can i be allowed to express these nouns in a pronoun, or am i schizophrenic prone? it seems i c
20 | 31 Poems for August 2016

I began writing this at exactly 03:58 a.m. on a Sunday morning while listening to Charles de Gaulle to JFK by Bas.
Lately I write my most honest pieces during the early hours of Sunday mornings while everyone is still fast asleep.
Wonder what the view is like from Charles de Gaulle to JFK, 30 000 feet in the air.
But anyway, you and I still got bad blood between us like sickle-cell anaemia.
Reminiscing back when I used to be close friends with a girl named Amelia.
Guess we drifted apart as soon as I moved back to Pretoria, maybe the distance dismantled our friendship.
I’ve decided to do this all alone and if anyone’s coming along then let them come along.
I wish I could drift way with the scent of this cup of coffee but a few minutes from now it’ll be colder than your shoulder.
Always wondered if you’d head to Cape Town to go study at that school of brand leadership we always talked about.
But you chose to stay at the Pretoria campus because of certain unforeseen circumstances.
In 2014 I got accepted but unfortunately the tuition was too high like Wiz Khalifa and my mother couldn’t afford it.
That’s why I may have the perception that dreams delayed will always feel like dreams denied.
I’ve been praying for three whole years for a miracle, adjusted my faith and became more spiritual but still nothing has changed.
Guess I’m just young and unlucky; my hands are freezing and my heart is bleeding.
Navigated through space and time just to find the time to give you space.
Words unspoken make way for a silent devotion, this whole thing hurts but I try my best not to let my emotions show.
Wonder what happened, we suddenly stopped talking several months ago.
Maybe you have changed, I just hope that you’ve changed for the better.
I am slowly falling apart and all I can think about is gathering the pieces of my broken heart together.
Maybe you have changed for the better, I guess no one works that hard to stay the same.
My hands are freezing and my heart is bleeding, this whole thing hurts but I try my best not to let my emotions show.
You said "Pull, and don't stop pulling until I tell you to."
I knew this was where my training as a wind breather was going to pay off.
I expelled all nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from my alveoli
And pulled.

I pulled and I looked at you,
Staring at me.
I deconstructed your face, your hair, your teeth, your eyes, your clothes, your life.
I deconstructed your Mexico and what you did to my friend.
I deconstructed the cigarettes you and your brother bummed off of me.
I tore you apart.
Organism, *****, tissue, cell, organelle, molecule, atom, electrons protons and neutrons.

I couldn't pull any longer.
I don't know if you knew I couldn't,
Or simply determined I was set.
"Okay, stop."

I couldn't breathe out. I couldn't breathe in.
I was suffocating.
She put poison in my lungs and my body is dying.
Water.
Water.
It stops.
I can breathe.

My lungs recoil and I can see straight.

She poisoned me but I love her.
Samantha Shaw Mar 2014
The construction of new truths
requires tracing back to the roots
in which our foundational youth
has been grounded.

Pursuants of knowledge, belief, and perception
falter at the objection
that their reality is not subject to
interpretive conception.

Impermanence
taught me to learn and to shift
with tides of my blind eye's misconceptions.
courtney Sep 2015
I'm reliving the times thoughts
clouded my mind,
in swirling storms of doubt:
But now I see, deconstructed at least,
the strings I've snapped and broken.
Once choking and heaving I've
become to bleeding
out the darkness inside of me.
Looking to you, staying true to
your words and heart so dear;
Emerging whole I've shed the
mould of a mind oppressed by fear,
And I see so clearly your light
burns within me, a triumph
awaited my tears.

(C) 17/9/15
Courtney L
Lia  May 2015
deconstructed
Lia May 2015
.
.
i want to pull you apart in sections like an overripe orange
and lick all the juice off of your skin
.
David Adamson Jul 2015
We revel in the artist's gaze.
See us, artist, we say.
Scale us in the geometry of your sight.
Objectify us, break us down
To our vital light,
The zero shade of being,
Our essential black and white.

But what if the figure becomes the ground?
Does the artist’s vision ever come to rest?
Does she halt the eye’s restless turning,
Instead hunger to be seen?  Fathomed?  Expressed
In basic hues, simplified, resolved,
Into the object deconstructed, the mystery solved?

Spotlight and camouflage,
Revelation and disguise:
The chiaroscuro of the artist’s eyes.
Then where does beauty reside?
In our eyes, beholders,
Invited in yet held outside?
Or in the starlight, sunlight,
Lamplight as it plays  
On the seer seen in beauty’s gaze?
South City Lady  Aug 2020
verdict
South City Lady Aug 2020
I wait alone
wrapped in paper
shivering amidst cold
the door pressed hard
against my chest

this time a year ago
I met a similar fate
the verdict returned
       cancer
a word my mind
has deconstructed
reconstructed
discarded
as my past

tears erupt behind
my eyes
how can I afford
to fight again
at what cost
and during
a pandemic

the door **** twists
as she emerges
eyes averted
my throat scored
in pain
"It's benign,
come back
6 months from now"

unable to move
I peer through haze
minutes tease silence
then with
trembling fingers
I dial his number
Aiden answers
    "Mom, you okay?"
nodding tearfully
with newfound certainty
I finally whisper, "Yes!"
This time last year, I was undergoing surgery for breast cancer. The year of recovery was difficult.  The tests came back with more unknowns. I waited 6 months to learn at last I'm one year cancer free. Each year will get easier, but for now, I am a survivor. 💕
Pagan Paul  May 2017
Valleys
Pagan Paul May 2017
My thoughts drift slow and lazy
through the valleys of my mind,
reaching out for answers,
searching for something I left behind.

My memories were here once before
with darkness, screams and pain,
the intense fire of creative spirit
dampened to pulp by a wicked brain.

So where did I leave myself
when I escaped in to my head?
I've deconstructed the mental walls
to discover the places I had fled.

Between. Betwixt. Bewitched. Be still,
a balm to soothe this anxious seer.
My thoughts drift slow and lazy
through the valleys of my fears.


© Pagan Paul (20/05/17)
.
Leah Rae Oct 2014
The following is a quotation.
"In the emergency room, they have what's called **** kits where a woman can get cleaned out."  
-Texas State Representative Jodie Laubenberg

Dear Mrs. Laubenberg,

I have never felt so betrayed by another woman before.
And I know this was your attempt at a prolife argument.
But you don’t understand anything about your own anatomy.

Unlike you, I know my own body.
The home I've created here,
inside myself,
these shoulders,
hips,
scars,
and stretch marks.

Believe me when I say - I am my own war memorial.

So let this body be ready to be broken.

I will give birth to umbilical cord nooses.

Hang myself with my own womanhood.
Blood soaked ******* and blue and black bite marks.
I will never be anyone’s victim.

I was built - hand crafted by some creator - who knew he was breeding me for war.

Let this body be a graveyard to all my past lovers.

Let it be known that I was built for destroying things just as often as I create them.
The lipstick I wear is the same color as blood.
I was made to devour.
A caged animal in my throat.
A growl asleep in my chest.
A ribcage built for holding me captive because I'm a savage animal.

Do not call me weak.
A ***** bites.
A ***** swallows her prey alive.

So don’t you dare push my knees apart into metal stirrups, and
“clean me out”.
Do not bandage my wounds.
Do not wipe me clean of this recklessness.
Do not cover these bruises.
Let me stand, a testimony to what they have done to me.
To us.
My wounds will not be silent.

I want you to look at me.
At us.

We need to carry these battle wounds with us.

On my college campus, we have been broken in like cattle.
We know the scent of fear.
We’ve been branded black and gold.  
We were told to carry mace like an accessory to this sin.
To never walk alone at night.
To travel in packs.
To carry weapons.
To carry guns.
To carry our femininity concealed because bare thighs are dangerous here.

Each week is only finished when a ****** assault paints my campus crimson.

**** is a hate crime against weakness.

So I’m taking back femininity and I’m deciding what it’s synonymous with.

And never again will submission mean woman.
Never again will girl mean powerless.
Never again will tenderness be considered vulnerable.

I am a flower on ******* fire.
I am Mother Nature,
Thousand watt lightning storms and forest fires that could turn you into dust.
You cannot break me.

Every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth.

So yes, we are used to giving this thing called life, our absolute everything.

There are 400,000 untested **** kits in America alone.

So yes, I know, Mrs. Laubenberg.

I know you picture women’s bodies like machines,
cold,
hard,
metal.
Something than can be deconstructed, cleaned, and put back together.
But I am a human being, and I don’t assemble easily.

****** assault belongs to the survivor.

How dare you try to white wash your own guilt and try and file our stolen femininity under blood slides and nail scrapings.

You are a woman too, Mrs. Laubenberg.

And I know, these hate crimes look like girls in short skirts to you.
They look drunk.
They look *****.
They look like *** workers caught in fishnets.

They look deserving.

But Mrs. Laubenberg,

They also look like your sisters.
And your mother.
And your daughters.

And if something isn’t done to change this,

Maybe

**They might end up looking like you.
This is originally supposed to be a spoken word piece. All feedback is welcome.

— The End —