preliminary explanation

before i really begin the project i have a few scatterings
of thought that made me do this, without real planning,
a different sort of impromptu that poetry's good at,
less Dionysian spur-of-the-moment with an already
completed poem entwined to a perfect ensō,
as quick as the decapitation of Mary Boleyn with the
executioner fooling her which side the swing would
be cast by taking of his hard-soled-shoes -
i mean this in an Apollonian sense - i know, sharp contrasts
at first, but the need to fuse them - i said these are
preliminary explanations, the rest will not be as haphazardly
composed, after all, i see the triangle i'm interested it
but drawing a triangle without Pythagorean explanation
i'm just writing Δ - i'll unravel what my project is
about, just give me this opportunity to blah blah for a
while like someone from an existential novel;
what beckoned me was the dichotomy of styles,
i mean, **** me, you can read poetry while in an awkward
yoga position, you can read it standing up, sitting down,
eating or whatever you want - obviously on the throne
of thrones taking a **** is preferred - the point being
what's called serious literature is so condensed for
economic reasons, font small, never-ending paragraphs,
you need an easy-chair and a bottle of cognac to get
through a chapter sometimes - or at least freshly mowed
grass in a park in summer - it's really uncomfortable because
of that, and the fact that poets hardly wish upon you
to be myopic - just look at the spacing on the page,
constantly refreshing, open-plan condos, eye-to-eye -
but it's not about that... the different styles of writing,
prose and the novel, the historical essay / encyclopedia
or a work of philosophy - what style of writing can
be best evolutionary and undermine each? only poetry.
poetry is a ballerina mandible entity, plastic skeletons,
but that's beside the point, when journalism writes history
so vehemently... the study of history writes it nonchalantly,
it's the truth, journalism is bombastic, sensationalist
every but what courting history involves -
a journalist will write about the death of a 100 people
more vehemently than a historian writing about the Holocaust...
or am i missing something? i never understood this dichotomy
of prose - it's most apparent between journalism and history...
as far as i am concerned, the most pleasurable style of
prose is involved in the history of philosophy, or learning per se,
but i'll now reveal to you the project at hand -
it's a collage... the parameters?

the subject of the collage

it weighs 1614 grams, or 3 lb. and 8 7/8ths oz.,
it's a single volume edition, published by Pimlico,
it's slightly larger than an A5 format,
3/4 inches more in length, and ~1 centimetre in
width more, it has a depth of 1 and 3/4 inches in depth,
a bicep iron-pumping session with it in bed -
i was lying with this behemoth of a book
in bed soothing out a semi-delirium state
listening to Ola Gjeilo's *northern lights
and flicking through the appendix, and i started thinking,
no would read this giant fully, would they?
the reason it's a one volume edition is because
the only place you'd read such an edition would
be in a library, at a desk, and you'd be taking snippets
out from it, quotes, authentic references points
for an essay, esp. if you were a history student,
such books aren't exactly built for leisure, as my arms
could testify... after the appendix i started flicking
through as to what point of interest would spur me
onto this audacious (and perhaps auspicious)
act of renegading against writing a novel (in the moment,
in the moment, i can't imagine myself rereading plot-lines
after a day or two, adding to it - that's a collage too,
but of a different kind - and no, i won't be plagiarising
as such, after all i'll be citing parallel, but utilising
poetry as the driving revision dynamic compared
to the chronologically stale prose of history) - i'll be
extracting key points that are already referenced and not
using the style of the author - the book in question?
Europe: a history by Norman Davies prof. emeritus
at U.C.L. - the point of entry that made me mad enough
to condense this 1335 page book (excluding the index)?

point of incision

Voltaire (or the man suspected of Guy Fawkes-likes spreading
of volatility in others) -
un polonais - c'est un charmeur; deux polonais - une
bagarre; trois polonais, eh bien, c'est la question polonaise
(one pole - a charmer, two poles - a brawl, three poles -
the polish question) - mind you, the subtler and gentler
precursor of the Jewish question, because the Frenchman
mused, and not a German, or a Russian brute...
and i can testify, two Polish immigrants in a pub,
one senior, the other minor, one with 22 years under
his belt of the integration purpose, one with 12 years,
the minor says to the senior about how Poles bring
the village life to cities, brutish drunkards and what not,
it was almost a brawl, prior to the senior was charming
a Lithuanian girl, before the minor's emphasis on
such a choice of conversation turned into idiotic Lithuanian
nostalgia about the disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth, primarily due to the Polish nobility.

10,000 b.c.

looking that far back i don't know why you even
bother to celebrate the weekend -
i mean, 10,000 years back Denmark was
still attached to Sweden,
England was attached to France,
and there was a weird looking Aquatic landmass
that would become a myth of Atlantis
in the Chronicles of Norwich,
speedy ******* Gonzales with the equivalent
of south america detaching itself from Africa...
mind you, i'm sure the Carpathian ranges are
mountains. they're noted here are hills or uplands,
by categorising them as such i'm surprised
the majority of Carpathian elevations as scolded
bald rocky faced, a hill i imagine to have some
vegetation on it, not mountain goats with rock and roof
for a blacksmith in a population of one hundred...
at this point Darwinism really becomes a disorientating
pinpoint of whatever history takes your fancy,
Europe - mother of Minos, lord of Crete,
progenitrix / ******* and the leather curtains
of Zeus's harem (jealous? no, just the sarcasm
dominates the immortal museum of attachable
****** to suit the perfect elephant **** of depth
the gods sided with, by choice, excusing the Suez
duct tightening of a prostate gland... to ease the pain
upon ******* rather than *******); mentioned by Homer
the Blind tooth-fairy, the Europe and the bull,
Europoeus and the swan, same father of wisdom to mind,
on the shores of Loch Lomond -
attributes a lover to the bull, Moschus of Syracuse,
who said earring Plato cured him of where the ****
should not enter even if it shines a welcome
in the disguise of Dionysius... revisionists bound to Pompeii
named Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens Veronese
and Claude Lorrain revived the bulging bull's *******
and her mm hmm mm, too gracious my kind, hehee...
Phonecians from Tyre and Io - so too the Sibyl of ****** -
and unlike the great river civilisations of the Nile,
the Ganges, soon to be the Danubian civilisations
and gorged-out-eyes-that-once-sore-colour-but-lost-sight-of-
colours-­after-seeing-the-murk-of-the-Thames...
soon the seas overcame civilisations of the rivers,
as Cadmus, brother of the thus stated harlot said:
i bring you orbe pererrato - hieroglyphics of the cage,
but not an owl or a hawk inside it -
so let's perfect speaking to an encoding by first
rummaging into learning how to procure the perfect
forms of counting - i say left, you say I, i say right
you say II, left right left right, what do you say?
VI. bravo! the Hellenic world just crossed the Aegean
and civilisation bore twins within the cult of a lunar-mother,
Islam of Romulus and Remus, a she-wolf
a canine of the night - according to another -
tremulae sinuantur flamine vestes - or so the myth goes -
a cherished phantom of what became the fabled story
of sole Odysseus with his ears open and the remnant
sailor's ears waxed shut - as if the bankers of this world,
revelling in culprit universal fancy than nonetheless
bred the particular oddities - lest we forget,
the once bountiful call of the sirens to the oceanic
is but a fraction of what today's sirens claim to be song,
a fraction of it remains in this world, the onomatopoeia
of the once maddening song, the crude *******
arrangement of vowels bound to the jealous god's
déjà vu of the compounding second H.

from myth to perpetuating a modern sentiment

you can jump from 10,000 b.c. to the Munich Crisis
of 1938 - 9 with a snap of the fingers,
imitating quantum phenomenons like gesticulating
a game of mime with Chinese whispers necessary,
if Europe is a nymph, Naples her azure eyes,
Warsaw her heart, Sebastopol and Azoff,
Petersburg, Mitau, Odessa - these the thorns
in her feet - Paris the head, London the starched collar,
and Rome - the sepulchre.
or... die handbuch der europaischen geschichte
notably from Charlemagne (the Illiterate)
to the Greek colonels (as apart from Constantine to
Thomas More in eight volumes, via Cambridge mid
1930s)... these and some other books of urgency
e.g. Eugene Weber's H. A. L. Fisher's, Sr. Walter Ralegh,
Jacob Bronowski... elsewhere excavated noun-obscurities
like gattopardo and konarmya had their
circas extended like shelved vegetables in modern
supermarket isles, for one reason or another...
prado, sonata sovkino also... some also mention
Thomas Carlyle (i'd make it sound like carried-away isle,
but never mind); so in this intro much theory,
how to sound politically correct, verifiable to suit
a coercion for a status quo... Europe as a modern idea,
replacing Imperum Romanun came Christendom,
ugly Venetian Pirates at Constantinople,
Barbarossa making it in pickled herring juice
in a barrel to Jerusalem... once called the pinkish-***-fluff
of Saxony, now called the pickled cucumber,
drowning in his armour in some river or Brosphorus...
alchemists, Luther and Copernicus were invited on
the same occasion as the bow-tie was invented,
apparently it was a marriage made for the Noir cinema,
beats me - hence the new concept of Europe,
reviving the idea of Imperium Romanun
meant, somehow including Judea in the Euro
championship of footie gladiator ***** whipped
narcissists, rejecting the already banished Carthage
(Libya / Tunisia by Cato's standards) and encouraging
the Huns, the Goths and the even more distant Slavs and
Vikings to accept not so much the crucifix as
the revised spine of the serpent but as the geometry of
human limbs, well, not so much that, but forgetting
Norse myths of the one-eyed and the runic alphabet
and settling for ah be'h c'eh d'ah.
dissident frenche stink abbe, charles castel de st pierre
(1658 - 1743) aand this work projet d'une paix perpetuelle
(1713) versus Питер Великий who just said:
never mind the city, the Winter Palace... i have aborted
fetus pickles in my bedroom, lava lamps i call them.
the last remaining reference to Christianity?
Nietzsche was late, the public was certain,
it was the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, with public reference
to the republica christiana / commonwealth was last made.
to Edmund Burke: well, i too wish no exile
upon any European on his continent of birth,
but invigorate a Muslim to give birth on it
and you invigorate an exile nonetheless:
Ezra expatriate Pound / sorry, if born in eastern
europe a ***** Romanian immigrant, pristine
expatriate in western Europe, fascist radio has
my tongue and *****, so let's play a game:
Russian roulette for the Chinese cos there's
a billion of them, and no one would really mind
a missing Chow Mein... chu shoo'ah shaolin moo'n'kah!
or a cappuccino whenever you'd like to watch
classic Italian pornographic cinema with dubbing
with nuns involved... Willaim Blake and his
stark naked prophesy, pope pius II (treatise 1458)
even though Transylvania, Tharce and Hungary
shared the same phonetic encoding with diacritical
distinctions like any Frenchman, German,
or Pole at the Siege of Vienna (1683)
to counter the antagonising Ottoman - i swear historians
do this one purpose, juggle dates and head-of-state figures
prior to entering a chronology - they must first try out
a ******* carousel before playing with the toy-train...
broadcasting to a defeated Germany public, T. S. Eliot
(1945) ****** import to into Western Germany
and talk of the failing moral fabric, China laughing
after the ***** intricacies of warfare of trade,
what was once wool we wished to be silk...
instead of silk we received vegetarian wool, namely
hemp, and Amsterdam is to blame... nuke 'em!
that's how it sounds, how a historian approaches
writing a history from the annals, from circa and
circumstance and actual history, foremost the abbreviations,
the fishing hook standards, the parameters,
the limits, and then the mathematics of history,
one thing culminating into another... contra Lenin
N. S. Trubetskoy, P. N. Savitsky, G. Vernadsky
Russian at the perks of the Urals - steppe Tartar shamans
or salon pranced pretty **** boys? where to put
the intoxicant and where to put the mascara... hmm,
god knows, or by 21st calculations, a meteor;
they say the history of nations is a history of women,
then at least the history of individuation
and of men who succumb to its proliferation
is astoundingly misogynistic.
Seton-Watson, among the the tombstones too reminded
of remarkable esteem and accomplishment
with only one gravedigger to claim as father...
as many death ears as on two giraffe skeletons
stood Guizot, men of many letter and few fortunes,
or v. v., incubators of cousin ***** and none the kippah
before the arrogant saintly diminished to
a justly cause of recession, ha ha,
by nature's grace, and with true advent of her progression
as guard-worthy pre- to each pro-
and suggested courteous of the ****** fibre,
oh hey, the advent of masqueraded woofing,
a Venetian high-brow, and jealousy out of a forgotten
spirit of adventure that once was bound
to hunting and foraging... forever lost to write  history of
a king dubbed Louis the XIV...
crucibles and distastes for the state to be pleased,
once removed from Paris, forever to Angevin womb
accustomed once more, at Versailles released -
as cake be sown so too the aristocratic swan necks
for worth of mock and scorn - and the dampening rain
rattle the blood-thirst of the St. Bartholomew's Day
slaughter, to date, the rebirth of Burgundy,
of Anjou, and with the dead king presiding, to be
of no worth in judging himself a king before god or pauper...
saluer Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville!
that i might too in stead rattle a few bones prior to burial
with the jaw that will laugh and chatter least
had it been to my kingly-stead a birth so lowly.
then at least in satisfactory temperament i procure a
judgement of the noble like of a *****
for an hour's worth of pistons and jarring tongues...
as if from a nobleman then indeed as if from a *****,
for who sold Europe and said: Arabia, if not the
Frenchman, the Englishman, the Spaniard?
the former colonial conquests served you not enough?
i imagine the reinstatement of Israel like
the Frankish states under Philippe-August...
precursors to a cathedral dubbed Urban the 2nd's..
there were only Norwegian motives in the Ukraine
and the black sea... Israel to me is like plagiarism
of the Frankish states of the middle-east, with Europe
slightly... oom'pah loom'pah mongolian harmonica.
some said Rudyard Kipling poems,
some said Mr. Kipling's afternoon tea cakes -
whichever made it first on Coronation St.
some also say the Teutonic barbecues -
it was a matter of example to feed them hog
and cannibalise the peasants for ourselves,
a Prussian standard worth an army standard of
rigour - Ave Maria - letztre abendessen nahrung -
mein besitzen, wenn in die Aden, i'd be the last
talking carcass...
gottes ist der orient!
gottes ist der okzident!
nord - und sudliches gelande
ruht im frieden seiner hande.
germany's lebensraum, inferiority and classification,
inferior slavs and jews, genetics and why my
hatred of Darwinism is persistent, you need
an explanatory noting to make it auto-suggestive
for Queen & Country? diseased elements,
Jewish Bolshevism, Polish patriotism,
Soviets, Teutons, the grand alliances of 1918
or 1945? Wilsonian testimony of national self-determi

It took me years to realize it wasn’t just me, and that the labels for women are created by men’s "standards". I wasn’t a ****. But what does that even mean? Men use “equality” to manipulate women with their standard: its fun to experiment at the time, but the girl will always be remembered as "the girl who did that," in hometown suburbia. Who’s going to end up with a woman they did nasty things to? In traditional marriages, no one wants that kind of wife. In today’s corrupt society, no one wants to know their wife was raunchy and experimental.

But what about the girls who are like that? Can’t you imagine moving away? Moving away from mistakes and stigmas and just start over? The hypocrisy and judgment against experimental women and gay men is still happening today with the "man’s" standards—the holy, good-natured man’s standards. Why are there gender roles? Why are women a minority, the curious exploring people we are? Why deny humanity for power? But humans do it to animals too! So it’s not just among gender, it’s among species! On this earth we should live with animals, but we **** and eat them for power. They **** and eat each other too, but as the knowledgeable species we are, we should respect them for there is a reason we share this earth.

But the hostility with having power is what it is to be a man. That’s how it’s been all along. And in the world men aren’t the majority, so why are they STILL treated like one? THEY are the actual minority, but they still have power! Because of religion! Straight men—who wrote the religious texts— dismissed everyone else! Slavery has been around forever! Also think monarchy and royalty—among humans we’re equal, but the power of civilization and class status and material and monetary value goes against nature. Because religious texts prove how religion started the world. These religious ideas created by certain men of misogynistic, violent, racist, homophobic creatures manipulated! Why aren’t women respected in the holy books? BECAUSE MEN WROTE THEM! And that’s why *** is reserved for marriage in religion, because inadequacies and insecurities branch off of ****** experience and the uncertain nature of what comes with exploring various lovers. It’s complicated for everybody, but men like control because they are the ultimate pessimists.

And religion has its perks by providing the one answer throughout history: "why do we exist," but it’s completely sexist! And within the misogyny formed by the different cultures of various religious men, of an evolving species, they realized manipulation could cause them power. And feminism takes away from the religion! Women are optimists, but they’re impressionable by burdens! Civil rights and democracy and spreading-the-wealth for all humankind help! But money creates problems—including environmental—on and for our earth! But why is it sexist? Because throughout the world these particular different societies created by ignorant men are still letting this happen!

And with this power, they still control women! Equality for humankind starts with feminist movements! And when it comes to sexuality, whether gay or straight, what’s the big deal? Society! Because why are so many homosexuals punished, and why are so many cultures sub missing women? Why does **** and molestation still happen? There is no greater form of disrespect towards another person! But making a consequential decision to have ***, with anyone excluding a “good man,” as according to that society, most-likely founded by a group of men its wrong? Profits don’t exist, because no single person can understand what it is that created the universe.

And hetero-****** *** isn’t supposed to be nice, because it’s aggression towards the other gender and the determination of who won the battle: the gender of child. And that could be why psychology suggests that there is an under-lying ****** nature for fathers and daughters and mothers and sons. And there is: gender aggression. But the gender that actually creates the child is the woman, and knowing this, men have made us submissive because although they’re bigger in size and aggressive, women would be the dominant side. The curiosity of the female reproduction has been a subject of fear throughout the millennia.

Bisexuals who don’t pro-create, however, usually resent straight men unless their having attractions toward them. The philosophical possibilities of experimenting with everyone to know everything is frowned upon by on all governments founded by white men. Wars have been created and people have been slaughtered! There can be peace on earth! But everyone needs to unite and eliminate prejudices and stigmas and live as people naturally, and sexually. There is balance in this universe and "living organisms" are true examples.

Women and men reproduce, to create another part of a balance. The universe, however, is impossible to ever completely understand, and the possibility of understanding it is an idealistic facade. We don’t know why women and men balance out the way they do (with an occasional mutation among humankind), but it balances with the universe. But sexuality is the purpose and the weapon, the heaven and the hell, the good and the bad and the euphoria of possibility. It’s denied in society with a civilization where one certain type of group can be the best and create power. And this balance is the key to all knowledge achieved by biology to "attract to reproduce"/"win wars". That kind of war is not in our power as humankind.

Men are a species and women are a species. To be human is to be an element of the evolving universe. Homosexuality usually isn’t a threat because it provides understanding, but in this world ruled by men, it isn’t! To compare humankind to a basic principle of the universe, the atom, a woman is a proton and a man is an electron. "Mutations" are neutrons. The man has the negative, aggressive nature and women are usually kind-minded and nurturing. But in a society where sexuality defines women, women are up against each other.

People are an element in the universe, and we reproduce due to gender aggression, or realistically, physics. We’re recycled stardust, after all. The point of this hypothesis is to provide an ideal for Utopia, where everyone is bisexual, but men and women are forever reproducing. Everyone is "wild" but wise and having *** to pro-create and understand our kind. We are evolutionary atoms. And love is two very powerful charges reacting strongly in a sequence. That’s what the universe does, it expands and creates.

The products of Earth—topography, geology, history, anatomy, biology, philosophy, physics, chemistry, oceanography, zoology and psychology–expand and create as well. Maybe there is a Great Creator, but it’s not comparable to the negativity created in the religions dominating societies.  It’s essentially what created the entire universe, not just what’s on earth, and not just humans. Humans, animals, plants, weather, planets and stars are all recyclables. We on earth are equally products of the universe, and after we die we’ll become something else. But religion, humanity and science aside, something made this universe. Something made our life and ability to think with secrets and balance, and whatever it is, it’s a ******* creative.

Being a girl in my day and age,
you get used to all the horn honks,
the wolf whistles,
and the "hey baby's",
and the guys saying "you're too pretty not to smile",
as though not having a smile on my face at all times is a sin.
But why should I smile when harassment becomes normal,
when a girl can't report it because even the police thinks she should be flattered,
but why should I be flattered that a guy wants to see up my dress so much that he 'accidentally' pushes it up,
why should I be flattered when a guy can't even use words so he whistles at me like I'm a dog.
But I am not a *****,
I cannot be won over by a whistle and sweet words,
no scratch behind my ears in the form of some misogynistic pick up line,
will give you a chance.
And if I laugh at your poor attempt,
it is not consent,
just because my lips curl into a smile,
does not mean you can come curl up with me.
My self worth does not exist on how fuckable I am in your perverted eyes,
it is not existent on if you want to 'hit that',
if you were to hit anything it should be your mindset that that is okay,
right out of your head.
Because I am not an object for your pleasure,
and I object to you treating me like I am.
I AM!
I AM!
I AM!
A WOMAN!
Built from all the things a man could never be.
And don't you ever ******* forget it.

Bunga Bunga everywhere,

a powerful man with silly hair
seduced a girl too young and scared,
was married too but didn’t care.
Corrupt and feared!

Bunga Bunga sounds like fun,

a swimming pool and saucy sun,
an Egyptian that was on the run
Or, under-aged Morocun
Who ****** the boss!

Bunga Bunga ***** and *****,

coffles of women to choose
and buy and grab and ride and use,
with confidence
and so much to lose,
but why didn’t he lose?

Why didn’t he lose when it was on the news
and hundreds of thousands of people accused  
him of scandal and incompetence?
He never revealed his conscience
or any remorse for play boy antics
so far removed from his pedantic
stereotype as a political leader,
more like a ****** wheeler dealer,
pervy old ***** geezer,
over cologned,
greasy,
heavy breather;
machinating falsifier;
misogynistic *******.

He prized a Ruby above the rest.
Bunga bunga, what a pest...
she leaked his private fetish fest;
poor Silvio, he tried his best
to hide the bribes and bets
and ****** and drugs and threats
but never could care
what was right and
what was fair.
Could only care
about the colour of his
**** hair.

"you really are beautiful,
in your own kind of way",
he says
     as he spits through his teeth

in what way is that,
i wonder?

in a way that can't be crammed into a size five dress?
in a way that isn't actually aesthetically appealing?
in a way that's too intelligent to find your misogynistic outburst colored flattery?

he pushes the wire-like hair away from my face
and wipes an angry tear from my freckled cheek
     "see, all you have to do is try."

oh, boy
try
yeah,
     that's what i'll do
so i can catch another in a long line of "men" who think i COULD be beautiful

as if beauty is only one color
     one size
     one shape
as if it can truly be measured with a bathroom scale and a hand-held mirror
and can be purchased at a costly brand-name outlet in a shopping mall near you

my mother's mother has an affinity for referring to my twenty-three extra pounds
in a way that one refers to the neighbor's busted-down ford that needs towed away
"oh, catrina, you really could be so gorgeous,
     if you'd just get rid of some of your fluff."

she pinches at my sides
     and the backs of my arms
     and the little curve at the tops of my thighs
          just below my ***
like i'm an over-stuffed pillow on her antique love-seat
that's about to burst at the seems
     should the seemstress not pull out the threads with her teeth
and remove the unsightly over-fill like black-heads from a slender nose

everything she buys me comes from a plus sized store
     and wears a fat filthy double XL on it's tag

considering that i factually only need a large
i fight back my plump tears and wear a cheap smile
as i give thanks i don't mean
and kiss her on her heavily perfumed cheek
     "oh, such lovely lips
     why not a splash of lipstick?"

as soon as i'm out of her home state
i take the clothes back to the "big-girl" store
and trade them in for pizza and beer money

the girl behind the counter ironically weighs ninety-two pounds soaking wet
and that's only if she's still got on her padded bra
     slender
     starved
     sickly
     and supposedly ****
since when were curves a curse?
and who the **** decided it was a good idea to pattent worth with a lipstick shade, anyway?

no
     no way

i am beautiful without having to paint myself that way
my existence is not defined by the shape i take
my flaws and imperfections can't be remidied with any myriad of poking and plucking
     nipping and tucking
and all of my greatness and wonder sure as **** outweigh a tiny bleach-blonde *****

oh
*******
     and that pretty little pony you rode in on

i refuse to be pressed against a rubric and graded like a show-dog whose owner will only settle for best-in-show
     and kicks his failure of a companion sharply in the ribs when he doesn't bring home another ribbon

this obsession of society's is making us sick
  
we don't teach our children compassion and empathy
     we instead instill their heads with talk of thread count
     and color schemes
     how to brush on blush
     and how to pick a suit
cute won't save the world

i beg you sisters
     please
let us not give this disease to our daughters
let us not allow our sons to carry the gene

together
     let's put to rest the ill-concieved notion of our beauty residing without us
          rather than within

let us never again bow down to the revlon gods of vanity

together
we are Woman
     and we deserve to finally soar

1611: Emilia Lanier became the first Englishwoman to publish and collect patronage from her original poetry with the publication of fifteen poems, all about or dedicated to particular women, in her “booke,” titled in Latin, Hail, God, King of the Jews.  She was the fourth woman in England to publish her poetry, but the first to demand payment in return for it.  The first to see herself as equal to the paid male authors of the era.

This was the same year that the King James Bible was first printed.  This was eight years after the death of Queen Elizabeth I.  This was 180 years after nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

                                                               ­      +

The Querelle des Femmes is “the woman question.”
Frenchmen of the early fifteenth century created a literary debate: what is the role and the nature of women?  Is it stemmed within a “classical” model of  human behavior; gnarled and rooted with misogynistic platonic tradition?  Should women actually be allowed into politics, economics, and religion?  There are scholars that say this debate radiated across several European countries for three centuries before finally fizzling out.  

                                                         ­                   But it is still there; has crossed
continents, has crossed oceans, is sizzling, sparking up fires, flaring out
into the night, leeching onto the trees, onto buildings, onto people, onto
anything flammable.  It is burning down monarchs and their thrones.  It is
raking back the blazing coals.  
                                                   Exposing the charred corpses.  
                 Proving their death.  
                                                   Burning and burning and burning them
                                              twice more to prevent the collection of relics.
                 It is chucking the ashes into the Seine River.

Lilith: who was made at the same time, at the same place, from the same earth, from the same soil as Adam, got herself written out of the Bible because she thought herself to be Man’s equal. Because she got bored of the *******.  Because she wanted to be on top during ***.  Lilith was replaced in the book of Genesis with a more-or-less subservient woman that was made from the rib of man instead of the same dirt and dust.  She was replaced with a woman that Adam named “Eve.”  She was replaced with a woman who served as nothing more than the scapegoat for Man’s downfall.
                                       The original Querelle des Femmes.

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1558-1603: Queen Elizabeth I ruled England in what is considered to be a masculine position. Although a woman can take the throne, can wear the crown, can wield the scepter, can run the country, the actual divine task that goes along with being a part of the monarchy, being a god on Earth, is thought to be the duty of a man.

Nicknamed The ****** Queen, Elizabeth never married,
                                                     never found a proper suitor,
                                             never produced a direct Tudor heir,
                                   (but this is not to prove that she was a ******).  
Chastity, especially of women, is a virtue.  ((To assume that she never had ***
simply because she never married
                                                                ­ is another Querelle des Femmes.))

For nearly forty-five years, Queen Elizabeth I did not need a man by her side while she lead England to both relative stability and prosperity; did not need a man by her side while she became the greatest monarch in English history.  
                                                She held the rainbow, the bridge to God, in her
                                                                ­                     own small hands just fine.

                                                          ­           +

Saturday, February 24, 1431: Joan of Arc was interrogated for the third time in her fifteen-part trial in front of Bishop Cauchon and 62 Assessors.  During her six interrogation sessions, she was questioned over charges ranging from heresy to witchcraft to cross-dressing.

At age twelve Joan of Arc began seeing heavenly visions
                                                                ­               of angels and saints and martyrs;
age thirteen she began hearing the Voice of God—was told to
purify France of the English,                          to make Charles the rightful king—
age sixteen she took a vow of chastity as a part of her divine mission.  

When the court asked about the face and eyes
that belonged to the Voice, she responded:
                                                      ­                      There is a saying among children, that
                                                         “Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth.”

Joan of Arc was declared guilty and was killed by the orders of a Bishop during a time when men were beginning to question the role and nature of women in society.  They thought women to be deceitful and immoral.  Innately thought Joan of Arc to be deceitful and immoral.  (Perhaps she was one of the catalysts for the Querelle in the first place.)

((The church blamed Eve for the
fall of mankind.  Identified women as
                                                                     temptation:
                                                               the root of all sins.))

Twenty-five years later she was declared innocent and raised to the level of martyrdom.
The Catholic Church stood back,
saw the blood,
                          the ashes,
                                            the thick smoke and stench of burned body that
                                                                ­               covered their hands, their clothes,
                                                                ­                    their neurons, their synapses;
        a filth that couldn’t be washed off by Holy water—
can’t be washed off by Holy water.

Four hundred and seventy-eight years later Joan of Arc was blessed and gained entrance to Heaven.  Four hundred and eighty-nine years later she was canonized as a saint.

                                                         ­            +

Lines 777-780, “Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women,” Emilia Lanier, 1611:
                         But surely Adam can not be excused,
                         Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame;
                         What Weakness offered, Strength might have refused,
                         Being Lord of all, the greater was his shame…

Adam, distraught and angered that his first wife, Lilith, had flew off into the air after he had refused to lay beneath her, begged God to bring her back.  God, taking pity on his beloved, manly, creation, sent down three angels who threatened Lilith that if she did not return to Adam, one hundred of her sons would die each day.  

                              (This is where the mother of all Jewish demons
                                         merges with the first wife of Man.)  

She refused, said that this was her purpose: she was
created specifically to harm newborn children.  This legend,
dated back to 3,500 BC Babylonia, describes Lilith as a
                                                                       winged feminine demon that
                                                     kills infants and endangers women in childbirth.

In the Christian Middle Ages, Lilith changed form once more:
she became the personification of licentiousness and lust,
she became more than a demon, she became a sin in herself.  Lilith
and her offspring were seen as succubae, were to blame for the
wet dreams of men.  Taking it a step further, Christian leaders then
                                                                ­                           wed Lilith to Satan;
                                                                ­                              charged her with
                                                                ­               populating the world with evil,
                                                   claimed she gave birth to
one hundred demonic children per day.

Lilith is considered evil in the eyes of the church because she was insubordinate to Adam.  Both she and Eve are considered disobedient; are too willful, too independent in the way that Lilith wanted to be on top and Eve wanted to share a knowledge that Adam could have refused.  They are perceived as a threat to the divinely ordered happenings that men see to be true.

Men wrote the history books because only their interpretation was right.  
Emilia Lanier writes:
                                       Yet Men will boast of Knowledge, which he took
                                           From Eve's fair hand, as from a learned Book (807-808).

The Querelle des Femmes is not just a literary debate in the fifteenth century.  It is a way of life.  It is the divine portion of Queen Elizabeth I’s job being fit for men, and men alone.  It is Joan of Arc being a woman and hearing the Voice of God; it is Joan of Arc being burned three times by the same Catholics that revered in Jesus, a man who, too, heard the Voice of God.  It is Lilith being deemed a demon for not wanting to have *** in the *******.  It is Eve having to apologize in the first place for sharing the apple, for sharing knowledge with her partner.  It is women holding positions of power and yet still feeling powerless to men.  

The Querelle des Femmes is wanting to use gender
to keep one group of people above another.  The Querelle des Femmes
is continually thinking that the ***** is greater than, but
never equal to, the ******. The Querelle des Femmes is
                                                       not understanding the difference between
                                                                ­       ***          and          gender
                                                                ­              in the first place.  
The Querelle des Femmes is me,
burning your dinner and telling you to eat it anyway.

This is for the outspoken racists
The short-sighted chauvinists
The one-sided misogynists
And every avid supporter of any form of intolerance

I think it's time I give you a piece of my mind
Allow me to crack through my cranium and you can
Extract whichever lobe of my brain you find suitable to fix your mental feebleness

Take my frontal lobe, I beg you because
Your so called conscientious thoughts
Permanently belong in the dumpster
Your brain flies confederate flags at half mast
As a constant reminder that even if
The South doesn't rise again you can still rest
Knowing you wave ignorance blissfully in the air

Or maybe you should have my parietal lobe
Since your manipulation of information is highly suspect
I suspect you've placed bigotry and hostility under solid ground
Equipped with enough racial slurs and misogynistic remarks
To blow up this whole town
Homegrown nouns and verbs conducting your own personal weapon of mass destruction
Corrupting the ears that welcome your mushroom clouds

Then again, your occipital lobe is out of whack too
Considering whether gray clouds paint the sky or
Royal waves reflect golden rays
All you ever see is black or white, gay or straight
Wrong or right, hate and hate
And I hate to break it to you
But you are blind to the beauty before us all
Your eyes fail to focus in on how we all
Lose scarlet plasma to paper cuts
Gain white hair and hardened scars
And share copper casket homes six feet deep

I almost forgot about your temporal lobe
That needs an entirely new design
Because it seems as though through all of this outrage
You can't process the filth in your mind
Like the smell of your own rotten attitude
Escapes your nostrils and pollutes the openness around you
Preventing any genuine intention the air it needs to breathe

Your entire brain is a train wreck
You need professional intellectual injections
Red pen corrections that can transform your neural network
Into a well-oiled machine fueled by tolerance
Overflowing with premium petroleum enhanced with high grade sensitivity to diversity

I want your synapses to fire positive discussions
Rather than recreate cerebric tyranny
I want your gray matter to mind its manners
To render exceptional positions
So your point of view refuses to point fingers
I want your prejudices pressure washed so far down
Your head's highway that they resort to becoming full-time pedestrians
I want your ability to communicate eliminated unless
You annihilate the venom from your vocabulary

But the choice is yours
You're voice is yours
And I won't take it from you
This is not a debate nor a dispute over your vernacular
Hate speech is undeniably your native language
And unfortunately you own the right to be as wrong as your words allow you to be
Instead this is merely a message that I hear your hostility
A not so subtle reminder that your narrow-mindedness is nauseating
And this society has enough deadly diseases to deal with
To drill your acceptance defect straight through your skull
But please feel free to take any part of my mind
And find the time to perform your own lobotomy
So maybe then you'll understand
That intolerance has no place in anyone's anatomy

I want crazy, I want cranky
Let me be that old woman who gets mad easily
Let this misogynistic society grow so great it will never be over oh no
Crush me, objectify me
Romanticize the way I dehumanize myself
Discriminate me
I am the stigmas, don't free them from me
I will drink your *** and be happy
Break me, let me crumble
I am a lump of inedible meat
Make a bet on my rushing blood
Don't lose, don't lose oh you will win for sure
Just say it and ***** on my mouth
Don't let me have worth without you
I am lesser than a slave, don't let me stare at your eyes
Play with my broken bones, cut my veins as you please
Make me beg, step on me
I am watermarked and it says your name
And yes this heart beats for you to stop
It can start again if you say so
You are the God, just do everything you want, just do everything you want
I can't not take it
I am inanimate
I am inanimate
I am inanimate