on a crisp, clean morning in the fall of 2008,  i was happy.
i walked to class, textbooks in hand.
I could almost feel the earth shifting underneath my combat boots.
I was excited to showcase my new haircut,
reaveal my new and improved self to the world.
I'll never forget when the handsome, bright eyed boy who sat behind me in first period called me a d*ke.

You see, from the very beginning, I was taught that having a ***** made me
just a girl.
Made me just a maid,
just a cook,
just a someday wife and mother,
just a dainty, pink ribbon,
just a punchline,
just an orifice,
this
is an ode to the parts of me
that no soul has ever truly desired to understand.
this is working just as hard as a man.
this is ******* with the lights on,
assuming my position,
stepping away from the kitchen.
this is burning my big girl ******* and going commando, instead.
this is scrubbing his DNA from my body and reclaiming it.

When you exist in a world
where you are instructed to keep your mouth shut,
your strongest desire is to open it,
as wide as a cavern.
Here, where we are told that we
think too much,
feel too much,
love too much,
we long to be enough.
this is being enough.
this is learning to love myself unapologetically.
this is finding comfort in my body,
despite all of the glass shards
i find myself plucking from it.
this is loving myself into
an ******, so heavy,
that it makes me feel
like a *****
is the most profound thing
a person can have.

I cried at the breakfast table this morning
my father carefully explained,
"wives must be submissive to their husbands"
"housecleaning is the domain of the woman"
"God created woman because man asked for a partner"

This past semester I wrote two papers

One, a fire and brimstone sermon
          I quoted Anais Nin
          sending the creators of sexist commercials to eternal suffering
          "**** them!" I said. "May they burn in hell."
          For the women they portrayed were doormats
          Misconceptions
          Monsters

The other, the role of women in the 1920s,
           No longer confined to the kitchen
           they dropped ballots with their new freedom
           they wore short dresses and short tresses
           fingers wrapped around cigs
           they quoted Wilde instead of Alcott
           they danced until their feet hurt
       
I read of Anais Nin's "new woman,"
her partnership, not submission to man,

I craved a room of my own, neigh demanded it
For sheep stayed in the kitchen,
The Woolf had a study.

I read poetry
Sexton,
Plath,
I wept for their starved, depressed selves
caged, suffocating inside the clasped hands of a man.
Loved like rib-cage jails.

Adrienne Rich made me angry,
her daughter-in-law
forever trying to fit into a box
she was always too big for, spilling
at the edges, her shaved
legs like "white mammoth tusks"

I was finally
happy with my womanhood.

******, ******, *****, *******
they are mine.
******* free to move unrestrained,
jiggling under my shirt.
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,
they are mine.

mine.

I am not ashamed of what I am
because there is no shame.

I am woman,
I am girl,
I am lady.
I am a creature
with a voice
a mind.

a creature who endured much abuse,
continue to endure.

I am woman

and I don't have to be wife or mother
unless I want to be.
I was not created for man;
I was created for the same reason he was,
to serve the same great purpose on this tiny blue dot.

I am not rib.

I am ******, ******, *****, *******
******* free, unrestrained,
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,

I am a per.
I am a wo.
I am a hu.

Man and son need to back down,
collaborate not dominate,
speak not command,

for when less are forced into silence,
the maddening scream
hidden inside skin and bones and muscle-meat
becomes song.

this world of car horns and tire screeches
crying and wailing from raw throats
angry protests of indignation

could use a little music.

Orchid pod spreads
gossamer mouth opens
subtle click of saliva,
trace across the paper-thin petal,
tickle across the veins where blood rushes new life,
smooth like wet latex, tongue massages a route around the world,
face buried in field of color
osmopheric scent of cinnamon
apples
nickel
overcomes,
come over me
pour the dew across my lips
drown me in the waves
that make your muscles cry my name,
nine point nine and the world cracks open,
like the ghostly leftover milk bath
of a ******'s first cleansing after loss of maidenhead,
it spills over us.

.i've come the one sober conclusion that concludes all other "necessary" conclusions, drunk. the consumption of alcohol and sunlight should never, ever, mingle; it's just plain silly, bad for the usual mood associated with drinking.

what do you get when you
"conflate"
   a post-existentialism movement
whereby, each, and, every, sentence,
looks, like, this,
   or invokes,
"something" akin to "this"?

      comma contra the ditto /
nuance?

          contra-points
meets buffolo bill
meets lily savage...
meets: whatever marylin mason
critique you have
in that head of yours...

and, yes, the platitude standards
of kant was a feminist,
plato was a feminist,
but now...
   i don't even know who
a feminist ist...

   (on purpose "added" T)...
pose...

       a sunday newspaper article,
reads...
    'sting at ******* lays bare
feminist split over *** work'...
i'm either ******* trans-confused
or just gender-huh?

hell, if we're going to ****
around with language,
numb-skull our experience with /
against it...
           good thing i learned
a few chemistry prefixes...

ortho- probably implies cis-,
trans- could imply meta-
when attached to ***,
but not the benzene ring...

    it's one thing transcending
the geography of Copernicus,
quiet another...
to "revise"...
using these vectors,
akin to the benzene ring,
ortho-, meta-,
oh, right... you forgot the para-,

nice thought,
use chemistry vector coordinates
for binding groups,
they're all here,
meta-, ortho-, para-,
      cis-, trans-,
       it's almost like a new
pantheon for the demigods...

the "metaphysics"
of transgender...
cis-,
  "on the side of",
side of what?
   a cupcake 1 +
     happy-birthday singalong,
or, what?

  well, given that biological
reality did the whole: bye bye
and a queen elizabeth II wave...

    the best part of me,
is not about to make sense of all of this...
i'll leave that to the journal-enlists...
       me, back in a *******
in athens,
unable to tell the difference
between a greek and a libyian...
because you know how
the mediterranean folk like:
smelly sheep herders
greasy, damaging good looks,
and an aura of that:
dangerous brunette...
not anything like us baltic folk...
downing raw herrings
in a piquant mingle of oil
and white vinegar...

      anyhoo...
       giggles exhaust me...
so i did get a chemistry degree
"for something", after all...
         classical chemistry
prefixes, required to draw
electron travel schematics...
mostly associated with
the benzene ring,
if ortho-, meta- and para-
positioning is "in question"...

cis or trans isomers...
**** me, i used to study this...
organic chemistry was
my soft-spot...
       a bit like what
cooking curries later became...
eh... brew some ester...
get a perfume out of it...

        but even at university
level they didn't teach me
how to extract polyethylene...
i guess it was polyethylene...

   like the whole oil rests
above water,
for the love of god i don't remember
what two liquids were involved,
one sat above the other,
and you'd pinch
the "event horizon"...
and pull threads of
the polyethylene from it...
strings of plastic...

          so, this current, philosophy
playing with a chemistry tool-kit
invoked into propaganda berlin /
weimar lone no loan woe?

                        sure, i'd buy it...
but up to a point...
    i'm sniffing around and have
come to the following conclusion...
someone...
is really in dire straits...
wishing that gwanp'ah soviet
came back
to settle the equilibirum...
        this current feeding of
a lost void is...
       not helpful...
       as i see it...
   it will take much more than
a ****** to nanny the riddled
males of the capitalistic
  "under-class"...
   queen bee, isn't going to "cut it"...
if she's no gargantuan
***** black 'ole... is "she"?

      and the whole gender neutral
pronoun, schtick?
   that's only worth so much...
sooner or later...
        "they'll" be gagging
for the guns of navarone...

the current mumbo-jumbo
is... alkenes
to me:  cis-2-butene
                     trans-2-butene...
background noise...
  
ugh... chemistry:
             algebra, for the truly wicked.
     but let's entertain
this kindergarten play talk
for a while longer;
no one wants to see a dangling
poopie suffocated by
a g-string,
                  do we?