I'm not BABE
or *******
or PRINCESS
I'm not the names you throw at me from your car window
I'm not HONEY
or SWEETIE
or LOOK AT ME WHEN IM TALKING TO YOU *****
Harassment. A 10 letter word with thousands of synonyms
each one like a knife to my skin
each one a scar I can point to and show
"this is where I stopped trusting"
and
"this is when I started running"
Never was I prepared for a life where Im told to be timid
To shrink myself down
To be humble so that men aren't threatened
To never speak my mind and to laugh at everything he says
To always carry my keys in my hand like they are a weapon
To never show my skin and that its my fault if I'm taken advantage of because "boys will be boys"
We live in a world where the female body is fetishized
Where women are seen as "liars" if they wear makeup and "lazy" when they don't
Where girls in school are being removed from class because their tank top straps aren't three fingers wide as if making sure that men are comfortable is more important than an education.
The overarching misogyny that plagues women everyday
That makes them see themselves as the "second class ***" will always be apparent
Unless we make a change.
So no
I will not SMILE
or BE NICE
I will tear
And destroy
And break
And smash
I will fight.

Hello Sam my name is Sam too
How do you do?
Sam means same in Sanskrit which means we are on the same script

Signs signals books music communication everywhere
We are brothers from different mothers
So then why don't we understand each other?

D. Clare

“instructions on how to destroy yourself from the ground up, and vice versa”
i say i think i am a better ghost-- and she says, dont be so cliche
this isnt a fairytale, this isnt Wonderland
, but i was born shoving the barrel of a gun down my throat like it was someone else’s tongue
and after a while they start to taste the same
less like a herald and more like sour lips curling around a sentence over and over “nobody exists anymore
welcome to the Forgotten era--”
swallowing glass just so my throat wont feel so empty
when she kisses me she says shes sorry
when she says my name it sounds like a swearword, like her mouth is too brittle to sound it out right
“instructions on how to build the perfect barricade”, start with enough wood to burn yourself to the ground
start over. start over. start over.
(seventeen crumpled dollars and a neon sign that says WELCOME TO PARADIS, comical in a way that makes a nine year old on a too-small bike start crying)
We Need To Talk / cutting your bangs uneven with a pair of scissors you found in an abandoned building / LACHRYMAL: CONNECTED WITH WEEPING OR TEARS
“instructions on how to change the way your name sounds”
i bleed empty promises,call people in the middle of the night just to say that I’m Fine
(i dont even remember the last time i ****** awake coughing up consonants, trying to
rebuild myself, i swear!)
she says my name right and it’s a tuesday. there are guns on a basement wall twenty miles away
, and it’s raining outside
, and she tells me she likes the way it sounds
(she swallows it whole)

people always name me
label me
for my season
a petty qualm
a minor annoyance
but annoying all the same
hey spring! they yell, like that makes them clever
hello winter, they crow
like I haven't heard it all before
sometimes I just want to scream
my name is Autumn
not winter
not spring
not summer
Autumn

When it starts
To rain,
And rather than complain,
That's when I
Say your name.

When the sky's
Asunder,
And lightning
Joins the thunder,
That's when I
Write your name.

When the storm
Has ended,
And I've finally
Penned it,
That's how I
Sing your praise.

Preludium, or, *what has gone before:
A man makes his way, alone,
Through rocky ash and bluff,
His feet a mass of ****** scabs
His throat gruff with rust.
In his savage thirst he sees, delirious,
The City from whence he flees;
The City that stole his Name.

Furious! O righteous hate;
Bubbling! Consuming! Melding with his haze of pain:
Fickle Justice! Intangible Law! Humble Equity!
Alien words for an alien time
That has quickly descended to muck.

But we must leave this Nameless nomad
To his dark visages, for now.
Perhaps we shall return
To plough his tale and groan
To find him drowned in thirst;
In self-pity, the liquid fire.
For now- to the City, we are bound!
And the mind of one so fortunate, as to still call his Name his own.

Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.

Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.

A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.

And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.

The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.

And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.

I got enough peer and so I had excess
I wail past the busy street
Irritation I cause
My shilling ,caused me the fracus
And now?
I am in jail
..................
Strained and stressed
Lonely and whole
I feel all alone
Tormented by spirits
My head could burst
.....................
The cost of my shilling
Hangovers and tiredness
Vomiting hard and chest pains
Stomach ache and nausea
All,the cost of my shillings
......................
I am in jail
The prison of lone suffering
Serenaded by by the walls of loneliness
I call it the cost of my shilling.

Oh God...
Ya Allah...
Hay Bhagwan...
So many more names to reckon the great soul.
.
.
.
And amidst all these names,
Why is it always, that we keep forgetting whom we call?