The woes of life
we pass them on,
'cause if we can't see them
then the problem is gone.

We shudder when
we hear transgression
but we all watch on
and then take our confession.

Now that we're forgiven
we can carry on
cause if we can't see it
then the problem is gone.

The world we know
could be much better run,
removing the barrier,
deserting the gun.

Renounce all the greed
and announce it out loud.
That up until now
we cannot be proud.

Or we can stand still,
and not move on.
Cause if we pretend
then the problem is gone.

Could we stand together
and perhaps all refuse
to join in with hate
and reject racist views.

This is maybe the only
way that we can move on.
Cause if we all join together
then the problem is gone.

White.
Female.
Middle Class.
Heterosexual.
Agnostic.
Libertarian.

Yeah.
That's me.
That's that first layer,
thin as the paper you could
read it on.
Just a
Jane Doe,
a nameless, faceless
demographic.

But peeling back the layers,
ripping through page on page of a complicated novel,
digging
down
into
a
bottomless
hole
to
China,
unravelling
­the intricate
web of
stereotypestruthsliesassumptionsprejudice
and
there you will find
me,
a colorless genderless asexual
spirit whose frame
is crafted and molded
not with how the world
chooses to see me and
who "they" deem me to be;

no.

A guy that didn't know me well
once told me that I
spoke more urban than he
expected,
and I couldn't help but wonder why
someone from an urban area
couldn't speak like they were
from a city,
like somehow what he saw in my
whitefemaleheterosexualmiddleclassagnosticlibertarian
prolog­ue forbade me
from speaking in colloquials and
abbreviations.
Oh, I apologize,
I laughed later to my friend,
law students are supposed to speak
with an ostentatious vocabulary and
an heir of
(superfluous) arrogance.

I am rarely a prototype
of what it means to be
White,
of what it means to be
female;
middle-class* or not,
my parents insisted at age 8
that I begin to understand
the value of a dollar;
my sexuality indicates little
about my level of attraction
to the world around me;
agnostic is really just a term
I put because I'm still trying to
figure out whether I really
believe everything I was forced to
learn at Catholic school;
and isn't Libertarian just a fancy
word for I don't want to
choose liberal or conservative?

It's insulting to
ingest how much is
insinuated about
my depth in
the shallowest of pools.
My cheeks burn hot
with frustration as I
try to balance on a beam
cracking underneath the weight of
a world that is constantly begging me
to go back in the neatly
wrapped package from which
the world would prefer I
came.

I'm not someone
you can put in a *******
box and
label;
you can't contain my
shine behind
blackout blinds;
I will burst out of your bubble
and break your glass ceilings;
I will scream at the top of
my lungs in a soundproof room
until you HEAR me.

I'm not meant to be judged
by my cover,
and neither are you.

We are meant to be read.

He wipes the moisture from his brow
The colour of a tomato fills his face,
as soon as we heard "GO!" he was gone,
doesn't he know that slow and steady win the race?

I don't run, I just walk slowly
I see my mother in the crowd, telling me to hurry.
Hasn't she realized that I am the Tortoise
and he is the hare.

I know I am right,
it said so in a book
we are racing around a circle
I see him and give a smug look.

For I am clever,
and he is nearing the finish line now.
haha how foolish!
He should've walked like I am,
now he'll have to rest his head in shame,
and just allow me to win this.

For he is the Hare,
but I am the tortoise.
And even the famous book says
"Slow and steady wins the race".

WE are the predators,
WE rip OUR prey to shreds.
WE are on Land,
WE are in Space,
WE are in the Sea.

WE are everywhere,
yet WE are nothing.
WE are small,
WE are weak,
WE are fearful.

WE know compassion,
yet WE do not show it.
WE are kind,
WE are polite,
but WE are cruel.

WE are disloyal to OUR own gift,
WE love to hate and hate to love.
WE are relentless.
WE are greedy.
WE are Human.

I am not a true minority.
I am white woman.
I believe in feminism because that is what I experience.
But what about what I don't experience?
It pains me to have a power and to not know what to do with it.
Race is still an issue.
I hear these words all the time, but do I really hear them?
There are people out there who want to be married and they can't. I sit on my social media and say what should be said.
Sometimes.
Is that enough?
I have the power.
So why am I wasting it?

Enemy of the afraid
Terror of the tame
The privileged have you made
Into killers by name
If dying is your game

Too suspicious, skin too dark
your foreign tongue
Has made its mark

Bomb terror, bomb terror
Empathy to maim
Get your guns, weapon bearer
If dying is your game

Weighing lives against each other
Civil fear, where is your mother

If misused power lent you fame
then dying is your game

Certain men may be pigs, and maybe some feminists take it a bit far,
but when it comes to sexism, I certainly don't think it's restricted to ***;
and when it comes to racism: there's no such thing as race.

Far too many **** Sapiens are just ******* vapid and odious when it comes to their personality, in general. It doesn't matter if the narrative is One's ***, or religion, politics, perceived gender, art, science, the weather or any other elite form of edified philosophy.

I want to believe that everyone has merit-
that they cannot be judged by any external entity
that, because it is external, lacks the whole context.

Still, some people spoil my attitude towards people a bit.

Humans are my favorite counter-example; yet, I love us. Somehow.

Jaded though I may well be,
I seek foremost to be kind, but that makes you a doormat.
One seems to have two choices: be a push-over, or an *******.

I seek the middle path:
empathic and kind, but also self-interested.
..something of a "passive-assertive" person.

Returning to the point:
I'm just an equalist, I guess.
Egalitarian. Individualist.

Sexism? Racism? Nationalism?
Why the **** is it even an issue?

Haven't we grown up at all in the last 10,000 years?

If someone's skin color, chromosomal composition, language, wealth, ethnicity, or where on Earth they happened to be born is that big of an issue to you psychologically and socially, there are much bigger problems going unchecked boiling over within you. The abandoned kettle whistles.
Good luck. Earnestly.
We're all counting on you.

People are people.
Worry about yourself and what and who you love.

When you walk like you have 12 gage shotguns for lungs,
Your very breath is a weapon.

When you walk like you have pistols for hands,
Your very touch is deadly.

We did not ask for such a violent biology.
But we were born in the tide of oppression and forged in discrimination.
We did not ask for this.
This skin is a painting we do not get to wash away.
This story does not end when we wake up.

We live with the audacity to think we belong, knowing.
This was never out fate

I'm sick of hearing about drunken men
Slurring their thoughts out through the tips of their pens
And the history of poetry had been bleached as white
As the parchment on which their poems were printed