you are so enamoured
with the honey on her lips

you don’t realize that mine
taste just as sweet

We really can't recognize happiness as much as we recognize and name pain or sadness.

It's so easy for us to say that we are sad and lonely yet we can't even bring to admit and say that we are happy.

We can describe and picture pain  down to the last detail yet we can't say a single word about bliss.

Why is that?

Trying To Stay Woman

I wouldn’t call it vanity,
More nature of proclivity,
Its natural routine:
We’ll call it femininity.
Showing up one day: testosterone, whisker stiff,
Non-specific, un-terrific.  
Something foreign taking over,
Over which you’ve no control;
Identity’s uncertainty,
The struggle to stay womanly
Without looking transves-*****:
Trying to stay woman.

(original version found 7.22.2016)
I wouldn’t call it vanity
(though Augustine might).
More proclivity’s routine: a femininity.
Who can ignore the whiskers stiff,
Testosterone’s attack,
The fact that something foreign’s taken over,
Over which you’re no control – a Janus head,
Identity an ambiguity.
The struggle to stay woman
Without looking like a transvestite.

Trying To Stay Woman 2.16.2014/10.25.2014/revised7.22.2016
Circling Round Woman II; Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

i look in your eyes
but i don't recognize you
no, not anymore

I looked at you, looking at her and my heart winced.
Everything I had held onto so tightly was slipping away.
The tighter I clung, the more you danced around my fingers…
Just barely out of my grasp.
I would have given you everything, you know.
In fact, I did.
I gave you all of me.
Every last piece.
Every time you broke, I gave you another piece of me to fill your wounds.
Stitching up your pieces and putting you back together again, and again.
You left yesterday.
You left and went to her.
I can’t help but to scold myself.
I knew.
Of course I knew.
How could someone like me ever be loved?
How could someone like me ever be good enough?
Now all I have are gaping wounds and memories of our love.
6 years I loved you.
Now I don’t even recognize myself.
There’s nothing left to recognize."

They said i should not scream.
But, i had to learn now.
"teasing"
"teaching"
Tortured tongues caged in veneer jail bars,
yearning to walk free.
Let the ripe words of my ancestors dance up my throat
and fall,
fall flat into your hands pretending like it's an every day occurrence.

Recycling my words to new ears.
like you said,
you were "teaching"