We danced, the cognate vessels
Nested in walls &
Cowered in blood

We buried love deep into
Beating flesh &
Writhed In Utero

We emptied veins of reason
Laid in torment &
Seceded in white gowns

We--Empiric experiments
We--Deficient devices
We--Thrashing threadbare

We--Womb
We--Woman

--
c

My mum tells me to be careful as I close the front door
Every footstep the tick of a bomb about to go off
And I know that she will worry until she hears me return
That maybe this time I wasn’t careful enough
But I know Careful
Careful is a woman who walks in our skin when the door shuts behind us
Faceless and watchful
With keys jammed between each finger
And her honey voice is flowing through a perpetual conversation with the home screen of her phone
Her gait wide and her hood up,
hair down but tucked away
She never looks up
only shifts her eyes from left to right on a pendulum trajectory determined to read the cadence of the shadows
Like they are palms or tea leaves or a CCTV in operation sign on the front of a shop window
On the walk home
She is always moving
A waterfall rushing down the steepest drop to get back home with all her foundations in tact
Careful is always waiting for the other shoe to fall
She is texting texting texting details of her plans
Where she has been
where she is going
what is the license of the taxi she is in
Are the doors locked as soon as she shuts them?
How salty is too salty for a margarita or a tequila or a glass of water
Can anyone vouch for the milliseconds that her drink was out of her sight?
She has a  pair of earphones attached to nothing jutting from her ears
and her key clawed hands wrapped tightly around a can of pepper spray
And her car is parked right outside the building
Careful is always a woman living in a war zone
where the enemies can be the ones that she has trusted most
Or strangers that cast long shadows
She is a landmine that is always in danger of being stepped on
She is made into a three star salad that the jury reject because she was underdressed
Overexposed like the photos that Careful should never have sent
Because even she knows that she cannot exist
A woman is always careful
But never careful enough.

I over heard a man say,
In all tone tailored misogyny.

"Women only write to gain sympathy;
trauma is the only word that they know to write in their tear stained diary's.
And the only "gentle-man"
kind enough to wash their emotions down,
chasing fire with gasoline.
Secretly wished he drank his filtered water silently..."

In all the heights of talks at the bar.
Shots being set off
like battles to march.
Blitzkreig novelty in subtle exchanged gazes.
Awkward waives of air strikes,
cued me to infiltrate with a statement.

If we could rewind back a bit:
Manson.
Corso.
Frost.
Shelley.

We as men,

we got paper in that social economy.

We've cornered the market with deep pockets,
and I'm personally buying up property.
if you have any trauma on this street
all the way to the corner of Fuckitall and defeat,
your words pay indulgences
to my agony.

We as men sank the dollar down with women walking away thinking we are just crazy.

We convinced ourselves we are rich and strong...
we are rich and strong...
...rich with strong anxiety.

Too bad an ego doesn't have a mirror to flex in proudly.

When things start looking good,
We question everything-
until we ruin the quality.
We wish we could start
handing out apologies
that could clean ourselves off
of guilt and second guessing
while we simultaneously
call out to every hot body we see.

That isn't boys being boys, that's mania.
We beg for a monetary insanity.
We pay for Electro lobotomies
And we take it like a man!

Like a homeless man...
shaking his can empty,
the only reflection
that's relevant of me.

I am the Can filled empty,
emotionally starving for change.

You can invest into our **** measuring moments ,
and track how many times quarterly we lose inches to self-pity,
we trade reason and go all in for compensation!

If we had a board of executives,
they would think for...
Ehh maybe a second; (meh)
Who needs to be invested?
when hair gel and resentment are certified and cost effective?

Blame, shame,
**** displayed disco games.

These are the tools we need as men,

Oppression, projection, beard cream, soggy dreams

We stuff our pants big
With a little tragedy.

All to have this conversation.
When the dollars weak
print out sexist paper statements
to inflate insecurities.

We men, we no speak.
Cause our fathers didn't put money into a *****.
We buck up or pay up.
the only men we can hear talking
Washington, Franklin,
and Lincoln penny's.
We ***** ourselves
And waited 30 days for warranty.
And took one for the team!
One more for someone else's American dopamine !

Kronos out of this time.
the statue we built of Atlas, crumbling.
Can man no longer lift the globe and say he needs nothing?
Has Gaia come home demanding her sons to reap what is printed on a receipt?!

Men who don't talk about trauma are traumatic.
If diaries are more soaked in women tears than ink,
why do we rub their faces into their single word dictionaries?

Is it so they cannot breathe the possibilities
that their tears and ink have formed other words
WORDS that could create sentences
SENTENCES on those stained pages
and all over those PAGES
She would explain it all;

In TEARS
and INK
and STAINS

"WE ALL FEEL PAIN."

Trauma bets against us all and leaves no *** or races.

Write trauma.
Right trauma,
By writing trauma away.

Women/Men.

I can guess your names,
Cleverly chosen to reflect
This year's popularity.
Names beginning with XYZ.
Some silly ones, by all accounts,
But I'm silly to think my opinion counts.
Though that's of no matter for what you face;
For we've left this place in a sorry state.
Our lame excuse is,
We didn't fare well from our benefactors.
The ethnic mix was already a mess;
And rightly demands fair redress;
Broken promises to those who dreamed,
The indigenous and the migrant streams;
Those in chains, though innocent,
The fairer ***, and I'm not sexist,
Has been under the heel of the strong,
Yes, far more fair,
And they've been wronged.
Unique communities of men and women,
Have cracked the doors, blown their horns
And tumbled the walls of garrisons
Through film, print, paint and clay.
Their inclusiveness gives me hope,
That some near not far future day,
We'll all be gathered in one parade.

I've scratched the surface of our inheritence,
And in fifty years of managing the place,
We've left problems til too late;
Some we've worked on,
Some escaped.
We've pointed fingers far too long,
The work we started's never done,
You too will have to pass it on
To the unborn of the human race.

I have this friend
          (it's really me)
Who has this girlfriend
          (who's really she)
Who has this quirk
          (really several)
Which she'd deny
          (which is another)
She's not anti-gay,
Sees right past color, creed and ethnicity;
Sees women for being women,
Men for men,
And any combination thereof,
And vice versa.
No, she can see right past bigotry,
Is blind to prejudice,
But has an innate drive that goes straight for wardrobe.
From the gowns of celebs,
To the color of Alex Trebek's tie.
A sartorist, that's what she is.
          
          I heard that.
          And I am not.

          (contrary too)

They say that one hundred years ago
Women ‘earned’ the right to vote
It makes you wonder what men did
To earn that right before us.
It must’ve been something pretty impressive.

“To The Women in My Life”

Take ownership of every inch of you
Each individual strand of hair
On your head
That glint in your eyes
Your sharp, dangerous smile
The suffocating curve
Of your hips
Your slender legs
That’s all you

The declarations exploding out of your mouth
Like fireworks
Popping, popping, popping
Beautifully disrupting silence
Beautifully making your presence known
Staining everything it touches
In hot, vibrant color
That’s all you
That all belongs to you

Remember that
Tattoo it on your heart
Because people will try
To wipe it away
Like eraser shavings taking up space
You are not temporary
You are eternally beautiful
Let my smile remind you
My natural laugh
My loose shoulders
You are phenomenal
A strong, powerful woman
You’ll leave your print in the stars

—

“Step Up”

“...I think it has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and souls — who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on the executive level — to step up.”

Why are women being told to “step up?”
Do you not see the tears in each word
The blood in each lyric
The fire in every performance
You cannot wash it all away
Or remold it like clay
Women do not need to step up
Neil Portnow
You should step down