#1950
What do you expect of me?
To do everything for you?
Like a simple housewife in 1950?
Cooking and cleaning and laundry?
Hell to the no.
Yes, we have a child,
but does that make me the
sole caretaker of them?
The one they come to
when they're scared?
Hell to the no.
We are a partnership.
A force of support
for those around us.
A team working together
as one giant entity.
Should we be any less?
Hell to the no.
So please think before
you act or speak.
Especially with phrases like
"I will get to it later" or
"In a minute".
Then not do them.
I will end up doing them then.
Hell to the no.
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 11:11 AM UTC
poem 74:
you are beautiful , like the sky after the clouds have cleared
you are gorgeous, like like the first flower bloom in the spring
you are lovely, like a poem that made you smile but shade one tear
you are all these things and more, with every pasting day
you make jaw drop and eyes turn into hearts
you make the sunshine bright so it can compete with your flow
you are truly beautiful with a mind so bright and heart so kind
as walk while looking like a queen from the 1950s
you are beyond words, but theses aren't just words
these are feelings of amazement
of appreciation
that someone like you exist
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 10:03 AM UTC
Memphis got real high in the 50's.
Those honeycomb bathroom floors decided to become streets
them city kids got the buy bug knocking at their knees.
Problem is: They never dream.
Teachers just learning to write
using pens filled with interrupting ink
telephone poles gossiping about the trees,
they hated their branches—always loosing their leaves
office administrators on Section 8 Housing
while the vacant houses are out on the streets.
People swarming the sewers
forgetting: a bomb shelter is no home
while drainage floods the alleys.
If you could see this place with your own eyes
and not the ones you bought at the drug store
you would wish you were blind.
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 8:32 PM UTC
The monster in my closet is not the
Lord of the Flies or the way I hiccup at
the mention of tombstones like picket fences
or the Bible I have sitting on back burner, waiting and
turning to ash as I switch my focus elsewhere;
it is my freedom, it is my voice, it is my vulnerability.
I have found that the true steps to being a woman are
One:
To never say “no” to a man: he is right, he is infinite;
Man, with a capital “M,” is Right with a capital “R.”
I must find my place beneath his boot and be
grateful for the attention. I must offer myself to him
on a silver platter and ****** my wrists back when
he latches on like leeches in ponds—
innocence is necessary but experience is a must.
I need only to serve him and serve him well.
Dinner will be ready by five.
Two:
After snapping my fingers and throwing on an apron
I need only to make shopping lists and fold laundry
and wash dishes and dust coffee tables and
***** train toddlers and begin the ironing—I must
become a less troublesome Lucy, and as Sylvia said,
become the place from where the arrow
shoots off from; my husband will be the
arrow into the future
the bright light at the end of the tunnel
the brains, if you will,
ask him all your silly intellectual questions,
goodness me, how would I know anything
outside of homemaking?
Three:
While living in the Valley of the Dolls,
it is important to play the part precisely because
anything less than the best is a catastrophe—
this isn’t suburbia this is su-Barbie-a where
women are beautiful and poised, plastic in shells
with skin as cold as the freezers they keeps their words
in. Your businessman of a husband will come home from
work at quarter to five and say,
“silence is golden,”
as he pats your daughter on the head,
and you will not know to which one of you
he is communicating with because,
yes, of course, he is in charge of the vocal cords, being
stronger and smarter than the two of you; it is only
logical to accept his words as law. Besides,
neither you nor your daughter really deserves the
right to not only speak when spoken to; girls have
silly and inconsequential ideas anyway.
Four:
I must give myself up for love. A woman without
a single altruistic bone in her body is
not a woman at all, but rather a shadow. In order to
prove myself, prove my loyalty, prove anything, I must
first prove my heart. At age eighteen, I will go backstage
for a costume change: graduation gown to wedding gown.
Don’t worry, Mother, he told me that college is overrated;
he told me that the only other education I will need
lies within homemaking skills—the easy life, don’t you see?
Love is my biggest flaw and greatest weapon, and
I must learn to wield it.
Five:
But without a man, nothing is possible. Catching
one like fish in nets is the goal, but in order to do so,
it is imperative that I realize that
beauty is not deeper than skin; beauty is pliable like bamboo
and is only prevalent when it is in paint. I must become
Wendy, I must stay in Neverland, I
must
not
age.
It is important to look young but not to act young.
It is even more important for my ribs to break
through my flesh—my beginning will be my end
but at least I’ll look good.
I am not afraid of the dark or of heights or
of storms or of doctors or dogs; I am
afraid of time reversing, I am afraid of
returning normalities. That fifteen-year-old girl
I saw post online about how she was
“born in the wrong decade” and how she would be
a “much better fit for the ‘50s” scares me to death.
If I was expected to choose between
career and family,
I would sit at the bottom of the
fig tree like Sylvia;
I would stick my head
right in the oven.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 12:49 AM UTC