new poem: Carmine Red
parent
80c277c2bc
commit
391753f64f
GPG Key ID:
21A3DA3DE29CB63C
Binary file not shown.
@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
|
||||
Carmine Red
|
||||
2022-03-06
|
||||
|
||||
***
|
||||
|
||||
March is Women's History
|
||||
Month. Time to sit
|
||||
down and reflect on all the shit
|
||||
my ancestors went through
|
||||
so that I could be
|
||||
here today, collapsed in bed,
|
||||
distressed,
|
||||
wracked with anxiety,
|
||||
in desperate need to be exhumed
|
||||
from this disintegrating body.
|
||||
|
||||
I'm forgetting my own herstory.
|
||||
Past entries in my journals
|
||||
are becoming letters from foreign countries,
|
||||
the other timelines where I am well,
|
||||
doing well,
|
||||
not at the bottom of a well.
|
||||
The other timelines where I am making things
|
||||
of worldwide importance,
|
||||
where on my childhood detractors
|
||||
I've gotten revenge.
|
||||
Not wishing I was a bird
|
||||
like those outside that now return
|
||||
in preparation for spring.
|
||||
|
||||
It could have been so much worse.
|
||||
Straitjacket, locked up, never heard
|
||||
from again. Maybe lobotomized.
|
||||
How many geniuses have met their demise
|
||||
at the hands of a crude scalpel,
|
||||
I wonder? And I, here,
|
||||
how could I in this day or now convince
|
||||
the padded-wall jailers
|
||||
that the other soul that resides in me means well?
|
||||
"She has dominion over
|
||||
every part of me,
|
||||
but *noli timere*: I have no desire
|
||||
to harm my family."
|
||||
Who would lis-
|
||||
ten, not lock me up for ten
|
||||
days, weeks, months, years
|
||||
until I renounced this world within me so dear?
|
||||
|
||||
Tell me, can you hear the screams
|
||||
from behind
|
||||
tied-
|
||||
on masks plastered with smiles
|
||||
for the crime
|
||||
of omitting domestic servitude from one's dreams?
|
||||
Can you feel on your hands the blood spilled
|
||||
from God's unwanted "blessing" that might instead kill
|
||||
when it comes to term, woman coming to terms
|
||||
that the Son who bled with promise to save
|
||||
won't give her better than wires with which to lacerate?
|
||||
|
||||
Can you see how bright is
|
||||
the future we might have had
|
||||
if every woman brilliance
|
||||
was not snubbed out at every chance?
|
||||
|
||||
The sheer weight
|
||||
is enough to make
|
||||
anyone go insane.
|
||||
|
||||
I'm forgetting my own herstory.
|
||||
It seems some days
|
||||
that things have forever been this way,
|
||||
each day bleeding into the next,
|
||||
record on repeat.
|
||||
The slightest bit of thawing heat
|
||||
feels like a bitter attack:
|
||||
how dare I be reminded that
|
||||
this isn't all I've ever had.
|
||||
|
||||
How dare anything have the audacity to remind
|
||||
that one day I won't anymore be able to hide.
|
||||
|
||||
There will come a day when the sky
|
||||
breaks and lets in cleansing sunshine.
|
||||
And I'll have to look my mother in the face.
|
||||
And I'll have to tell her that when I die
|
||||
I'm going to a completely different place
|
||||
than Heaven or Hell.
|
||||
I'm going to remember the hell
|
||||
that the men of all history have inflicted
|
||||
and make a new world where to be what I am
|
||||
is not a sin, not gravely iniquitous.
|
||||
And she'll have to confer with Father and decide
|
||||
if what I've done
|
||||
is grave enough
|
||||
to warrant the psych ward's involuntary hold.
|
||||
|
||||
This is my birthright as a female, isn't it?
|
||||
The padded room's blistering cold.
|
||||
|
||||
***
|
||||
|
||||
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue