I’ve been writing a lot of rage poetry and journal entries lately. It’s a method of processing, a safe space where my feelings won’t be chastised or be cautioned to calm down. To be told, with shrugs, that this is just the way it is. To be hounded with others’ convictions that I’m being the irrational one (or worse, the powerlessness, of ‘nothing can be done’). No wonder women go mad. No wonder we quit our jobs and our relationships in droves. I think someday we’ll all probably wander of the grid and go feral. I hope that someday our leaving destroys the grid completely. I hope ‘feral’ is a return to what we were always supposed to be. In ownership of our own bodies, part of an egalitarian community, taking care of the Earth that sustains us, protecting one another. I hope for this.

Today’s poem is part of a project I’m working on, tracing philosophically through the roots of my own rage, and the collective anger of my generation of women. Raised to believe we could be equal from a generation that was slowly learning it themselves. As such, this poem is an exploration and an ode to one of the most influential albums (and songs) of my teenage years. And to the seeds that she planted in my soul, that have found a fearsome bloom in current times.

The Jagged Little Pill (I can No Longer Swallow) 
(lyrical exploration of "All I Really Want" by Alanis Morissette)

All I really want
is deliverance

from the maddening hold
of the lesser sex’s self
inflation

Do I stress you out?

to remind you
that you came from a womb
and still she chose to keep you 
even after all
the repulsions she knew you would
own and 
call power?

I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land

when faced with pedophilic horrors
and the butchering of innocence
as if it were any 
other
expendable resource
men rape the land, why not us too?
why not our daughters? our sons?
we are fresh streams and 
teeming oceans
gold mines
and diamond fields
all for the taking
all for the discarding

Reel them in
and spit them out

calm down
there is nothing to be done
let the broader shoulders shrug
to end the matter

I am frustrated by your apathy

while you drink your martini 
and cast sunshine, between sips, 
that at least the stock market
is finally up
and I sit still, as prey
praying in bushes might,
cheap wine I feel guilty for
and watch blood run in the gutters
and remember my own, horrible
8-year-old truths
while the news blares
of babies being eaten
or burned
or buried by the ninth hole
water hazard and sand trap
thank fucking god
the stock market is okay

the sound of pretenses falling

is louder to me
but you were never listening
anyway, were you?
just for the sound of panties dropping
be a good little girl
for daddy
sit on my lap and reassure me,
I’m still a ‘nice guy’
right?

No.

I won't speak these lies
any longer
my lips have been sewn shut
needles in and out 
the thread of anger
trapping unsettled bees in my throat
and handcuffed wrists bleeding 
as I fight against 
the radiator of the American Dream

why are you so petrified of silence?

does it make you hear the echoes 
of your own dissonance?
A good man who still
sometimes
objectifies his high school students 
and calls it ‘American Beauty’

And all I really want is some peace
a place to find a common ground

but we aren’t standing on even ground
never was there equal footing
from the day I spilled out of my mother
my knees have been broken
by the bat of masculine ‘protection’
my voice scalded with the shame
this system gave me 
for a body 
that nature knew and named 
as more divine

you want me to calm down

all I really want is justice