Poetry 12-22-22

I have to admit. This isn’t in the holiday spirit. Unless you count gifting myself and other women I know, a reawakening of strength and self-worth, that has been laying dormant for too long. So yes. Consider this a gift, not just to me, but to any woman who has ever felt this dynamic, this pressure, unasked for.

How We Dare

What is it from the mouths of men
the decadent lies
the wasted words they think will woo?

And how quickly they turn to anger
when those wilting platitudes
fall like daisies thrown at
our fortress’ metal walls.

I am too heavily armed to submit
to the weak volley
of your empty affection.

How dare you not love me
as I love you?

How dare you reject
my half-hearted attempts?

you should rejoice
that my loins find you ripe
that I shower you with compliments
shallow and unasked for!

How dare you not return
the blessings of my favor
the short-lived and asinine desire
?

how dare you not lie down
and accept this righteous gift?


To which I give response…

How dare you.

How dare you come to me expecting?

How dare you shower me with words
and fantasies unasked for?

How dare you assume
my heart is anything like yours?

But most of all

How dare you bellow your unwavering love
while not listening to the words I speak?

Claim to love the magnificence of me
until I open my mouth to tell you no.

As though your fantasy talked back
but she didn’t say the words you wanted
so you overlooked her autonomy.
and continued on, unhinged

How dare you stake claim on a land
you do not own?

On a human you hold no rights to?

What is it from the mouths of men
that make them prophets of conceited expectation?

I am no man’s to own
I am no one’s to desire.

Turn your beaded and greedy eyes
on some other prey

I am not magnificent for you.

I am magnificent for myself alone.
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Humans are Assholes

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Yep. That’s where I’m going today. I know this blog is primarily about writing, but it’s also a blog about living. And in the course of living this past week I’ve come to the ultimate conclusion that humans, by and large, are assholes. You can argue the point. I admit there are some good ones out there…but as our society ‘progresses’ I swear I’m witnessing an overturn of kindness and compassion into a collective settling of “me-first” assholeness.

From people honking behind you if you pause too long at an intersection, to those that sprain your wrist in karate class because you threatened their fragile ego. To those judgmental mothers who raise judgmental daughters who body shame other girls, in the same nasty way it has always been since long before I was born, because we’re so caught up in tearing each other down that we don’t realize how much powerful we’d be if we built each other up.

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To those spewing venom on the internet, raging in hateful and hurtful ways without stopping to listen to their own disgusting thought-vomit long enough to ask if it’s truthful. To the creators of those social media worlds that know the beast they’ve created is addictive and harmful, a veritable cesspool of useless and divisive vitriol that has been proven to be suicide-inducing, yet charge ahead anyway because the pay is sweet and the power sweeter.

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To the world that’s declining around us, fires and drought, floods and monsoons, dead coral reefs and decimated animal populations, the earth itself dying a little more every day, racing headlong into environmental destruction.

To the countries that slaughter and enslave women. To our own that treats women as if they were only good for being incubators and objects of desire (really only a step up from the aforementioned countries).

To the drug epidemic, our addiction to technology, poverty, wars we shouldn’t fight, battles we can’t win, politicians (career assholes) who care more about being reelected than they do about what they accomplish towards the common good…

Man, with this slew of examples, what subset of assholery does one even pick to write about? Humans have so many veins of douchery to tap into, I just don’t think I can choose one. All of this has settled like heavy sediment inside my skull and I have little room to breathe in any creativity. I have little room to breathe at all. It’s no wonder people purposefully walk away from it all, permanently or otherwise.

Who wants to live with a bunch of assholes?

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