glass on the pavement

glistens like snow

and i remember autum and winter with you

before everything i came to know.

red lights flare into puddles

sky of a better world in there

a world that is full

of gentle boys

and clever happy girls.

Ani Difranco recites Coming Up on Def Poetry

Where is he?

This undressed man

who wails the wail

of a victim.

Where is the nail

that drags the skin?

Blind and torturous

like a white eye.

The screen fills

with thighs, stomachs scratched

women bleeding lust

men wielding power.

What is a victim?

A writhing, wailing woman

oversexed and underdressed

fearing the clothen blade.

21.3.08

The undressed woman

beautful and bare she lies

but with no mystery quickly

she becomes old

swooping and dipping

she plies for new attention

but no one will buy her

when she does it for free.

But, she says, I don’t

do it for free, everyone pays

in one way.  Eventually,

I will never be for free.

The undressed woman

unbelievable and bold she flies

topping our hearts with stories

of her naked experience.

21.3.08

you
with blue hair
putting the world
to
rights
one homoerotic
mans man
posh pastey
fish out of water
geek
at a time

(don’t like my use of the word geek.  I am a geek and I love it but no word fits better)

two pale

too pink

circles

do

not

touch

your words grind like sand
as i feel goosebumps prickle
tickling my skin with fury
not for you
not for the words you speak
but for loss
for the emptiness
that i am left with when you go
when your eyes close
with your lips
you seal your words
you seal my fate
i feel that loss
of life
of a life i will never have
in your world

poem:  ‘my i.q.’ from Puddle Dive by Ani Difranco.

when i was four years old
they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when i was 13 years old
i woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that i live in a breakable takeable body
an ever increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, i got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
i don’t need anyone to hold me
i can hold my own
i got highways for stretchmarks
see where i’ve grown
i sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
’cause you’re only as loud
as the noises you make
i’m learning to laugh as hard
as i can listen
’cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then i could relax
but a good brain ain’t diddley
if you don’t have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you’re dancing
especially something stupid
like i.q.
for every lie i unlearn
i learn something new
i sing sometimes for the war that i fight
’cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.

found at danah’s place

you can isolate me

because i have a voice

you can hate me

and hate my choice

but you must love him

and accept his decision

you should respect him

but he is met with derision

As with most men – Mark Gonzales

As with most men it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them
Lest the truth be known that men
are nothing more than emotional sky-scrapers built with glass infrastructures spray painted the colour of steel and nick named strength
Strange isn’t it?
what walking contradictions are we called men
Men are taught to colonise at the age of 5 through gangs like cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians
At the age of 8 we are given helmets, and told to hit each other in the head with it,
Bleed but do not bleed
Cut but do not cry
Be a man
Join the military
Die for your country
And if death comes to you look it in the eye and say
“bring it on motherfucker I fear nothing…but intimacy”
When it comes to intimacy men quiver like fault lines, crumble like cities
What walking contradictions are we called men.
Men sign peace accords while abusing their wives
Accept the Nobel Peace Prize while reducing health care
Pledge to rid the world of terrorism, while simultaneously denying government aid to any country that defends a woman’s right to choose
During the 1970s, the US government forcibly sterilized an estimated 50% of the indigenous population of America’s mid-west
Telling them the process was reversible
Can you say ‘biological terrorism’?
And in a global war against terror maybe testosterone is the real terrorist
And if so, how many of these star spangled singing, flag waving citizens
Would continue to do so if terror was not racialised
But gendered
Would the US military turns its guns on itself
For its sex crimes throughout South East Asia, Africa and the Americas?
Would MTV be firebombed for its objectification, hypersexualisation of our womens of colour’s bodies?
Would we stop looking towards the Muslim world for misogyny and instead turns our sights to Madrid, Montreal,
New York
Los Angeles
And now understand my sisters when they say “every woman has a story that’s been told a maximum of once or maybe less”
And that is why you will never hear me call a women slut, bitch or dyke
No matter what she does
‘Cuz I do not blame her
I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her
I blame these corporations whose images tell her they hate her
And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how grateful I am to God that she created her
Men take note this is how you give love
This is how you receive hugs
Press flesh to flesh
‘til breasts crumple
Like emotional origami

********

I think I got all of the words right. There is one part, where I have written ’sex crimes’ that sounds a little like ’sex rants’ but that doesn’t really make sense. If you think any of it is wrong let me know.

Copyrighted to HBO Def Poetry…? or YouTube perhaps…