Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Words

I wrote this over a year ago, and have decided to go ahead and post it now because I was going through old stuff I had written and I really thought this was about the best poetry I have written.

I don't know how to use my words
They don't seem to work like they used to.
Proud confident and sure of the message they had to share
I don't know how to use my words
Muddled, questioning, so in need of nuance now.


I feel sometimes like I have become too shattered to ever be put back together
I feel sometimes like all these pieces
is the only Me which has ever been the real me


I saw you there,
Seated at a table of peers
You poised and beautiful
I wanted to know who you were.
I listened, me Sipping that beer
but drinking deeply of your prescence
Your words like music and lyrics flowing through
I wanted to get to know you.
I felt you there, every idea, joke, and word
your soul being shared, you filling ours.
And I wanted to kiss you.


Renée Descartes said I think therefore I am.
I was academically birthed into the world of postmodernity,
suckled from the mounds of trust no one and question everything,
And cut my teeth on deconstruction
Now I am left to say "I am thinking therefore I am not being."


I wanted to slide my hand into the small of your back,
guide our bodies together no distance between us our lips warm softly touching
The space surrounding melted away into the peculiar particularity of that moment together.

I wonder if the other me was entirely another me.
I wonder when in that 16 years did he pass and if anyone shed a tear for his loss?
I wonder if I could summon him from his mausoleum
invite possession by that other me.


I wanted to learn your story, 
to share your journey, 
to know the whole of how you think; 
to stay up all night talking 
so the sunrise makes us laugh 
at our enraptured attention to each other.


I wonder if enchanted by the other me 
this me could have charmed you. 
The one with poise whose melody 
was philosophy, dramaturgy, and story.


The universe she made us in her image.
from singularity we shatter scattered out into a billion billion pieces

Mass - pressure - ignition -fusion
Stars born and burn hot and bright
Stars energize fostering life around them
Stars supernova, destroying everything in the exploding path
Stars expended die out to cold and emptiness
Our atoms forged in the heart of stars


I want to take these two fingers 
unzipping the dress down the length of your back.
To take these hands 
slide them inside the slit of the dress. 
First pressing them firmly against your back  
savoring for a moment 
this first time their skin has touched this surface of you.
I want to rest a kiss at the base of your neck 
as I drop your dress to the ground.
Then piece by piece 
we together remove the fabric layers which separate our bodies 
from being fully touching enmeshed with each other.

Shards formerly propelled apart by the force of their own trajectory 
now coalesce into orbits round each other.
Orbits are added to orbits
Shards larger and more significant join, pass, yaw, and pivot in.
Planets and planetary Systems
bigger than the pieces
scraps spinning together
absorbing the energy of their shared fire.
Our lives dependent on the fire of a single star.

I want to taste the fullness of your soul.
Use these two listening ears; unzipping the barriers of your mind.
I want to scuttle inside your deepest self
Hear your passions, your pain, your strengths, weaknesses, dreams, fears. Savoring for just a moment touching the casing of your soul for the very first time.
I place just a peck at the base of your mind, dropping our masks and defenses to the floor.
Then story by story we tell each other
together we remove the layers which separate our souls from being fully touching enmeshed with each other.

Maybe you and me would have been a galaxy.
Maybe you and me would have been a supernova.
Maybe we could have found an orbit
Maybe we would have just passed by
The universe she made us in her image.
from singularity we shatter
scattered out into a billion billion might have beens.

Time expired
Leaving I only asked your name,
I stood there looking in those eyes
Windows in to the soul as they say
I wanted every bit more of you.
A morsel of your being
A spoonful of you mind
A tincture of your soul
But I said not a charming word more.

See, I don't know how to use my words anymore.
They just don't seem to work like they used to.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

The Past Matters (a Facebook comment)

I have been thinking a lot lately about this relationship I had at 17. She was from a very religious, very wait until marriage type family. We never had PIV, but we certainly went further sexually than she was comfortable with. Our sexual activity was always consensual, but it was convinced consent not enthusiastic consent. She consented only because she believed our relationship was headed toward marrying each other.

About 8-10 years ago I reached out to her brother via Facebook looking for contact information to apologize to her. Her brother responded about a week later with a very formal, “She appreciates your apology but is not interested in communicating with you.”

I live every day knowing that I am possibly someone’s #metoo story. If someday she came forward and accused me of manipulation and therefore assault I would not deny it because THAT is what it means to be good. I was not intending to be manipulative, but that does not change how my words and my pressure affected and damaged her.

The past matters; especially when the past is not even admitted to.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Concealer (a Facebook comment)

Every woman close enough to share our confidences has revealed she wakes each morning having to apply a foundation of strength, her concealer over the scars of her sexual assault. Absolutely every woman I know intimately is living with the scars of sexual assault. Saying "Every single one" is not an exaggeration. It is an objective truth easily heard if you are listening. When you shame, dismiss, and invalidate the victim you become another piece of that trauma.

Monday, May 14, 2018

I Have This Friend

I have this friend. In physical appearance she is gorgeous. In conversational engagement she is captivating. In lifestyle she pursues the things she loves with passion.. Any man who meets her is going to be smitten; because in attractiveness she is the total package.  As I first started spending time with her I was taken by her. So, I did what any man enamored of a woman should do; I told her. I laid myself out there and told her all the reasons I was enchanted by her. My friend did not return my romantic intoxications.

I have this friend. I am honored to call a friend. All the reasons I find her amazing do not disappear because she is not attracted in a fairy-tale crush on me.  Most of the qualities that attracted me romantically are the same qualities that attract me to friendships. I want friends who are easy to lose time in conversation with and embrace their life with fervor.  She is both these things.

I have this friend who had a conversation this evening with another guy who found himself infatuated by her many charms. Yet, his response to her rebuffs of his romantic advances was very different than my own. See, like myself, she considered this person a friend as well. They had shared life challenges and she had been there for him when his life situation needed a friend to be there.  

I have this friend who was verbally assaulted, unfriended and blocked by a person she called a friend simply because she said to him, “No, I am not romantically interested.”

Men, this has to stop. We have to do better. How can a woman you considered a friend be discarded so easily simply because they do not return your attractions?  Are we as a gender so focused on our erotic passion that a woman uninterested in romance is discardable.  This is the pinnacle of objectification. 

Men, since you are unable to hear it from the women in your life I am going to repeat it here for you. That woman, your friend, is an entire person. She like you is fully able to possess a range of differing emotions. She, like you, is entitled to the attractions that allure her.  You are not owed her carnal sensuality simply because you express attraction. If all you can see her for is how she responds to your advances than you were never her friend to begin with. 

Men, do you want to be used? Of course the answer to that question is no. So then, why do you feel the women in your life feel any differently? To have a friendship discarded this easily hurts. This kind of capricious response to her honest response proves you were using her for the entirety of the relationship.

Men, I have this friend who I want to trust me. In fact, I have several friends who are women and I want them all to trust me. I want them to trust that our time is safe, our vulnerability is genuine, and our friendship is rooted in the whole of their personhood. However, how can I ask this trust when the bulk of their investments in relationships with men end in this way? 

Women, I am sorry. I am sorry our culture did not teach this lesson to men when they were boys. I am sorry that the repeating actions by a string of men have positioned you to feel unsafe as your default. I am sorry that teaching the emotional responsibility of friendship has been so grossly ignored in our culture.


Men, I need us to wise up, grow up, and do better.