still
there are days
when there is no way
not even a chance
that i'd dare for even a second
glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror
and she knows why
like i know why
she
only cries
when she feels like she's about to lose control
she knows how much control is worth
knows what a woman can lose
when her power to move
is taken away
by a grip so thick with hate
it could clip the wings of god
leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking
and tonight something inside me is breaking
my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain
i could give every tear she's crying
a year---a name
and a face i'd forever erase from her mind if i could
just like she would
for me
or you
but how much closer to free would any of us be
if even a few of us forgot
what too many women in this world cannot
and i'm thinking
what the hell would you tell your daughter
your someday daughter
when you'd have to hold her beautiful face
to the beat up face of this place
that hasn't learned the meaning of
stop
what would you tell your daughter
of the womb raped empty
the eyes swollen shut
the gut too frightened to hold food
the thousands upon thousands of bodies used and abused
it was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell
seven
and she stopped believing in heaven
distrust became her law
fear her bible
the only chance of survival
don't trust any of them
bolt the doors to your home
iron gate your windows
walking to your car alone
get the keys in the lock
please please please please open
like already you can feel
that five fingered noose around your neck
two hundred pounds of hatred
digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh
please please please please open
already you're choking for your breath
listening for the broken record of the defense
answer the question
answer the question
answer the question miss
why am i on trial for this
would you talk to your daughter
your sister your mother like this
i am generations of daughters sisters mothers
our bodies battlefields
war grounds
beneath the weapons of your brother's hands
do you know they've found land mines
in broken women's souls
black holes in the parts of their hearts
that once sang symphonies of creation
bright as the light on infinity's halo
she says
i remember the way love
used to glow like glitter on my skin
before he made his way in
now every touch feels like a sin
that could crucify medusa kali oshun mary
bury me in a blue blanket
so their god doesn't know i'm a girl
cut off my curls
i want peace when i'm dead
her friend knocks at the door
it's been three weeks
don't you think it's time you got out of bed
no
the ceiling fan still feels like his breath
i think i need just a couple more days of rest
please
bruises on her knees from praying to forget
she's heard stories of vietnam vets
who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs
she's wondering how many women are walking around this world
feeling the tingling of their amputated wings
remembering what it was to fly to sing
tonight she's not wondering
what she would tell her daughter
she knows what she would tell her daughter
she'd ask her
what gods do you believe in
i'll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them!
pick the brightest star you've ever wished on
i'll show you the light in you
that made that wish come true!
tonight she's not asking
you what you would tell your daughter
she's life deep in the hell---the slaughter
has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath
a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh
and she knows the war's not over
knows there's bleeding to come
knows she's far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire
she was whole before that night
believed in heaven before that night
and she's not the only one
she knows she won't be the only one
she's not asking what you're gonna tell your daughter
she asking what you're gonna teach
your son
-Andrea Gibson
I promise I'll rant tomorrow.
Showing posts with label waxing literate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label waxing literate. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Duende
I don't mean to overexalt myself. I'm well aware of my status as a simple teen soprano, with barely a smidgen more talent then the general population. Most of what I am and what I can do, I owe to people far greater than myself who've had the patience to teach me how, and to a pit bull-like discipline (some say it's stubbornness, but fuck that).
But if there's one thing I know. One single little solitary thing that keeps me going these days, it's duende. And that's not something you can just get, just translate into words.
Duende. I don't think it can ever be described, but a tiny tiny fraction of what it really is: it's floating in a white, blank world. But the blank isn't really blank, it's just too colorful to exist. And all there is in that blank is one column of what seems to be air, but it could be water, could be fire, could be anything. you're the only one there, and all you can do is to push it out and up. You decide what it'll be, if you're strong enough. You decide what it'll sound like, and the sound is huge, it vibrates and threatens to shatter the entire world you're moving in, but that's all right, because it can never break, it's more fluid and amorphous than mercury. And it's better and more beautiful and more terrible and more heartbreaking than anything you've ever seen. And against all the white that isn't white, all that your eyes can truly, physically see, is one thing. Then, it was my coaches hand up in the air, telling me to hold it. And then it drops, so you drop the note too.
And when you come down, when you let the note go, you come back to that other place. The real world, I guess, though it's not as real as the other one that you're coming back from. And you can see again. And you can feel how the entire room is vibrating with the potency of that one note. The echoes too. You see that your hands have been gripping the edge of the piano so hard that there are your nail marks on it. And there are other musicians from the other classes peeking through the windows to see who it was singing. And you find that you're shaking, and you're not standing the way you were before.
And that's D above high C.
But if there's one thing I know. One single little solitary thing that keeps me going these days, it's duende. And that's not something you can just get, just translate into words.
Duende. I don't think it can ever be described, but a tiny tiny fraction of what it really is: it's floating in a white, blank world. But the blank isn't really blank, it's just too colorful to exist. And all there is in that blank is one column of what seems to be air, but it could be water, could be fire, could be anything. you're the only one there, and all you can do is to push it out and up. You decide what it'll be, if you're strong enough. You decide what it'll sound like, and the sound is huge, it vibrates and threatens to shatter the entire world you're moving in, but that's all right, because it can never break, it's more fluid and amorphous than mercury. And it's better and more beautiful and more terrible and more heartbreaking than anything you've ever seen. And against all the white that isn't white, all that your eyes can truly, physically see, is one thing. Then, it was my coaches hand up in the air, telling me to hold it. And then it drops, so you drop the note too.
And when you come down, when you let the note go, you come back to that other place. The real world, I guess, though it's not as real as the other one that you're coming back from. And you can see again. And you can feel how the entire room is vibrating with the potency of that one note. The echoes too. You see that your hands have been gripping the edge of the piano so hard that there are your nail marks on it. And there are other musicians from the other classes peeking through the windows to see who it was singing. And you find that you're shaking, and you're not standing the way you were before.
And that's D above high C.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
SuicideGirls
Today there were three girls in a bed. And we were not pretty, not as the patriarchy sees it. And we were not fulfilling patriarchy-approved sexual fantasies. We were watching a movie. We were talking about our lives.
A woman on the screen laid down, with bottles of pills all around her. We laughed and joked about it, because all of us know, all of us were alive and there to prove that overdoses rarely do the trick. We all know from experience. Some of us more than one experience. I know from two experiences with suicide-by-pill; the latest being...the latest, I guess.
A woman screams, howls with rage about how her mental illness has incapacitated her. Not the illness itself, but how everyone around her has become convinced that they must make every decision for her, and her life ceases to be in her hands and in her control, and she ceases to be human. It's patriarchy; textbook. She is dying of patriarchy. And every one of us could identify. We could all talk about it and make jokes about it because every one of us knows that. We know that to the point that all women do, and beyond; to the point where all mentally damaged people know that. We feel that dehumanization.
We've all been dehumanized.
I wrote about it last week. How I was dying, and all anyone could see was to what extent I conformed to patriarchal beauty standards.
Well take a good look, patriarchy. You and your pornification, you and your trendy girl-on-girl, you and your fucking beauty standards. Look at us. How we were today, together on that bed and you would have seen the real SuicideGirls. And they are not the girls who are pornalicious subculture objects. They are PEOPLE. We are people who bear with the burden of being young and female. Because no one has less power in this world than a female child.
Take a look at us. Take a good look. One underweight, two over. Their stomachs ravaged by the eating disorders and the side effects of the medication they need to survive, to cope. Of all the drugs they have pushed into themselves to fill that hole, that empty set, by nullifying it completely. Look at our scars. All kinds of scars. The addiction, the need to hurt ourselves more than you can ever hurt us, even though that's a losing battle. Look, if you can, into that space where everything becomes chaotic and dark and terrifying, that place where no one who hasn't been there will ever know or understand, and everyone who has will spend the rest of their lives trying to escape. Every victimization we have suffered, directly or indirectly, by patriarchal means, has left us fracted for life. Every hurt we have ever done to ourselves. Every glitter sore is a scream against the world we will never live to see changed, if it ever changes. A scream for every other female, and especially every other female child who will most likely end up where we are, until the world changes, or comes to an end, or every woman dies of patriarchy, dies of femininity.
We are what you hate. But we are still here, despite your efforts, and our contrary efforts. And I love you, girls, women, my friends. You are PEOPLE, despite the whole world trying to make you less. You are what beauty should be.
Fuck those other SuicideGirls, living tamely, reaping the rewards, empty as eggshells, as lightbulbs; of conformity. We're the real deal. Fuck the beauty standards that made my friends hurt themselves so much that I can feel it just standing next to them. Fuck the queerbashers who wounded me, fuck the rapist who attacked me as a child, and fuck the men who mentally, emotionally, and physically abused every one of us. Fuck the women who have internalized misogyny and wield it as a weapon against every iconoclast who dares to live her own life. Fuck religion. Fuck hairlessness and skinniness and stupidity and frailty and servility as The Ideal Woman. Fuck the patriarchy.
And FUCK SNOW WHITE.
A woman on the screen laid down, with bottles of pills all around her. We laughed and joked about it, because all of us know, all of us were alive and there to prove that overdoses rarely do the trick. We all know from experience. Some of us more than one experience. I know from two experiences with suicide-by-pill; the latest being...the latest, I guess.
A woman screams, howls with rage about how her mental illness has incapacitated her. Not the illness itself, but how everyone around her has become convinced that they must make every decision for her, and her life ceases to be in her hands and in her control, and she ceases to be human. It's patriarchy; textbook. She is dying of patriarchy. And every one of us could identify. We could all talk about it and make jokes about it because every one of us knows that. We know that to the point that all women do, and beyond; to the point where all mentally damaged people know that. We feel that dehumanization.
We've all been dehumanized.
I wrote about it last week. How I was dying, and all anyone could see was to what extent I conformed to patriarchal beauty standards.
Well take a good look, patriarchy. You and your pornification, you and your trendy girl-on-girl, you and your fucking beauty standards. Look at us. How we were today, together on that bed and you would have seen the real SuicideGirls. And they are not the girls who are pornalicious subculture objects. They are PEOPLE. We are people who bear with the burden of being young and female. Because no one has less power in this world than a female child.
Take a look at us. Take a good look. One underweight, two over. Their stomachs ravaged by the eating disorders and the side effects of the medication they need to survive, to cope. Of all the drugs they have pushed into themselves to fill that hole, that empty set, by nullifying it completely. Look at our scars. All kinds of scars. The addiction, the need to hurt ourselves more than you can ever hurt us, even though that's a losing battle. Look, if you can, into that space where everything becomes chaotic and dark and terrifying, that place where no one who hasn't been there will ever know or understand, and everyone who has will spend the rest of their lives trying to escape. Every victimization we have suffered, directly or indirectly, by patriarchal means, has left us fracted for life. Every hurt we have ever done to ourselves. Every glitter sore is a scream against the world we will never live to see changed, if it ever changes. A scream for every other female, and especially every other female child who will most likely end up where we are, until the world changes, or comes to an end, or every woman dies of patriarchy, dies of femininity.
We are what you hate. But we are still here, despite your efforts, and our contrary efforts. And I love you, girls, women, my friends. You are PEOPLE, despite the whole world trying to make you less. You are what beauty should be.
Fuck those other SuicideGirls, living tamely, reaping the rewards, empty as eggshells, as lightbulbs; of conformity. We're the real deal. Fuck the beauty standards that made my friends hurt themselves so much that I can feel it just standing next to them. Fuck the queerbashers who wounded me, fuck the rapist who attacked me as a child, and fuck the men who mentally, emotionally, and physically abused every one of us. Fuck the women who have internalized misogyny and wield it as a weapon against every iconoclast who dares to live her own life. Fuck religion. Fuck hairlessness and skinniness and stupidity and frailty and servility as The Ideal Woman. Fuck the patriarchy.
And FUCK SNOW WHITE.
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