How to Make a Molotov Cocktail

Her crib walks across the bedroom
And I find her pieces by the floor
Do clattered torn clothing get your goat
Man! I hope it does
because she’s only three and you’re looking
Like a wolf about to gulp down a chicken
And shatter shatter shatter
Thirty years later
She’s looking to replace
your penis with antidepressant
And that don’t matter
Cause you still drinking with her father
Commenting on how cute that blue dress looks
On her nice boobies
It’s been a while since you saw em
Ain’t that how you do it?
Ain’t that how to make poetry?
Because at the end of the day when the world is sitting right behind
And she’s writing a poem
you will be the one who would take away her clothes
Turning her naked in middle of a cafe
And she would run to the bathroom
Only to hear creaky voices sounding snake venom
into bloodstreams that could’ve watered
personalities into daisies but, instead
Creates hatred
And it would be behind her.
with a wobbly crib being pulled across the stage
You see complaints are silence
Silence resonating across hills with officers asking
“Hey you don’t look so attractive
Are you sure you were raped?”
“I mean officer i am standing here with my broken spine
And a half toothed smile across my face
And the line behind my back has
Women who could qualify as goddesses
And the thing is if I was a goddess
You would ask me to be modest
And because I am already modest
You question my sanity”
Just like my uncle did
When I refused to sleep
Because slipping a grown penis into a 13 year old’s panties
For she dared to grow boobies is just the just punishment
Riots, molotov cocktail
We’re snowflakes because we called out someone who followed me around
For 15 long days, even in the library and outside bathrooms
Whose bated breath became my bane
And who made me feel like closing everything and lying in bed
Except I knew the footsteps before the bedroom
The sighs beside my bed
Paranoia, madness, depression
Pills to take after breakfast, after lunch, before sunset, after twilight, before dinner, after death
Everytime you feel threatened
Well, when do I draw that line mate?!
A safest place turns into a nightmare
Cuz you know, your best friend’s mate’s a lil drunk
And you do have big boobies
So like, forgive him mate
And honey I would
But, being clattered clothing on the room
As the crib moves across marble floors
And my cries become a fond joke between my parents
I become angry
For fuck’s sake,
tomorrow, if I take a chair and smash it across beauty companies
And try to bleed out this hegemony of abuse
I’d be chided and made fun of
But, so be it
I am fucking survivor mate
And I have a knife
Which dares you to call me a victim again!

Half-written notebook

Because on the third evening
While, you sang songs out of a book
That had almost lyrics but, was still insecure
I was looking for kisses amidst half winters
And your frail fingers searched for cigarettes instead
So, when the pain went away
And the smoke cleared slowly off the dress
I wore pink, and you wore blue
And the ball flew out into the darkness
What a gall we had back then
Romance just a broken concept
Without works, without words
I could never lay beside you
And yet, I pretended to love just because I had to
Have someone who could hold me close
As the rains came down every 5th of November
But, before rains fell, you were on a cab
And the train leaving the station became the platform I was lying in
Dreaming of stars and equality and the promises
Which I had written down in quick successions
Amidst poetry that sought out the body of men

So, tell me today
Before I go out to that street
And chart a song for the masses to endure
Do you remember pink lipsticks
Or have they all become red?
And do you think black is still ghastly?
because those are the boots I am wearing
And I know you don’t sing the blues
So, I wrote you a jazz lyric
on the back of a maths copy that screams out in contempt
You wrote your number with half remaining ink oozing out
The ball point pen lies forgotten on a back seat
Somewhat of loneliness

Does the forest look as good as the grass
Before we went away?
Or is the brass
Breaking down again
I know the train runs still
And your fingers, not so frail
Are seeking out a soul
I would surrender mine
But, you would rather have a poem won’t you?

The Black pigeon Speaks False

Today, me and my friend were left looking at a video that left us basically in awe with it’s regressive views. So, as is usual, we entered into a feminist and political view of the entire deal. So, me and Shivangi sat down and discussed the video below to well, find out what was wrong with it.

Me : OK, so what are your primary thoughts? For me the video performs quite a few fallacies, there have been several countries where enforced monogamy is the norm (*cough* India *cough), where the economic situation has not seen uniform growth over the years and has in fact in the long term, only benefited from the outside trade. Also, equation sexual liberation with the political ideologies of the left is naivete. Historically, as well as recently, the left has routinely stood up for women’s rights, and sexual liberation has played a key part in it. Also, let us remember that there have been countries with high levels of gender equality, which have offered a multicultural approach to Islam and have worked their way. So, the correlation, however, positive cannot account for the causation. The prime example of course is the Danish government, which despite having one of the most sexually liberated, and gender equal societies in Europe has remained staunchly against immigration. Which by definition of scientific research makes the entire debate moot.

S : The perspective of the narrator is completely wrong. He is looking at everything from a biological point of view and not social.

Me : So, as we scientifically disprove this false ideal we also have to question the sources he is using, a 1936 book cannot account for recent economic trends and of course the developing nations with new trade opportunities are growing at a faster rate than developed countries where the trade opportunities have become limited in scope. However, there has been a scope for development still, USA is still growing in the business sector, the sexually liberated and free bordered EU countries have seen growth too

S : Also the comparison of Vietnamese and Nazi incidents with the Syrian refugees is not only stupid but also blatantly racist. The women who married the enemies were just in a social position where they could take advantage and they did like any man would have as well.

Me : Of course, the biological perspective sans any social context puts things at a backseat, traditionally, men have sought out women with larger hips and larger breasts because they were indicators of greater fertility, but, in the context of a steady growth of population and an already overpopulated world, the concept of a monogamous family as a production unit of children holds no purpose and is quite archaic.

S : Where he brings in the 87% women orgasm during rape. That doesn’t prove that women naturally seek more aggressive men.

Me : A lot of American soldiers would have had relations with Vietnamese men, this was not seeking out the enemy, historically this was to protect the family from the oppression, I believe we can find studies and books written about the same

S : Because by that logic we can also say that a lot of men get erections during rape so they like aggressive women as well.

Me : Sexual arousal is a bodily response to penetration and other things, it is removed from the consensual basis of a relationship that should be established. there are psychological repercussions

S : Exactly

Me : This disproves the aggressive men theory

S : Plus people have different personalities on bed and in public.

Me : Also, it is a moot point that women tend to have rape fantasies, because by consenting to have those fantasies women essentially want sex that is consensual. This cannot be equated to rape.

S : The most irritating part for me was the author’s 80% and 40% part. He clearly ignored the fact that maybe the women were lesser in quantity.

And of the rest 60% of men maybe some were not interested in Heterosexuality.

Me : Also, the fact that polygamy was an accepted social norm in the older societies and that monogamy is a recent construct which basically created the family as a production unit has been noted in Marxist philosophies for such a long time.There is positive evidence that colonization of the older cultures particularly in native America was when the monogamy as the accepted norm started there, there is actual documented evidence of this

S : Exactly. And moreover the sex ratio has not always been equal.

Me : Basically, the construct of civilized society has been so influenced by colonization it is very difficult to construct a narrative where you can account for a part where a polygamous society or a society where the women were more sexually liberated was worse off

S : Also he said that women never built or maintained a civilization. Whose fault is that?

Me : Because as far as I remember, in India particularly, the polygamy and sexual liberation of women, to the point of an entire sexual culture centered around it was when it was showing maximal growth. Of course the colonists did not see it as growth because they were myopic in their views of what growth really meant

S : While the civilization was about to start women did not have an option but to reproduce

Me : Patriarchal societies have routinely not allowed female participation in decision making and with male opinions dominating the media, and the male narrative still dictating a large amount of consumerist society, we cannot construct a view of how a matriarchal society might perform in the real time world

There is simply no credible scientific evidence either way.

S : I like how he keeps saying that he isn’t referring to all women but women as an organism. I have really never seen a sentence contradict itself so much

Me : Woman isn’t an individual organism, the female sex still belongs to homo sapiens and has particularly same base characteristics, despite societal norms dictating behavioral changes and the inherent biological differences almost all female and males of any species have

This other-ing of woman into another separate organism as a whole represents a myopic view in itself and showcases an inherent misogynist view

Out of everything, we can probably understand that the author represents this mindset which is scary. mostly, we debated on the feminist characteristics of the views represented in the video, the inherent xenophobia would need a whole other source.
*sigh*

Almost… not Quite

I spent my childness
Wearing princess clothes
Over bordered pin stripe suits
And I danced to a ballad
Written for people
Who would always be prettier than me
When the first hairs grew
Amidst a failed puberty
I decided on a war
And I fell in love
With every passing stranger who decided to look twice
Twice it took my breath away
Thrice, I was left writing poems that made me regret
Do you understand where we stand now?
Now, that the leaves have withered away?
I packed away my MAC
Bought with tiffin money I saved for years
The matte lipstick has become decoration
Of a lover’s lips
Someone I didn’t even dare to love
But, I cared enough to surrender myself to
And my mother tied me up
Three turns of the rope
As I laid in the garage awaiting the car
But, it never did come, and so I was released
Sans the madness that made me dance so
So, next time a jazz record came on
I played loud guitars and growled
Donned a leather jacket and stood behind
A group of men who decided that screaming at this girl
Who I still love, as a sister now
Was the perfect response for her short self trying to click pictures
I could never forgive them for that
But, hey I was being a man
So, at the 20th cigarette by the Ganges shore
While, talking to friends about love and lore
All while, all I could dream about was poetry and art
Was the mask I pulled
The matte lipsticks and concealers
The ruby red, and translucent
Were less of masks than my words became
Until I was laying across a man’s chest
leaving behind trails of lipsticks
Red makrs that went down the sternum
Right down to a place
Whose name I shouldn’t take
Censured myself to the extent
That outside the home of his
I smoked three cigarettes
As If I didn’t like the taste of sex
in my mouth, on my body, on everything
i wore the t-shirts, but, I loved drapes
So, every time puja came around I wore dhotis
Mom thought it was tradition
it was just being myself
I was never a woman
But, wearing something that flew so seamlessly with my body
Drawing art on my body
Writing poetry quotes acrossed malformed breasts
Highlighting features that they want to be hidden
Hey, I do have stretch marks
And scars from a leg badly broken
Who are you to judge?
And why do you think that I
After all this time would even care
Because I wear glasses and throughout school?
Because you decided grabbing my breasts was a good joke?
Non-sexual, jovial, brotherhood?
And I didn’t realise why it made me feel uncomfortable
Till now
But, I own myself more than I ever had
graded visuals, gradients which go from blue to black
Pieces of me decorated by a boy
Whose love often turned to hitting
And yet, I was happier than I was with you people
But, then I could never be the princess again
Dark umbrellas
Staunch shirts that hid me
behind layers and layers and layers
All mounting up to this shameless
Image of someone who is almost there
but, not quite
Not quite himself
I decided on love by the time I was 17
But, the 13 years kept pulling me back
So, when i shared my first kiss with a man
I congratulated myself on not making my identity a mask
For all these fears and aspirations
I had gathered over for years
So, you know what?
I will listen to Taylor Swift
As much as I listen to hip-hop
And angry ballads written behind garages
And like I danced the shimmy yesterday
While my friend was in the bathroom
And I will again
And I will wear my mascara because that is the only time I was myself
And I am no woman
I have never identified as such
but, I refuse to be broken idols
And I know you like imagery so take this
The diary bound in leather
had charred pages which threatened to reveal all these poetry
That were supposed to be hidden
but, I just flled ink in my fountain pen
I let love in
And love happened

Random scribblings

I would often lie about the worldwide truths
Hide them behind the sensual myths
That were hidden behind the highway cigarettes
I never had a bike of course
I just rode along
And half a bottle of vodka in my stomach
I went on to chant poetry for the masses
Before the bud blooms is there a moment
When it wonders whether the bloom is worth
That is how I felt before sex
because in my family no one touched it
Being touched became this sort of fear
That I ran from for ages
Until half hairy hands fell over my body
And pulled me in and in
So, of course when I lost in the Russian roulette
Played at the riverside with strangers
I said I would suck all of them, if indeed
They would hug me, because I missed being wanted
I still do perhaps, but, touches changed
And one evening drunk at the safest place I knew
Where two gay lovers embraced in the silhouette of disco lights
I was being touched behind bottles and laughters
A buck for the breasts, two for the groins
To have sex, you probably still need consent

I forgot that for a while
While, I pretended that every man I met
Was deflowering me again and again
The asshole isn’t much of a flower
So, I had no problem to pretend
Guess I scared my friends a bit with
Chalk marks written over half covered faces
Can burqas be reclamation or can we pretend
That today you just didn’t want to see me because
I was too beautiful for you
The only intelligent conversation we had
Was when I said I needed to use the Bathroom
And you told me to get out
If you hated me so much in the first place, well
Why try even? I know your wife waits for you
Does she come behind veils and hold pails of water
For you to drink, because for God’s sake I won’t
You see
This other lover showed up at the event and winked at me
I made him buy cigarettes behind a shack on the street
I would have gone down on him, but, oh well, anxiety
Now, sex is like a tree
And I am not much of a John Keats so I tried to keep that at minimum
but, while, I stared down at bald valleys
I realised that I was petty with prettiness
And hotness came at the cost of a burnt rectum
God, am I even allowed to say that out loud
I mean it is fun and all, but, I would lust after a hairy nipple
But, please do not ask me to suck them
It feels cheap
I mean I would probably suck you for 60 bucks but
Oh well, I come cheap in the market where sex sells
Strange that I would advocate for a Marxist treatment of our bodies
I am a petty bourgeoise with my own
but, we do treat others with the love we deserve ourselves
and that’s only because truths are so easy to lie behind
Wooden creaky beds at your home, with that smell
“You masterbated before I even came?”
Oh God that’s a brilliant pun indeed
But, then, I am dancing along the national highway
High, back when I was not on three pills
White and yellow honey, sold at 300 bucks
So, I would need to sleep with 5 people to even be happy
What kind of fairness is that? Oh well you can call the psychiatrist
I tried to, but, he just stared at me and signed “No”
Once in a concert, while they were playing folk music
I decided to do the time warp behind a platform
Think my favourite vocalist saw me, wonder how much would he pay
not that I won’t do it for free
But, at this point that doesn’t matter does it?
Hey did you write down my number yet? The horny kid
pretending to be a slam poet?
Oh well, it’s just 10 digit, give me the call
When you feel sad, or you feel horny
I mean I did do Harry Potter for a while
And apparently all the girls I met
Are either asexual, bi or les
Designated queer whisperer people!
It does take me balls to say that I am not sexual
I mean I did imagine the demon penetrating me
(Don’t you judge me on that mister, you have too)
And his long tongues licking my ear
Poets don’t judge right? So I was kind of a lineart
Turning into colored imagery by his touch
Well, another guy did come into my life
And while I was writing this poem I didn’t know if he would ever come for me
God, my friends would love this
Anyway, so while, I was broken and wounded
And halfway a toy which fit in the hands of a manga reader
He took me in from a bus which felt like thousands of arms
Sex workers don’t really enjoy non-consensual touch kids
And bought me coffee
And a lot of drinks
He says I am 5000 bucks in debt
I could repay by sucking him, but, I think he’s halfway straight
And I have lied to myself enough to know that hurting other people
And hurting yourself, just ain’t the same
So, 21^st midnight, when medication, hopefully gets over
I would get drunk with him
I would hug him and tell him that he’s the best
Better than highway vodka in front of a restaurant
Being passed around by strangers for the sake
of a pint of beer anyway
Much better than a whore who didn’t know any better
Better than a lover who broke up with someone
Who didn’t love him back the same way
But, mostly I would still be sexual
Running hands through long strands of hair
And kissing bearded faces
Well, at least till the anti depressants are effective anyway

Virginity : A View From India

The myth surrounding virginity has always astounded me. To degrade a human being into petty categories of “pure” and “impure” on the basis of the sexual experiences they might or might not have implies an objectification that is terribly regressive. I remember a cousin saying, “Would you buy a car that has been used before?” We have not only reduced women into objects, they are consumerist goods, to be sold at an auction on the basis of their purity. It is strange when seen in the context of a changing world which increasingly sees sexual liberation as one of the hallmarks of progressiveness that this regressive notion is rife in apparent progressive groups too, especially in India.

When I was having this discourse in India, a lot of them did not have opinions on the first night in terms of choice, rather, their view was that sex itself is impure. Granted, I study in a place which is not as modernised as my home, and the class factor does come to play. While, sexuality and appreciation is prevalent here (you do find men making uncomfortable comments everywhere, and women do admit to their sexual attractions, however, privately that might be), to speak of it in the open, to open a discussion is seen as naivete. I come from a position of privilege, I have seen people use their sexualities as a weapon as an adolescent and I stand by that. However, in the poor society, the sexualised woman is the outcast, unless, of course, she appears nightly on the TV screen. We would not forgive the ghar ki ladki to indulge in such behaviour, but, the profitable exploitation of a woman by mass media is something we would indulge in. This also is secret, people find it hard admitting, they watch porn, or like masterbation, in that manner at least sexuality is equal.

Inequality peeks through the fringes when the woman who has had sex before is treated merely as a number. The number of people she has fucked, the number of shameful nights she has had. What is so shameful about sex? I have been told that as a person who comes from a modern city, I do not understand. Yet, the quality of the flesh, and the needs are same. We are after all biological beings united by this base same-ness. Whether the maal on TV or the ghar ki ladki, the breasts would not differ so much in composition, and the nerves would still instill erotic imaginations. Not that I want to oppose traditionalist values as a whole, liberation should not mean that you should have to have sex to fit into the world. It merely means having the choice to do what you want. In this society, the choice is subtracted easily, the currency of shame mediating all nteractions between the male and female sex.

The men wish to fuck, they would go extraordinary lengths to court a girl they term “loose” and not shy away from anything on that account. On the other hand, they would choose women who are easily available and dispensable with that knowledge alone. Women are consumerist goods then, and we men are the consumers.

“She is such a slut yaar.”

Easy to say isolatedly, and, easy to categorise females till we are left with categories. “Would you like a Nissan or a Toyota sir?” “Of course you would prefer a virgin, who am I to ask?”

There are myths that obviously need to be tackled here, but, even those myths are so entrenched in objectification of women that it becomes very difficult to give answers without feeling drenched out of everything.

To answer some questions.

No, the woman is not a car.
No the sexual pleasure of yours that you will derive from a tight vagina would not be taken away.

No, a woman is not the number of men she has fucked.

Why the fuck is your ego so fragile?

Shame goes around, and love becomes a currency that is so related to shame that you can seldom tell them apart. I wish I had a solution, but, it’s hard to. Sex education in this country after all should have no mention of sex, and a virgin woman is just easier for them to sell.

To the Woman I met Once

The felt tip underneath my skin
Wrote “Woman” all over my body
before I turned eighteen
And hence, started the blooming
Out of the broken puberty lines
I found cursive lines of black ink
Everywhere I looked,
Whiteners fashioned out of prejudice
Would not make them lose
The heart broke in the midst of stormy shambles
While, I gathered my sunny stock in order
to raise a barn amidst the woods
I kept friendships at the backdoor
However, it shines and it shines
Words spoken could not erase
What was written so inexplicably inside
Women were always pink carnations
Heaped upon one another, frail, shivering
And yet, there was something of a reclamation
In the streets of a town which was sepia toned
So, confessing to myself over a cigarette
In a street where the time halted to a stop
i decided that my body is forgiven
For being so, and the felt tip became film
Showcased to an eclectic audience
On a wooden night where plastic fell
Out of images, I drew out transformations
And paintbrushes became who I was
Not a sermon, more a ballad
Spoken out from hilly mountaintops
Where mercy so immediately merged with snow
That the horses ran across fields
I was a daffodil, among carnations and forget-me-nots
And the felt tip still wrote, but, now
The songs were stories, and I will tell you one
The story of a boy who was born
The story of a girl who always was
And how there were not two souls but, one
How where you come from
Is not who you are…

Amanda Palmer, Asking and Fears

Last week I held myself up enough to read through Amanda Palmer’s “The Art of Asking” on a whim. This came betwixt a horrible week riddled with a lot of life’s complexities, a majority of which centred around an exam which is due on December this year. Being a performer has always perplexed me to some degree, I have never found myself identifying with the spitfire woman screaming her vocals out of a soapbox. I would rather be Allen Ginsberg, sitting in a studio fashioned out of garage wood in the centre of a town that seemed to be screaming out names. Yet. Palmer means something to me, her ideas of motherhood, her fear of becoming irrelevant is something that plagues me on a daily basis. I am after all someone who takes long breaks from my own blog without warning and threatens to not come back, until the heart pushes so.

You see part of me in consumed too, I have been dealing with these feelings that scare me. I do not know if I am “homosexual” enough for people. I do not think I can be “bisexual” anymore either. I haven’t really been attracted to women in a while. I find myself contemplating over the nuances of what it means to be gay in India, and I think I fill none of them, except for having this strange need for sucking a dick at the end of the night. There is something about the collar bones of a man, the contours of his chest, the slightness of the hair, the veins in the penis that invites me again and again. I confess over tea that I am afraid to open up enough to actually let myself out of that zone of being sexuality-less, because then my vulnerabilities will also show. The reason I turned off the lights last time after all was not because I found my lover to be ugly, but, because I was so sure that I was. I have always hidden my body under wraps and wraps, and it takes courage to open up bits of myself for inspection.

Amanda in this way, represents something that I can never been. She’s a fierce poet who is confident about her body, she invites her fans to draw over her bodies, an act of two-way trust. For me, I hide behind lenses of cameras with words trying to make them feel what I feel in my heart, in my libido. I do not know if the libido would preserve itself over the years, I am terribly afraid of course of being a loner in the world which is tumbling downwards. Thatched roofs are hard to escape, but, I was born under one, and not with a silver spoon in my mouth either.

I feel phony as a writer too, and this only owes itself to the fact that mostly I do not get the time or motivation to write a lot. Battling with depression meant I did not write at all for the most of past few months. I wrote some stories in the centred way that I do, but, those poems sound fake and hollow, withering away before the sand of time could even touch them.

I am panicking.

But, Amanda taught me this. I asked for help yesterday, I have been asking for help all week, trying to get people to rally around me for some of my passions. Maybe, most of them will be negatives, maybe, nothing will come out of it, but, well, what’s the worst thing they could do anyway?

On thorny mornings

This is a part of the series of posts about Rabindrasangeets that have influenced me, I am not even a speck of what the bard was, but, I try…

I remember you before dawns, walking out with a horse, in a sunset that I could only describe as thorny. You held in your fingers a pencil, and you decided to draw poetry on a sand. I wouldn’t find my portrait in those words until you decided to leave the city on your car.
Now, i remember days like I remember nights. They are the same. No one wets my candle with their touch the moment I have turned around. The saree is no longer a seductress and the red and white often becomes a landscape of lilies marred by the blood of a swallow. You never did know how much of a storm you threatened to become did you?
Neither did you remember how walking out on an evening which was striking into the night like a hammer, you were sparking onto a momentary bliss, and all I had was this expectation that the pain of burning could ease out this pain. But, then you would say swallows are shallow for wanting the same thing again and again. And I would be a sandstorm covering the footprints I left near the streaks of your tires which were nearly paintbrushes. Then again you are an evening that hammers the night till she becomes a seductress and I am childish lips drawn on the corners of a shirt collar to mimic kisses you should have left.

Was it fate that we fell in love in a desert town? Or was it fate that inevitably we ended up drowning. I meant to ask how many men you have drowned before me but, I know you would smile and I would be left drinking sandy waters on the banks of an oasis. Do you know palm trees smell of the way you spilled milk on the water to make it into an image reflected infinitely on the shores like the moon was. I knew your secrets, you wanted to see the moon have a blue stain, because you were always sans marks on your visage, something that lent uniqueness to your being.

If I could sail, I would sail with you, through the distant shores of endlessness, and I will drown too, much like lipstick stains do. Please do not let me put more acetone on the nailpolish wounds.

 

 

This is influenced by “Tomar Khola Hawa”, you can listen to the song below

Past Lovers

Who do you complain to when your ninth grade romance
leads to a silent night before 12^th grade when you lose
your virginity in a background, and you become just a silhouette
screaming that you wish you had not? When you have known
about masturbation from the day you were eight because
someone masturbated to you, after closing bedroom doors.
“Does anal hurt?”, she asks after smoking the third cigarette
I smile and I whisper, “Lots.” “But, not as much as him
Forcing me down so that I wouldn’t enjoy it more than he did”
remains a subtext. This grows until my silences become
novels which need writing, and I am afraid that he would notice
his name which rides on anonymity. Maybe, he has forgotten.
I’m ambivalent about that, do I want him to forget how I felt?
Maybe, if he remembers, there will be regret, but, what if
it is another day when he does not listen to my screams and is
there telling me about how he would like to try something new.
“Something new”, my friend who is strong says, and starts
Painting with words, showcasing her pain to be a strength
surviving without dilution, without any kind of pretense.
Shame flows through me, I remember my false pretense
and how I tried to remove his taste, by spraying deodorant
on my tongue. Shit decomposing, turns to green goo
and you can drown and suffocate, without a light to see.
You detoxify, and I have spent years trying to run away like an addict
getting rid of heroin in their bloodstream. Every time I look at a man
I measure him up to the past failure, telling myself that I am
not looking for you. “Battered wife” is not what I will live with
but, it is painful because books become smokescreens before
a TV screen showcases our past, and I am puking.
I have not listened to music, and I could not masturbate until I was 18
before your face was replaced by another, and I believe
that he was worse because I knew what he was doing.
Only I didn’t protest because ever since, eight I never had
anyone exclusively. There are only so many musicians you can
cut out because of the memories. Suddenly, you are dancing
ballet with the most amazing guy in the company and they will
put on that song, and he won’t know what hit him.
However, that is not how I know what the worst is, the absolute worst
comes from reclaiming my body. Answering my friend’s
call, walking back into your restaurant and realizing though
they change the interior decoration and shit, the chicken soup
still got your saliva in it. I am still afraid about going out
meeting people not pre-approved, but, then that is shit.
The last time I had a hook up I went outside and I smoked
five cigarettes, one after the other, until he walked into me
and hugged me. Yeah, we weren’t supposed to keep contact
but, that was the only bus ride from our hotel, that did not stink
of your masculinity. And I know I am 21 and fuck, I need to figure
out a way out of this, but, I cannot behind
this wall that is chasing me. You do not return my calls, as if me
accusing you was the greater crime than you raping me.
Sorry I wrote this poem
You did always accuse me of not keeping the peace