Apologies, Mother
I am generous with my flaws
Early in the morning I hate myself and share it with you
Over a cup of bitter coffee and stale cigarettes
I bitch about the way us fags and freaks are treated
I am a lemon in your apple grove
My pocked yellow skin, my sour disposition-
Don’t they know how quickly those apples turn to shit when cut?
Everyone knows you put lemon juice on apple
To keep it fresh and pretty
Are you fresh and pretty?
I thought so until I cut you deep
And saw the cracks ‘neath porcelain
And saw the blood turned sap
And your beauty, thin and tenuous,
Dry and thirsty, mewling-
You want bitter acid like what comes from my mouth
You want hard survival like what comes from my blood
You want me to pump you full of glamour
Pet your coif and cow-tow your generous ass
You want me to sing you harmless love songs
Bump and grind you with my neutered sex
Turn myself into a homo-like-you-all
Instead of a homosexual
I can make hatred from my ivory tower, too-
Without the backing of false, moral cowardice
Without the tight-lipped stink-eye from disapproving so-and-so’s
I can make a claim on God and pathologize the lot of you-
I can birth a river of sadness, AIDS privileged sorrow
That tastes of rainbows, red ribbons and organ failure
I can show you a magical kingdom
Packed with diseased, dead bodies
Holding each other like puzzle pieces
Heaped in bundles like their namesake faggots
Yeah, I’m bitter, thick-skinned and
Hard to take without a little bit of sugar
I’m acid, venom, Methuselah, drag queen
Medusa, NaNa, I don’t need the approval
Of the Dumb, Deaf and Rich
I don’t need your power of attorney
To come back from the dead
Because I’ve come back every time you’ve killed me
Spitting from the grave Greek curses
And silver laments So sorry, mother, really-
I’m not a sweet, innocent fag.
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Remain Calm
Remain calm. Remain calm is what they tell you when your plane is crash-landing.
Remain calm is what they say when administering a rape kit.
Remain calm is what they tell you when your building is on fire.
Remain calm is the prologue to death
When panic hits they say Remain calm, stay cool bitch. Take a deep breath. Relax
(Breathing) I have been taking deep breaths all my life
I have been breathing very deeply all of my life
I have been patient I have been cool I have been calm
All of this breathing has built a fire from a spark and now my soul is in flames
And still I breath calmly and still I breathe slowly as the flames rise
To consume not just my anger but also my wrath.
I am a building on fire
I am a nose-diving plane
I am a rape happening here and now
I have the seed of death
Remain calm. Remain calm is etched in the bullets
Remain calm is sung on the wind
Remain calm is dangled from branches deep in our history
Remain calm is the knife in my gut
Remain calm is the burden of silence
Remain calm is the nuclear blast
Remain calm is the song the assassin sings
Remain calm is the whip of control
I’m burned I’m raped I’m whipped I’m killed I’m crashed I’m death I’m gone
I am the moment you can never take back, the swan dive to fate that breaks your neck
Remain calm
I am the witness to suicide bombs and the smile of victory on the young soldier’s face
Remain calm
I am the tide sixteen stories high that dashed a thousand skulls against rock and mud
Remain calm
I am the dagger of Maya thrust into your heart
Remain calm.
Remain calm to witness
“I’m gonna kill your motherfuckin ass”
Remain calm to witness
“I don’t want to hurt anybody. Just do what I tell you and everything will be fine”
Remain calm to witness
“You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, right?”
Remain calm to witness
“everything done to me I do to you in the here and now you are all my reflections”
Remain calm
Remain calm
Breathe in the fire of acid destruction
Breathe in the fire of reincarnation
Breathe in the fire of self-realization
Breathe in the fire of reclamation,
Reunification, reparation,
Unclean, untidy devastation
Remain calm bitch
Remain calm motherfucker
Remain calm remain calm
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Addicted
I get addicted to the nice things he says
and I wonder how long till they go away and I know
it seems desperate and there’s an urgency in me that I can’t quiet down
I can’t calm her or nurse her or save her.
There’s this panic in me around love that makes my stomach hurt,
revives the days of cutting and strangling myself unconscious.
I sometimes want to see my bones when I’m hurting
to know that I’m actually alive and not a ghost dream of myself
I’m scared because I have to admit in the face of love
that all my detractors all my family were wrong,
I’m not the ugliest dumbest thickest one
I’m not worthless stupid hatred-worthy
I’m a being of light like everyone and worthy of love.
I don’t have to work so hard that love gets confusing
I don’t have to wrap my head around everything that happens
and wait for words like a starving child abandoned in the street
even though that’s what I am, what I have been and where I come from.
Dirty shoes and clothes with holes in school they sent me home
cos I was dirty I got made fun of a lot for being poor
and I’d never seen marshmallows in a jar,
the cream kind you can just put on bread with peanut butter and
thought my friends were rich because they ate food that wasn’t from packages Top Ramen was a big deal and mom waited tables
I bussed them for quarters ate the scraps when no one looked cos I was hungry- sublimating…
Nursing wounds from the world around me,
crying blankly, never-articulated anger
and sadness at the world rejecting me…
my brother and sister didn’t like the things I did
cos once upon a time I wore girls clothes and
someone told them that boys in girls clothes equals unstable,
weak and worth nothing, might as well start over he’s a lost cause
and I only wanted to be pretty
like I felt on the inside, watching Linda Carter spin around and around-
I wanted to spin like that too and become a Wonder Woman
bullet proof and invincible making bad guys tell the truth, Like
why did you pin me down and marker me up
with all those nasty words that I had to internalize
like the spit you hocked in my mouth,
when you called me faggot and panty waste and
spent all of that time convincing me you liked me
just to hold me down and shame me
You were the first rape I ever had and I feel sentimental now because I’ve been raped so much-
Uncle Feely fucked me hardest with his fingers and his mind
kissed my mouth with blinded tongue- though
he probably tasted that loogie you put there so many years earlier-
He’s the only one that hurt me so deep
he could probably taste the pain in me and relished it
somehow my mother never scrubbed hard enough to get those words from me
Forgiveness might be golden
but in me it feels like pewter
cos nobody took the time to forgive me
for being mixed up and confused at life-
nobody took the time to holler at me and say
“I’m glad you’ve made it out alive,
what beautiful decorations you’ve got. Those battle scars are lovely.”
I get to feeling like I turned
into Wonder Woman’s invisible jet-
there’s something powerful sitting inside me
if I can just incorporate her into me
then I can be a whole, living person-
I feel like a doll on a shelf waiting to be made real-
all of these experiences have hurt so bad
that I’ve been turned to plastic parts and porcelain veneer-
distance makes the heart throb muffled
distance makes life like static, white noise,
comforting and disconcerting, the thrum of a steady but slow bass line,
just waiting for it all to stop-
No more memories of my mother screaming help me
and us children not being able to stop him,
no more memories of falling out that window
with my father’s hands pushing and crying “I have no choice”,
no more wondering if the same demons that got him will get me,
no more wondering if I, the product of rape
and a victim of rape would ever go on
to commit such an atrocity
no more thoughts of having children and
how badly might they be tortured when I wasn’t looking?
and would they ever be able to tell me?
No more turning over in my sleep
in fits of anxious prowling of my deepest, angriest parts.
No more recollections of dead faces in boxes
eyes closed and lips shut to never say I’m sorry,
explain away the pain, let me say I love you
but your dead ears don’t hear, your living ones didn’t either
No more questions about why the fuck did you ever have children
you sadistic depressed motherfucker?
No more freak outs around people who weren’t there
to see it feel it hear it and wonder why the fuck I’m so affected
by touch why I’m so urgently telling my own truth
why I’m so angry when my friends drink and drive,
take their families that pay their rent for granted and call their mom a bitch
All I ever wanted was a family to love me
accept me for who I am not be like me
or think like me but at least recognize me in a crowd as one of them,
not a defector cos I never left them, they left me
like a bird dropped from a nest smelling of human hands to die
I get addicted to the nice things you say
because someday you’ll stop saying them
and you will have left me
but I’ll still have those words tattooed on my brain
to remind me that once someone saw something in me
that no one else did.
Someone at one point saw me as whole,
nurtured that vision and stuck with it long enough
to let the fear of exposure vanish
and the thought of family bloom
So someday when you’ve had enough
and my depression hacks through your resolve
and my death ghosts rob your sleep
and my resolve to have solitude has planted weeds in your Eden,
I will still have words to show that you once cared
so deeply you formulated sentences around the idea
of loving me and for that I thank you
for that you will always be famous to my heart
there will be an independent, foreign film
complete with songs and subtitled dialogue
because I don’t yet know the language of thanks
I am scared to say I love you
because where that comes from in my family history
is a dark place full of gut punches and behavioral allowances
that make children objects of scorn and resentment,
sexual punching bags
I am scared of you telling me you love me
because that means you now have the power
to completely obliterate me
that gives you power over that little girl-boy inside me
who’s still flipping off the world for never seeing her for who she is,
a part of me as valid as my heart or brain or tongue
Maybe there’s a part of you that sees her
and you want to hold her.
Maybe there’s a part of you that recognizes her
as one of you and you just want to help her
flip off the world even more. I don’t know.
Perhaps we can do the same for each other, but together and that’s the truth behind I love you,
not all this hyper sensitive shit I wanna leave behind,
but all the rest and permission to let my crazy hang out sometimes
is all I need to know.
Do you really love me now?
Or will the dawn emerge in silence
and sorrow for every promise of tomorrow
that will never come because THIS love is too intense?
I’ve heard this before and I know I‘ve not had the last
of the red hot rejections
because my mind is too different,
because I obsess over goodness and romantic gestures
and I want to spend time lavishing in anything that’s good
without having to explain why it feels so fucking good.
I’m in defense of my love and of my good feelings.
I’m in defense of my resolve to see something through
to it’s conclusion because my family left me like they did,
mom in the ground dad in the ground, what’s left for me?
I fear you’ll say the same when you see how I self-medicate,
the sicknesses that I have.
All I want is to accept and be accepted.
So tell me am I dreaming when you say you understand??
Tell me I am dreaming and I’ll walk away
my footsteps to the shore of never again
I’ll sail away, believe me,
the muffled sound of my speech drowning in uncle’s fingers and prepubescent rape.
