Where do men get this confidence? This ego. This thing
that tells them all their words are weighted with sounds of crashing clouds,
that tells them someone is listening, or has sinned when not listening.
When they spew idiocies as the grandest of ideologies and tell
(in that knowing tone) that they know all that has been suffered,
they clang shut inclusion's gates.
When they hum harmonies for tenor, bass, and baritone,
they deny the necessity of atonement.
They haven't a clue that a view exists outside of the rational-logical-
geometrical-non-metaphysical physics of stuff.
"If it doesn't make sense, it isn't true."
That's their truth. A totally amazing mythic credo
like their games, played with their rules, their balls, their bodies;
like their language (which I'm thinking about adopting AND divorcing).
I've learned their words like "gut-level"
(which is where I don't understand them) and these
language lessons have stolen my humor, my muses.
Where are the words that are mine?
Where is the phrase that says "kick ass" to me?
I want to know who told me—when I was a girl competing with boys
making my own illustrated soundtrack,
creating my own folklore my own ethos—
Who told me to act like a lady?
Who told me to be quiet?
Was it some god of Patriarchy that caused me
to silence and then cramp and bleed;
to despise my body and not revel in its rhythms?
Who did this thing?
Was it me?
I watch this confidence inflate the Other.
My girl confidence gone twisted from and in their mouths.
I'm left with questions and concerned nurturance as
the only place to go, the only way to touch.
I miss too many trains.
I don't look alone at the night.
The world poisons my physical freedom with the fear and violence
that hold hands with power.
Sexual assault is the female right of passage but,
physical violations are just limp echoes of the penis that swells
in my throat whenever a man opens his mouth.
I want to say, "Fuck your cocksure confidence bullshit!
Fuck your piss-me-off paradigms!
Fuck your sore-sorry-ass words!"
I'm left with masculine invectives, phallic and scatological references.
Brave bats and balls have seized the anthologies;
shot me right out of that literary canon;
labeled me a silent servicing thing of beauty;
some Who that hasn't howled;
some boyjoy forever.
But, scatology won't swing in my skirts.
I have anarchy in my ovaries.
When I shut my eyes to read, I hear my body calling its voice.
I want a language that secretes and ovulates.
I want a language with no fear of cunnilingus, and a better word for it.
I want a language that listens to children;
purrs and rolls like a cat-queen in season.
Where multiple orgasms are the norm, not a goal, and
not a one-shot push-pull two-headed boy beast.
I want a language that goes inside, not out.
I want my voice back for one day, or one moment of one day,
for less and more than infinity.
I don't get manipulated by truce offers of Esperanto.
ALL the language I'm given is already man-made.
Give me My language and watch me become a black man's river.
Watch me find a better thing to do with a dream deferred.
Watch me dismiss a mountain into an ocean.
Watch continents kneel at my shores.
Hear the music bend around scales never heard in minds never freed.
Hear the dull-colored birds sing just as sweet, call just as loud.
Hear women cry out in colors never stretched on canvas cloth
never caught in wind or larynx.
I want a language that has the taste of me on its tongue, and I taste good.
the smell of me filling its nose, and I smell fine.
I want a language afraid and ready to give birth.
I want a language that feeds empires with swollen nipples,
doesn't shave its legs, and grows wiser and more beautiful with age.
I want a language that serves My practicalities,
that extols the virtues of cranberry juice
and cotton full-panty briefs.
And then I could stand in a room and not doubt that I'm there
not wonder if I should speak
if anybody heard me
if I did speak.
I could walk to the train station.
I could burn the maps in my car.
I could have guiltless ashtrays.
I could "Howl" better than my cousin's cousin.
I could say, finally
I saw the best girl brains of all generations destroyed by the madness of starving hysterical language,
dragging themselves from beneath comforters at dawn, looking for an unangry word.