WORDS ON A WOMAN

Sisters, we shall not be bruised

however long this strive may be:

we are architects, building anew

we are tall and arresting structures

rising artwork and free thinkers,

pinning own dreams from

self-made visions;

rather, we do not bend or listen

to the backwardly misinformed

or the people assessing us

when their slurs and taxes

are the only things

messing with forwards.

Today, sisters

we have the same right to life

to rally, bejewelled

alive in bedlam

and climb outside our heads

to bring ‘woman’ back from

the dead.

Discerning our concerns

is learning

to be icons of tenderness

of compassion

and of welcoming the wetness

when our voices pour like rain.

INTO THE BLUE

I look to the fire below, and I’m mesmerized

playing in the surf, of worlds inside our heads

red lightning beneath our feet

and I’m hypnotized.

The surface finally rips, eyes open wide

pulled under, its you that I lift

my gentle and kind.

I saw myself pull in two, falling

wrapping flesh round the other, a monsoon

of colour on the darkest night

carried by the tide.

 

SUBJECT

I often forget

The mirror isn’t camera

There’s a hacker under the lenses

Of my corneas

Shooting me paralysed and pickled in snapshots

Of someone else’s desire,

My own skin rendered a suit

I’d rather crawl free of like pupa.

 

There are a lot of things that send my vision spinning:

Deafening offences

By women

And the screamingly obvious ways we’ve gagged their honesty.

 

Men’s eyes catcalling behind their lids

How can a look be so loud

And the subject so silent?

When did we forget to look quietly?

Catch the softness of an afternoon in the garden

The unspoken amongst the leaves

The bare tangibility of an unmade face in the morning

HUMANS ATTEMPT CHRISTMAS

They sit in the dark, under the sky of light bulbs

that pull observing eyes

colourfully strung satellites , microscopic dots

painting bucolic scenes.

The humans are at it again;

peaking sister out of bed, nicks all the milk

left for fluffy man in red suit, Sandy Claws

suspended on the drain pipe.

Doors down, the old King is dead

the Extinctionists next door killed poor Nick

stuffing the yearly cheer into box coffins-

pageantry piled up in the attic junk yard

of tinsel.

Some find shoulders of land

in living rooms hit by tornadoes, battleground

the fallen soldiers, death by wrapping paper.

LION WOMAN

Unto the forest she drags herself

spectral Queen with more than a bite-

quite the talker.

Lion woman could cut out your tongue

devastate you like meteorites

flung like punches under satellites

mistaken for comets.

The noble trees mark her transit

some stand, others are sold to the ground

like chopped limbs, barbecued

to lessen the risk

of caving in your skull.

Lion woman with her atlas hands

nothing but clear cracks and tears

from chemical burns

walks half full, fear fossilised here

in the wake of man.

She wants nebulas for irises

the warm hug of a space suit

like the tin foil blankets

they give you outside a hospital room-

at least then they’d save her.

She yearns to pluck the stars

and keep them near her poached heart

but they already belong to the galaxy

and the moon has the sun’s love.