Playing with Poetry

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve written poetry. Usually I just stick to songs (way less pretentious seeming). However on occasion I see a really really phenomenal poet and start making my own verbal doodles. This rhyming rampage was brought on by watching Rives on Ted Talks, and then on youtube.com, then any where else I could watch his performances. Songwriting and poetry are related like black and white ink drawings and oil paintings are related, we use the same canvas of silence but poetry fills the void with thoughts while songwriting can use instrumentation and singing to fill in where we can’t find the words to fit.

Any how, here goes.

When did I start to believe
that beauty meant conformity?
Changing so subtly
it didn’t register consciously
that I had stopped expecting intimacy
and was instead pruning myself
to become more user friendly
until one night a user sat before me
tallying up his kindnesses like a bar tab
I was meant to pay with open thighs
and I’m not saying I’m complaining
because it made me realize
after kicking his average ass out
that this was what the magazines I’ve been reading are about
finding love with games
trying to change
hiding the fact that I was born strange
and wild
My Daddy tried to tell me that it would take a while
and what he meant was I am special
but I heard un-lovable
because how else do you prove your worth
as a girl
if not by
seeing it reflected in a good mans eyes
so deeply ingrained were the centuries of lies
that the feminine is too weak to stand on her own
and women like me
just end up alone
with no one to hear our stories but the cats
some how I grew accustomed to believing that
I must cut
trim
bleach
wax
and bind
to mold myself
and allow others to define
the boundaries
of who I ought to be
but the wilderness in me
keeps bursting through the seams
like tree roots that raise sidewalks
scattering seeds of thoughts
so I can never stay perfectly manicured
my Feral girl
is never satisfied by domestic men
so why try to be attractive to them?
I’m letting this garden go
until my eyes will show
an inner jungle
of complexities
maiden, mother, crone
I am all of these
blessed with the beauty of countless deities
I am spirit formed into reality
and the ONLY man for me
will howl happily
at the fullness of my moon