tell yourself
the man who eyed your thighs
in short shorts
shouting FAG! from caprice window
wanted nothing more than to touch you
or be touched
but long ago lost freedom of language:
gift of mothertongues made serpents by men
split down the middle by he who fears the power of her
it is only war
tell yourself the butterfly boys
kin and caste
who look away to scorn
to dim the lighted room
of intimate possibility
fix themselves through perfect boybodies
affirmed in fear through something
seemingly better than they
it is not that you are not enough
only too much
tell yourself the jesuspeople who hold you hostage
with delusions of divinity
are just mortalmen
ashamed of humanity
desperate for power
at the expense of blood
and you are not easily opened
tell yourself that men
who hate menlovingmen
hate women
and the woman within
hate mothers because fathers did so
hate womb power and not having
hate the inability to be made men whole
without the energy
of sisters with bleeding breasts
who have nursed entire worlds of men
with frail phallus
Blues In Black 