Hermetically Sealed

There are a lot of sickos hiding out in religion. Look at religious sects who have polyamory or plural marriage as part of their covenant. Nowhere else in the United States will you find a man living with 5 women, having children with all of them, and living in a form of a compound where people won’t turn their heads until he says “I’m a Mormon.”

Remember Tony Alamo? What about David Koresh? Jim Jones? All religious nuts who had underage girls for their sexual playthings. In my opinion, they were handled with kid gloves because they pulled out the old “sexual purity” card and made it the “Voice of God” that instructed them to take a 12-year-old girl as their wife.

Think about those creepy “Purity” Balls. *shiver*

And don’t even get me started on the boy-molesting Catholic Priest cover ups.

My point is that sexual deviants hide out in religion because it’s a nice soft bed for sickos of all kinds. I don’t know many (if any) women who have not been sexually brutalized, dominated, or compromised in some form or fashion at the hands of “religion”.

For the Bible tells me so.

When Will Women Learn?

When will women learn
that the value of our being
is not in our bodies
That the dreams that we hold close
are not meant to be gobbled up
by the insatiable hunger of others.

When will women learn
that we are not defined by
how clean our house is
how tight our pussy is
how hard we wring our hands
when we try to figure out how to fix
the entire fucking world.

When will women learn
that our tears do not indicate weakness
that our legs do not instigate rape
that the soft pallet of our heart
is not a mother fucking trampoline
for Butches or men or bosses or Fathers
who would rather crash down upon us
than look within us
or listen to us
or fear us.

When will women learn
that we damn ourselves when we damn each other,
that those unbearably beautiful daughters
are not our whipping girls
that we are not afforded the luxury of
“I’m sorry”
when we rip out the heart of our sister
or tap-dance across her life
because we can’t hear our own music.

When will women learn
that our life is not a detail,
that we are not meant to live
in feint whispers or mealy sighs
that we were born to crash and burn
against the shores of the institution
that we were born to give better to the world
than was given to us
that although we are not it’s savior,
that we have that mother fucking power anyway
and that how we choose to live it or give it
defines us
and defies them
and releases us
and forms a dare within us
to be alive
and alone
and ugly
and old
and imperfect
and loud
and raging
and fat
and the very definition of what the world denies us

When will women learn? That we are not someone’s “plus one” on an invitation, that we aren’t the queen of their doublewide trailer, that just because we may be somebody’s mother that we arent’ everyone’s mother. When will women learn?

When will women learn? That being born with a pussy means that eventually someone is going to want to fill it up? That we are taught from birth that our unwhole, unholy, unwashed, unkempt selves need to be fixed with a good dickin’? When will we learn to fuck back when being fucked? When will women learn?
When will women learn
that we are
here and alive
in spite of it all
and that simply by breathing
we break the machine of the world.

When you are born with a pussy, sooner or later someone is going to try to shove something in it. Whether it be their expectations, their rules, their big throbbing dick because “you look like you need it, girl.” Because we women are seen as empty unless filled by someone else. Because our minds and bodies aren’t supposed to be enough on their own. Because we are a “bitch” or a “Feminazi” if we have the audacity to believe are fine just the way we are. Full stop.

Because having a pussy in this world means you have a scar. A deep and dark trench. A bloody gash. A broken chip that’s been reglued.

It holds momentary value when it produces a child. Or an orgasm. But even then, it’s still a scar sputtering the remnants of it’s damage.

We with pussies are taught to take it. To accept what the world shoves in us. To “make it work”. To make a child. To make them cum.

We are reduced to receptacles.

They tell us from birth that we are empty. That our hollowed out existence finds purpose in servitude. That our lives need to be filled, to be made whole.

They are wrong.

There is never a creature so lithe and limber as a woman who arches her back under the needs of the world.

Women are at the ready. Necks bent in submission to the demands, the suggestions, the tiny, tinny desires of other people. Chomping at the bit to lay down on the rocky ground so that someone else will have an easier path to walk even as they smash into our livers or our ovaries.

Women sleep less because they lay awake at night dreaming of ways to fix the problems of their sons and daughters, their lovers, their boss, their friends. We close our eyes on “maybes” and turn into a pillow made of “if I just give up myself, they can have more”.

Women walk faster, work harder, complain less, cook better, bend deeper because the world will only take us seriously when we’re on our knees.

And people wonder why we rage.

The muse is awake.

She vomited up a poem and left it dangling out there in the world in all of its rawness and she says there is more coming. She is raging in there. Stretching the sinews and sweetbreads of my guts and threatening to rip me open with those sharp little teeth.

I’ll keep screaming as long as she’s pulling the strings – All of that tingly aliveness in my fingers and ribcage says that it will be a long, long night.

I learned a very valuable lesson not so long ago.

I used to go through life pretty naively when it came to who I allowed in my space. I gave most everyone a fair chance and mostly took people at their word when they told me who they were and what they were about. I blindly accepted that most people in this world have good intentions. I still believe that on most levels.

There are, however, a small section of very, very damaged people in this world. People so damaged that the only way they know to exist is to radiate that damage out onto other people so that it will reflect something recognizable back to them. It’s the only thing they recognize – the chaos, the anger, the pain, the turbulent existence.  You can almost always spot these people by seeing who’s life is in almost constant turmoil or some form of chaos. I almost wrote a sentence here about how they can’t maintain relationships, but I have found that isn’t always true. Sometimes even the very, very damaged are able to form sociopathic bonds with others like them or, even more sadly, are able to hone in on other people’s sadness and sit in wait like a spider to be their “hero” or “savior”.

One of the things that I have come to understand is that even if you are very kind to these people, even if you show them enormous compassion, befriend them, offer a shoulder, try to show them that you care about them without their lies or grandiose stories, that they often cannot accept the love you offer because sadly, they don’t understand it. Even further, you will leave a portal in your life for their chaos by opening your heart to them.

I did this very thing hoping that showing someone, however damaged and destructive they were, my love even in times that they were lying to my face or being incredibly destructive or evil that it might put a crack in their shell of hatred and self-loathing. I had to admit to myself that people who do not want to change cannot feel love no matter what you do, what you say, or how far you try to reach into them.

I feel sorry for the two people out in this world who taught me one of my biggest lessons ever. Even though these two people entered my life at different times, they are so strikingly similar in the way they operate, it is impossible to deny the effects of damage and self-loathing and how it looks identical no matter where and in who it occurs. I feel sorrow for the fact that two human beings live such a sorrowful existence. That their families are destroyed. That they have no real friends. That they have to sit alone with their lies and deceit at night. That they will never know the joy of feeling love, compassion, and true friendship.

I feel deep pity for them even as they throw their negativity into a vacuum on a continual basis because I have to believe that nobody would choose to live their life that way. I have to believe it is just a sad example of what happens to people who are unable to work out their damage in healthy ways.

I am unapologetically thankful that these beings have crossed paths with my life. They have given me a touchstone for what true sadness looks like and a primal urge to continue valuing all of the joy that surrounds me. I live an amazing life with an amazing partner, an amazing home, amazing friends, an amazing job, and an amazing ability to love, learn, and laugh. There is nothing in this world better than that.

For all of those out there who need it, I wish you peace and healing. And as Whitney said, “Above all this, I wish you love…”