In the darkest days of our humanity
I often wonder why we thought not
To turn on the lights
Why we condemned wrongs and injustices
To small rooms
And only entered them through back doors
Why the judges of damning deeds
Didn’t dismantle the decay done by guilt
And instead locked that guilt away
Not erasing it but not affording it the right
To catharsis either.
Keeping it in the dark leaving it to fester in and from itself
Why not expose guilt?
I asked
Then thought it strange the answer was in the question
Who does that help?
When has the airing of guilty feelings brought on by damaging deeds
Benefitted the one who owns no stalk in guilt
It is the guilty it helps
It clears their conscious and frees their soul
But so
If theirs is the one tainted shouldn’t it be they
Who have to live with guilt - a punishment
That doesn’t have a casualty count.

I have this house of a heart
Each pump of blood
Blows open a window artery
Leaving all the rooms a bit too drafty
And I have never been able to find a sweater
Because there is no light in a rib-caged heart
It is not a sanctuary of a place
It’s one that keeps time and rhythm, yes
But the rhythm is only echoed back into itself
Confusing my muscles red as brinks
The rhyme throws off the time
And the record that places in my house of a heart
Skips and repeats its song
So I can never remember to feel around for a sweater
Or even to wait and feel that it’s too cold.

I am a mountain.
Oh, the valley of person I used to be
You remember, I was so deep.
So deep that
You  blew off the dust
gently -
From your binoculars
Just to see what was at my bottom
The valley of myself that at one time
Was so rough and so steep  
That when you climbed down to touch the
Base of who I really was
Because  for you a look wasn’t enough
You came up I’ll admit victorious
But bloodied.
The last of you I saw
Were  your red footprints leading away
So since you’ve been gone
I am a mountain.
I have turned myself inside out
Rivaling Everest
Every sore and bump, you can see now!
I have made it so all you have to do is look up.
Now all I do is look down
Waiting for bandaged footprints
To walk beside the red ones
Only in a different direction.

Feminism is not a bad word
It is more than four words
If you are a woman if you are a man
If you believe that gender equality
Is important, if you stand by your mother
When she shouts, “I am equal!”
Then you are a feminist.
And I’m tired, I’m tired and I’m frustrated
That the patriarchal society we live in
Would rather demonize equality
Rather than let it stand tall as the statue
It deserves to be.
All it means
Is you believe that women and men are equal
That they deserve to be treated both fairly and just
And I trust-
That the only image of a feminist in your mind
Is one that hates men, that burns bras, that simply get in the way.
And sure there might be a few of those, yes
But I would like to ask you
Since when did one represent the whole?
Since when were all white Christian men
Devalued, dehumanized because of Jeffery Dahmer?
If I were to follow your logic
If we were all to follow your logic
We’d have to lock up every single one of you
All because a few of your fellow men
Perverted an ideal that at the heart of it was good
And please be good
To your feminists please know that it is not a movement
To strip people of rights but to grant rights to those who have been denied
Feminism isn’t a bad word
It’s a word that holds an ideal
That genetics that genitalia do not dictate
Whether or not a human being is held to the
American standard of equality.

If I could have three wishes
The first would be for bigger arms
The second would be for bigger arms
And the third for a bigger chest
I would use my newly acquired body parts
For nothing else other than to help you sleep
I would reach out and grab you from
Any of the corners of this earth
That keep you awake
I would hold you close to
My bigger chest so you had room
To move around on it like a pillow
And with my arms I would wrap around you completely
Making myself the world’s first human blanket
And I would tell you just as sweetly as I could
That it would have been pointless to simply wish for
A pillow, a blanket, a whole bed
Just for you to rest your head
Because within my own body I also have
A radio
One that can play you the various beatings of my heart
A set of lungs
Full of air that will blow on you more gently than any fan
And I have a memory that knows you better
Than the memory foam between sheets and mattress
I wouldn’t wish you a bed to rest your head
I’d wish to be your bed, to know I am the thing that rests your head.

I cannot fully explain to you
How perplexing it is
To be a 22 year old adult
But to still have the fear
Usually reserved for a young child
The fear of the dark
And not in a way that one is afraid of death
Or lions or tigers or bears
Oh my, my fear is much more irrational
You see I find I have bravery in real things
I’ve rock climbed mountains
Ridden roller coaters
Held a poisonous snake by the tale
You get why that’s braver right?
But what makes the hair on the back of my neck stand
What makes my skin pucker into tiny little bumps
Are monsters born of my own imagination
You see my imagination is wicked
And I use that word both ways
In the slang sense that it is awesome and powerful
And in the literal sense that is it evil
That when I imagine a monster
I give it ten hands with 20 fingers each ending with teeth
And eyes so black they sink into the monsters head
Making them look like empty sockets
So deep, they touch his brain
I am forever afraid
I’ll be honest with you
I sleep with all the lights on
And my closet doors wide open
So I could see exactly what is going on in there
I years ago threw out my bed skirt
Convinced they cloaked crooked
Teeth crawling critters capable of decapitation
And were all considerable stronger than myself
As you can imagine I have a lot of nightlights
Mobile ones I use to walk to the bathroom with in the middle of the night
I have to buy so many batteries
The clerk at Walmart can only reasonably assume
I have deviant private life
Because grown *** adults shouldn’t be that scared of the dark
Because at some point during or after childhood
I won’t assume it happens at the same time for everybody
Your imagination takes a backseat to logic
And you understand that monsters aren’t real
But death is and maybe that’s a better fear to have
That didn’t happen with me though and I think most artists
If they were to be completely honest with you would tell you
It didn’t happen to them either they missed a step
In the development milestone department
Though I think they would tell you too like I’m about to tell you now
The fear is worth it there hasn’t been a single monster
I’ve imagined that hasn’t had an equal
Beautiful thought and I can see them better with all the lights on.

I would call it love.
If you would-
It would validate every feeling
I feel when you are away
I think it would
Remind me that we are two
Healthy organs
In a sick body we named the world
And even through you call me heart
And I call you lung
And even though we aren’t in the same place
In this body
I still pump blood for you
And you still filter air for me
And I’d call that love
If you would.