Another Year in the Body

Well, I popped on Blogger last Thursday, in a brief attempt to jot down words to immortalize the passing of yet another year. However, my birthday makes me annually cranky AND the massive company holiday party (of which I was in charge) was last Thursday night, so instead of fluid writing, I had halting moments of verbal constipation, interrupted by "urgent" requests from co-workers.

However, I awoke Friday morning with the Muse sitting on my bed. It's been a while since I arose with a poem building itself in my head, so I rushed for paper and a pen to scratch down the morning's first utterances.

What came out was unlike any of my previous poetry. Usually, I am a fan of free verse, unrhyming and arrhythmic. This piece stirs the memory of beat poetry, more appropriate to a poetry slam than an online reading. Its style is clearly inspired by some of the Sage Francis works that I have been listening to lately.

No matter how odd the phrasing may be for me, the feeling behind it is clearly one inspired by birthday blues. It gives voice to the fury of futile attempts to defy aging and keep up American society's flawed definition of beauty. Directionless rage, turned within, damaging body and soul.

Me Carve Pretty Someday

gotta pain buzzin’ underneath my skin
rage & slice, drag it out from within
Put it on show
Let everyone know
Fat ugly insides, jiggling round there

Television, magazine
Teaching me to purge
Fighting to be clean
Get it out, set it free
Stab into the real me
Flay & peel
Defy what’s real
Till I’m standing there
in nothing
but my BONES


then wrap my bones in skin
hold me up
call me thin
RAGE
at time, age and gods’ design
cut, pull, tuck & suck
tiny girls are good to fuck
spray adhesive just to hold it all in place
no lines allowed on my titties or my face
draggin’, pullin’, cutting, fightin’
still losing time’s cruel race
I’m so dry and tight
I’m wearing BEEF JERKY

looking in the mirror
still hating what I see
paintbrush and exact-o knife
create ‘the perfect me’
blood red, my color
bringin’ out my eyes
small cuts, band-aid hidden
distract me from my thighs

Screaming to the godless sky
Make me pretty or make me die

Screaming to the godless sky
Make me pretty or let me try

Screaming to the godless sky
Make me Pretty
Make me Pretty
Pretty
PRETTY
Please

Grab the frilly edge scissors and a dying hope
Like a 3rd graders’ snowflake
Gonna carve myself pretty

**DISCLAIMER: No folks, I'm not suicidal. I'm not even angry today... just OVER IT, ya know? Worry not, I'll be fine.