in this moment, right now, i am grateful for my pink fingernails. i usually detest the manufactured femininity of the bubblegum coatings, but today i choose to be masked in pitiless normalcy. 

your yarmulke begs i pick your brain. well, what about palestine? why do you need chopsticks? teach me about the sanctity of your god. 

but today i just want be a callow little jellyfish in a big sea of hubristic scholars; more preoccupied with the colour than creed of their roots.

its right time for a new coating, tara. a new pink. a new mink. a new way to think.

mazeltov. 

i teach myself to spit because you know i hate to swallow

and i perfect the art of it so that my paper trail will follow

and the models wanna be taller so they strap on their stilhettos

but even in their gucci guccis they cant get up on my level

you cant get on my level so feel free to get in line

but im the fucking main attraction so i hope youve got some time

and if time is of the essence then my presence is a gift

i throw down that rapping paper and i seal it with a kiss

yeah im rapping for that paper youre just fapping at your dick

and im laughing at them haters while im flashing them my tits

cause if i gave a motherfuck about those boys and what they wish

id have taught myself to swallow but instead this bitch can spit

i will stay out all night to paint the town in reckless indiscretion;

a luxury afforded by our fruit of lustful adolescence.  

i will give about as many fucks as chances i’ll abandon

to break the laws my fathers broke their backs to put to constitution..

sweat out the fever that you give me when i run from law enforcement.

and if kurt can love a feline then im sure theres hope for someone

to convince me that its possible i could be something human.

i tried to find you in a bookstore. fingering through the used pages of some of the greatest compilations of our time, i looked for you there. i searched through mary shelley and edgar allen poe; william wordsworth and w.b. yeats. i even looked for you in sylvia plath, whose heart was won by no man- i searched. but each book held the narrative of some other desperate lovers; their words were not our own. their pages appropriated by some fanatical reader desperate to live vicariously through their tales- those books still sweat with lust. we didn’t need that though. because our story was brave enough to defy the page, secret enough to be spared the predation of the voyeuristic scholar, and too impulsive to be dictated by the confines of the immortality of ink. so i left.

i tried to find you in a vintage clothing shop.  for a second i thought i heard you in the music, an old buddy holly jive. the same shit my grandparents fell in love to back when palestine was a nation and the clitoris didn’t exist. my fingers traced the spiral trenches of each vinyl record; i looked for you there. there i found the white-wash denim high waisted shorts i have, for two summers, been watchfully perusing for. i found a mockingbird pendant with a thin gold chain, its left wing starting to erode from the outside-in. i found a pair of old penny-loafers and counted, in my head, the number of steps it would take for me to return to the station. if their decay would even permit the spontaneity of my youthful recklessness to defy reason and run. but just as i couldnt find you in gewndolyn brooks or t.s. eliot, i couldnt find you here. so i left.  

i tried to find you in somebody else’s skeleton. but his hands were assuming, his gaze unforgiving and his words stale. between the rhythm of his coaxing syllables and smoke rings, i looked for you. but you didnt exist here. you didnt exist in the tongues of lord byron, the lint tufts on vintage cardigans, or the bones of a fool. so i left. 

and after my search i returned to grant you this: that when you should feel inadequate, know that i looked for you in all my favourite places. and then i left you here so that you, nor i, ever have to search too far again.

for it is now your turn to say that you can look to find yourself here. and its mine to say i put you here myself.

crooks & castles:

your silence looms above the bed suspended by my apprehension, cloaking our mundane transactions with a veil of manufactured:

apathy.  

i came for the conquest but stayed for the smoke, so light me up, kid, cause ive gotta head out. and i know im deserving of nails in my throat cause my heart doesnt live where you built it a home.

i will exhale and leave you lingering in a cloud of my toxic indecision, a bad taste in your mouth. and i will try to wrong the rights i made by letting you love me, explaining it was a momentary lapse in armor. 

the dust is settling, settling, and my side of the mattress is getting cold. 

why do you look for the living among the dead? 

i’m tired of being in a nothing place, so here it is. here’s something:
i’ve got a thing for you.
a thing that feels like cigarette smoke in the back of my throat (both good and bad but mostly just scorching) and makes me want to dance to the black keys. and i know this doesn’t seem like much, but its all I’m willing to give you.  and it’s a lot.  

i’ve got a thing for you.

a thing that makes me bite my lip, pull my hair and fucking detest you.
a thing that makes me want to make you feel small and inadequate.
and that’s the way I’m going to love you. with wrath and with gluttony and with the nastiest fucking rift on your electric guitar.  i’m going to love you the way an addict loves the bottle; i will drown you in my affection.
i’m going to love you so much it’ll make me hate you. and then I promise to hate you every day for the rest of our long pathetic lives together. i promise i’m going to hate you in a way that makes me never give you up.
and I know this seem like nothing, but it’s something. it is everything. this is something big.
you don’t deserve a syllable of this shit. you are un-everything. unreliable. unappreciative. unreasonable. undeserving. unaffectionate. unmotivated. unforgiving. unwell.
you’re the fuck I couldn’t get the fuck outta my head.
and i could stay in my nothing place where you are my cohabitant; plotting treachery to turn the other to ruins. but not tonight. tonight i will play the black keys and chew my red lipstick and write a horny love poem about how much i fucking despise you.

i am ashamed of every beat that i placed upon your drum. i am ashamed to watch the sweat defile your brow. 

and you can hold me in contempt, just so long as you could hold me, though i feel i ought to give you more somehow.

i noticed you were dancing on your lonesome in the corner, i should tell you that i do like your hair blue.

and you’ll give me a small nod but it is more than i deserve, im not deserving of such company as you.

there was a time when age meant nothing and we fought the colonizers

but this leads me to believe i am one too.

sometimes i lay in bed upset because no matter how desperate i try to fight back they’re still probably going to throw me in a FEMA camp someday. so sometimes i pick up my fists and i try to resist but most times i just try to find awe in the stitches of what makes us human- those little things. because that is what they can never take from us. we are a collection of leftover bones from all the dinosaurs they never found and all the plants that withered into fossils that now mark each of my fingertips in miniature trenches. it is there that i enter into battle-  the only battle worth fighting- the battle to transform our shackles into vapor. that same sweet vapor that was once a nectar that tempted my mother to reach out her fingers and pick forbidden fruit from gods great branches. the original sin- where god stole back everything beautiful and the world plunged into dark. because cain murdered abel, the tongues of babylon were evil but i cannot be convinced this sinning started with an apple. and if scripture taught me one thing, its that a man should never trust me cause it falls within my gender binary to be tempted by a snake, JESUS CHRIST, WHY is this book so PHALLIC?!? 

and i refuse to believe that the reason why i bleed is a punishment from god for bringing adam to his knees, i am a woman! not a rib nor chattel nor temptress nor battle trophy, or any other way i may be framed within the bible. i am a woman! i will not be humiliated, abandoned when im on my period and leviticus is fucked to want to wed me to my rapist. i am a woman. and i was not taught to love god, i was taught to fear god. and not just god, but all men. and fear in a way that made me ashamed of the pangs ‘tween my legs that begged me to trade my purity for pleasure. my “treasure” that i carried and at 13 had to bury and was told i couldnt find it till the night that i was married. i carry burdens every day from the way that i was raised believing god would solve my problems if i just knelt down and prayed but nothings changed except by my agency, my stone was rolled away and i anoint myself each morning just to make it through the day, I HAVE SEEN PEOPLE COMMIT ATROCITIES IN THE NAME OF YOUR GOD.

little boys destroyed by fathers with “our father” on their tongues. a stamp was put upon my womb to protect the prospect of a son. and the holy ghost will haunt me till i die. why? because i am a woman. and your book is an abomination, a frightening combination of prophecies and pages where it begs you love your neighbour but denies me the right to speak because i am a woman. yes, i am a woman with the parts and chromosomes that the universe gave me, not the way an invisible MAN made me. i am atoms and molecules that hung from stars that dont exist anymore but sometimes, if you make me laugh, they still emit just a little bit of light. each day i awake a different constellation and today, i am medusa. i am tyranny and ambidextry and i have bravery that my stature cant do justice. i am a woman. i have been poked, pushed, prodded, abandoned, exiled, raped, sold, hungered, murdered and left to die. but i, somewhere inside of me, have the bones of an ancient survivour who through evolution learned to crawl from the water and stand on her own two feet. over millions of years i have suffered and perished and decomposed into this soil, this unseeded algonquin soil, where i write your god into oblivion.

and just like your precious saviour i have been crucified and born again and born again and born again and died.

suture your lips, loosest quips may sink ships.

im applauding your anchorage with soddening fists

and im calling on saints, sell my soul to Poseidon

abandoning ship cause i need some excitement.

fellow you wreak of testosterone and cowardice

i gave you green thumbs and you hid from the avarice.

i’d tell them your name but it’d render me powerless

sweep from my hipbone i know you’ll devour this.

cause this citys too small for my bad reputation

your ego’s too big for my bed

i’d give anything to give more than the vow

of your ill fitting cap on my head.

we’re stranger than strangers, our hands make acquaintance

we’re salting each other to taste 

and when we are done there’s no use counting sheep

on our spines we can count our mistakes

fancier flesh more congruent, fanatical

radical symmetry stacking of skeletons.

give me your wrist, ill relinquish your rib bone

your fist moves in measurements muttering morse code.

package and patent me, save me for later

and cater to debutantes, as they serve you greater.

infantiscize me in patronly prowess 

address me as Magdeline, fuck me with cowardice.

your manhood’s too small for my big expectations

your thoughts too abysmal to tread

and i cant help believe even if we’d known better

the wetter choice still would have lead.

we’re stranger than strangers, our hands make acquaintance

we’re salting each other to taste 

and when we are done there’s no use counting sheep

on our spines we can count our mistakes

biblical Barons bred shame for my systems

with wisdom you whispered and made me your mistress.

when vivacious virgins turn listless, promiscuous

shedding my shame with the line of my uterus.

cocaine then criminal and personal negligence

i still had faith in you, wove your appendages

tracing the outlines i mimicked the ridge but

you still smoke cigarettes; my lips still burn bridges.

all that i ask, should i bother to ask of you

please be so kind as to practice some apathy

when you should wound me do lick the wound clean

and we’ll steam up our ventricles, christen the wash machine.

scraping of fingers and puncturing pores while

we work to forget what our bodies abhorred 

and then etched in your flesh i will seek comprehension

how i left bloodied traces where id never been.

for 19 days the summer i was sixteen.

for nineteen days i severed shackles society was binding me in and i taught myself. i taught myself to be a little less human, and a little more being.

for nineteen days i was finding ways to blame the god whose sins i never forgave and i prayed despite my rage that my friends would be saved, their bodies forbade that plague we didn’t know how to name…

it invaded painted maidens with its faceless case of ageism, mated with the naked to create a tainted shaming prison. risen from the grave? i wont be maimed by ancient antiquation, howling at false heavens: father why have you forsaken them?

 do you know what your privilege sounds like?

for three days when i was nine i wouldn’t speak to my father. for three days when i was nine i locked my door and hid my face from his prerogative. this was for three days after my mother looked me in the eye and said “sweetheart. as white males, your daddy and baby brother will experience power you will never come to know.” and this was the day i stopped falling to my knees to worship god.

 do you know what your privilege looks like?

for eleven months when i was nineteen. for eleven months when i was nineteen, my body was no more than a perplexed effigy in place of a stolen relic, eloquent but as naive as your words were cruel. my defiled flesh waged war against my blood until it boiled in contrition and in ire. and that was the day i stopped falling to my knees to worship men.

 do you know what your privilege tastes like?

for eight days when i was twenty. for eight days when i was twenty i built myself a home in confederation park. for eight days and nights i.. 

i stood in solidarity, prepared to bear the snare to beat the drumline on the frontlines so the cops would all be scared of me it felt so free to finally find a place to be preoccupied but occupy could not define the cause for which to hold the trial.

we gather here today, we are the 99% we represent the proletariat, the poles on which i hang my tent, repent to empty sleeping bags, a god i cant address and yes this space was to be blissful but instead it is oppressive. its a mess. 

and i digress, no regrets, confessions necessary in diluting our message like a pestilent confectionary wary of the waning workers wages waiting patiently for some sort of deliverance from this system. we’re afraid to speak 

so let me be the first to kneel and beg the corporations nations facing plagues of starvation as you remain complacent? i am a child, but my one claim is i have seen the pain that AIDS is you need put the “i” in patents and relinquish them to patients.

do you know what your privilege feels like? 

for eight days and nights when i was twenty. for eight days and nights when i was twenty, syllables of revolt rained from my rogue tongue, into confederation park. and i taught myself. i taught myself to be a little less human, and a little more being.

for eight days and nights i was joining the fight for a cause that i thought undisputedly right and you might have been right that i needed insight, my illucid contrition i must have gone blind.

cause i died in that movement, that putrid resolve when in protesting currency bartered my soul and i poured out my voice to cry out for the poor while you stole from the rich and still hungered for more 

and the more that i hate how this movement turned foul the less i am inclined to throw in the towel, but my pegs have been pulled and moses is a scam cause there is no milk and honey in this promised land.

 do you know what your privilege tastes like?

do you know what your privilege looks like??

a body in a rally. a sign in a march. a vote for your ally. a tent in a park.

do you know.

our privilege pacifies people from perceiving the power of every drop in the bucket. but you tell somebody living in drought that clout is insignificant, that doubt held more weight in your heart than the anchorage of their suffering. and that you were too distracted by the futility of your actions to thirst alongside with them for reform. 

 can you feel the consequence of your privilege?

do you know.

somewhere between your sperrys and macnamara island souvenir hat lies a heart with blistering ventricles i’d have conquered in our youth. but the persistence of winter and the error of my birth leave us estranged in curious longing.

both eyes frantically fixated forward as your shifting blood posts bail for the felonies of your eyes, you slowly unpeel me like a ripened fruit. and how you begged to taste the nectar, but i cannot pay mind to men who are more familiar with their pension than the prospect of erection. 

though i cannot help but marinate in all the ways i would have loved you, if god had planted me just one season too soon. instead we are two fools, one is weathered, one amused and we learn that age is more than just the ripples of your palms. 

it is how your couldn’t tame me, its the dialects of our tongues and its how i’ll never love a man i could not feast on.

Shad K. he says there ain’t enough females in the game 

discrepancies’ shame, im spittin’ like I sprechen sie fame

not reppin the same archaic shit that girls should be tame

if beauty is pain, im sinking in an ocean of excruciating

oops he waiting patient for his turn with the mic

his roll at the dice, that mothafuckin time of his life

he thinks his rhymes are tighter than that “pussy” he describes

but read his vibes you know that boy ain’t never “hit” one in his life

because men only talk big when they feel real small

and all these rappers talkin bigger than moby dick’s left ball

i’m appalled you called me “shawty” please don’t label me your cock size

and of all the boys i’m courting you’re the one i fed the most lies.

if i could serve my verses they would be an escargot

but my wordses make you nervous cause you combo #4

even when i don’t rehearse this, got you shakin’ in your bones

because my power in its purest comes from my X chromosome

you’re afraid to make me more than just a loop on your track

you’re disdained to say i’m more than just a “bitch on your cack” 

it’s a shame the game has changed, respect is under attack,

but you should swallow your pride, cause imma spit you right back.

mothafucka.

if success sounds like echoed double clicks on marble floors and is mistress to the unrelenting chivalry of the necktie, then fidelity never seemed so tantalizing

and i commit to gallows my inner temptress.

oh convict me of treason and hand my body in the concrete square so the patriots may leer at the one they had called heroine until she sacrificed her neck for vindication.

yes, let my body decay as you pick the fat from your teeth with my bones.

peculate the virtue from my marrow so it may contaminate your blood with an impervious thirst for reform

then let my own adorn the breastplate of every “misguided” warrior who was brave enough to pursue failure.

those two angular lines tell lies when they show time as being linear.

and i couldn’t care less about those times on the clock, we’ve reduced the lot to scatterplots and integers.

and i almost forgot.

i almost forgot why i cannot lock eyes with the ones i have confided in. they’ve all seen me naked on the altar, and failed to so much as flinch or wipe the sweat off my muted brow from your approaching blaze.

i almost forgot why biking down gilmour street sends my heart into a palpatative delirium, and red brick warns the hairs on the back of my neck stand erect to protect me…  i am a slave to my own physiological response to your existence. 

and this is how i know that time is not linear.

time is cyclical and fluid and we are the servants to our own ebb and flow. such as the moon draws the tide, so does time entice us in and out of her womb where i am incubated in her benevolence, liberated of your ghost for nine whole months.  

and perhaps this is what moves the newborn to wail. for sheepish ignorance feels better than the cold air percussing your bare ass.

yes, time is cyclical. and im convinced because subliminal vows of hatred anoint my brow with this season’s pinnacle. lets get biblical. 

you are lazarus. emotionally taxing; contagiously unaffectionate and just fucking sick. i murdered you for the sake of my lovers and of reverence to god. but your autopsy will conclude that you died of a natural cause: contrition. 

you died and i buried you. but you were, indeed, lazarus who rose and stumbled from his tomb, unabashed. you had survived in spite of me. a piece of you still existed in every man i met. so i punished them.

i murdered them all with my loving anguish. they fell victim to the hellion you left inside me, who i incubated in my womb and who (in cyclical prediction) unleashed a wail to unsuture the perforations you left within me.

yeah, you are lazarus.

and i liked you better dead. 

My unfailing love was never strong enough to stifle your request for the one thing I detested giving you the most: The remote.