Nobody to Toy With: A Love Poem

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A Love Poem

He said sweet tragedies as love poems
Whispered words
Blown across my breasts like feathers
Chill and warm
Floating down my skin.

Then

Cold hard hatred to shatter
and chattering
teeth the fear
Clear and cold
The punishment comes

For doing or not doing
For saying or not saying
For being or not being
No matter

As if in a room with neither door nor window
And no corner to hide
No matter
The punishment is for all
And it will come later
No matter
No explanation

To weaken the strength
To kill the soft and the hard
To kill the spirit
Tame it
Reduce the glow to cold ash

Memories of bruised lips
Cheeks scraped by teeth raw and burning
Hard hand on soft lips
To push the words back
All the words
No words have you a right to none.
No sounds
Mere soft breaths and
Keep those quiet too if you know what is good for you.

Keep your eyes to the ground where they belongst.

Harsh eyes
To flame your spirit to burn it
Turn it
Against yourself
Against your own being
Your spirit turned on yourself
To harm yourself
As if the punishment was not enough.

It’s not.
Never enough.
For doing or not doing.
For hiding or baring yourself raw.
For all.

For existing.
That is your punishment.

If you dare to even think the word cruelty
There is a punishment for that as well.

Keep your thoughts to yourself where they belongst.
Eyes down
Burrowing into the ground
Just in case
Just in case
One stray thought should leak out
And then—

Too late if it is seen or even suspected.

They will punch you
Then they will punch you again
For making them look bad for punching you in the first place.

Only most of the time
The punching part is not even necessary.
Silence is enough
Beneath the silence the unspoken
The brokeness of your spirit welcomes all
A glance
A look
A gesture

One of my grandfathers
Had an old bird dog named Elvis
And an old deaf black man named John who worked for him.
He controlled them both with gestures from afar
From his porch
Tipping his hat a certain way
Which hand he held his cigarette in
Whether he lit one or put one out
Each had a meaning
Each produced an action
Only small gestures
Glances
He showed me this
Proudly
When I was small
His sleight of hand

As if to say
One day
One day
If you are a woman long enough
This will be you too
Inevitable
We all know
Yet are always so surprised–
Shocked is a better word

Decimated often the best.

We never get over the shock
And keep it quiet
The shame
The name of what this is we don’t know
The blame will be yours to have
We search for what it is
Examining each small action we took
Every word we say
Every look
Every small move of our bodies
Every inch of our skin to find the flaw
But we can never find it the cause
We can never make ourselves unblamed
But we all know
And look the other way
As others look the other way for us.

---March 8, 2009

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Women and war

Me? I was raised to be nothing, like many women. Perhaps we are the only ones who can understand what this is like, to exist in a world where you are expected only to be nothing. Other people define us and tell us what we are and what we are not, women as well as men. Any place we have other than the one given us we make for ourselves at great cost.

Many of my thoughts are shaped by conversations with other women, the mothers and wives of soldiers, our examinations of what this war has done to our sons and husbands, and what it has done to us. One thing that I have noticed many of us have in common is abuse at the hands of men, whether it is physical, emotional or sexual, and sometimes all three. What these wars have cost us cannot even be measured, something others don't seem to understand, and we need each other. Still, I can't help but notice that there has been something freeing about this, as we share our pain in often a more open way than normal in this society, and some of us have had to discover and acknowledge a new strength--although really I might call it the strength of desperation.

Also my conversations with soldiers and returning veterans, their feelings of being unable to connect with women they love and their fears of somehow hurting them, a sad legacy of war. And my long and often deep relationship with veterans of that other long war, Vietnam. The father of my first son, no longer here either of them, was a Vietnam veteran, a decorated Marine. So was the first man who ever abused me when I was thirteen.

Being the mother of four sons, all grown men now, who I love dearly, forces me to try to look at this from both sides, abuse always has two victims. And made me come face to face with the ugly truth that no one wants to say out loud--if so many women are abused, someone is doing the abusing. If so many female soldiers are raped in the military--there is someone doing all the raping. Like the mentality that soldiers develop while deployed as an occupying army, the treatment of women is beyond the beliefs or morality of the individual soldier. With abuse not merely bad actions of men against women, but abuse as a continuum, with mere disrespect of women on one end--and murder at the other.

These are not trivial things. Although now I realize, by putting things of women out front, rather than merely posting the standard items about these wars, many men may not read them and dismiss them as being trivial. Women as well, we learn these things, to keep our ideas and issues hidden, so as not to be trivialized. We talk of our truths in whispers in kitchens, perhaps while men discuss the important things in the other room. I learned this sitting at the table in my great grandmother's kitchen, and have never really seen it change. Although now, perhaps more of us have learned to speak the language of men, and put other things to the side--the messes that we will still be left to clean up--for later.

Abuse of women is common in our society, as it is in others. Throughout history, at the center of conflicts between countries or cultures, including wars, is a dialog between men over the treatment of women. Both sides always treat women better than the other. Yet both sides also abuse women, especially in the case of war. We are not at the sidelines of war, whether we are soldiers or not. We are shaped by war also. Although as now, often we are the ones left to clean up the mess, a fate we American mothers and wives share with those in Iraq and Afghanistan, although their task is so much greater, to attempt to ensure human survival in the midst of madness.

I did not begin to understand these things deeply until one of my own sons went to war and returned. There were many things about my own life I had never understood. Or perhaps when I first saw him after basic training at Ft. Benning, now many long years ago, when he told me how glad he was that he had done basic there, and not at one of the bases where women went for training. And I saw those seeds planted in him. I have thought about this for all of their lives, my sons, looking for the ways to keep those seeds from entering their souls entirely.

Women cannot clean up all of the messes alone. These are not trivial things, these issues of abuse, even if that abuse is only disrespect. Violence, rape and murder are only disrespect writ large. I know these things well. Abuse of all kinds not only shapes the women, but also the men. It is a dynamic relationship. And we as women cannot do much about the behavior of men.

Nobody to Toy With

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A Love Poem

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Women and war

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