![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I was writing, this morning, on my way to work (and then at work, over my break, and so-on), and I noticed that a lot of my poems tend to be centered on answering the question "why?". Why polyamoury, why femininity, why divorce, why not divorce, why anything.
"Why can't you be normal?"
That's the one I tackled today.
I was expecting it to be a fairly angst-ridden, and fairly short, piece about "normal and me" being like oil and water.
Except then I got to thinking about oil and water, crude oil and ocean water, and how Normal = The Status Quo and, well, I got something that was a whole lot different from what I was expecting.
I feel a bit... I feel a bit like I should have been articulating this ten years ago, when I was fresh into university and all the idealism that entails - like either I should have been doing this ten years ago or, conversely, I should have been doing this now (as in: at the age of 28), but that '28' should have been in the late 90s.
I'm not sure why I feel that way, mind you.
<*shrug*>
Anyway. Here it is (it's quite long - that's why it, and the other poem, are behind cuts this time):
Angry, Educated, Middle-Class, White Girl
Finally Answers Her Mother’s Probing Question
Why can’t you just be normal?
She asked
for the umpteenth time,
eyes pleading,
Wondering, perhaps, why I would choose to make life so difficult for myself
Or,
Perhaps less consciously,
why I would choose to make it so difficult
For her.
Must be hard to brag, over coffee and cards,
when one daughter is a starving artist and
the other
abandoned
a perfectly good MA – and the accompanying earning potential – ‘cause she decided
the paper wasn’t worth all the grief.
When only that cherished
third child
has any intention of going
to medical school.
Why can’t you just be normal?
Truth is,
Normal and I have never got along.
Not since,
Gawky and Gothy at fifteen,
hanging in the library with those other
bookish and blossoming bi-girls,
I found my tribe amid strange and hungry orchids,
and knew that the impatiens, petunias, and
wooden, duck-shaped lawn-ornaments
of suburbia
would never be my home.
Truth is, I can’t be Normal because
Normal is crude oil, spreading
black and murderous,
across the ocean-deep diversity
of everything that’s beautiful and good.
Because Normal is a 9-5 job in a
Security-clearance building with windows that
Never open (and surprisingly meaning acronyms).
Because it’s Reality TV,
500 channels and nothing on but ads.
Because Normal is an airbrushed white girl on a magazine cover who is
Looked at, but never
Looking back.
It’s a black girl gyrating in a video, back to the camera, because
Normal only wants to see her ass.
It’s a native girl, pulled out of an East Vancouver dumpster, under the news heading:
Prostitute: Found Dead
because Normal doesn’t believe she could ever be anything else, and
doesn’t give a good god damn anyway.
Because Normal is believing that a
white, middle-class woman, working the same
white, middle-class job for the same
white, middle-class salary as a
white, middle-class man
means that Feminism got what it wanted and it’s
time to shut up now, dear.
Because Normal is
McDonalds
a drive-thru
an SUV
Because it’s
short-sighted
and foolish.
Because Normal is
Killing us
one cancer case at a time,
And I
Intend
To Live.
*~*~*~*~*
This was followed, very quickly, by an "oh, bugger - look what I've just written" piece - basically asking myself how I intend to live up to my words.
How Shall I Live?
So I wrote a poem
to my mother
explaining why I can’t be Normal, and why
“Normal” isn’t exactly something to strive for.
I wrote
(it turns out)
a manifesto.
(Well, fuck.
I didn’t see that coming)
And so I’m left, clutching
three sheets of
heartfelt hyperbole
in my hand,
Wondering
“Now what?”
How do I live up
to what I just put down
on paper,
a lightning hot strike of intensity
and intent?
These long, strong legs haven’t been to a protest march since the last time
Quebec threatened divorce, and
Frankly,
I’m scared shitless by the knowledge,
like a swallowed ice cube
that my white, middle-class privilege
won’t save me
when someone’s coming at me with a night-stick
and all I have to protect myself are my convictions.
How then,
I ask myself (because you can’t make a statement like that and not back it up with action)
How, then, shall I live?
This is how:
Walk
Everywhere that I can
(and bus everywhere that I can’t)
Ignore the tv
Sew new clothes from old,
Make bread from scratch,
Write,
Sing,
And honour this body.
Host dinner parties
by honey’d candle-light.
Touch this good earth with
Lover’s hands,
Coax beans and squash from composting soil, and
Truth
from this trembling heart.
*~*~*~*~*
So, there you go.
I submitted those two, plus "Out Loud" and "Love of Literature" (which, untitled, were part of my reaction to "Longing At Least Is Constant", the other day), to dig - an annual poetry 'zine in Toronto.
Later, I shall hunt through my other poems and see what I can find to submit to Bywords. :-)
Whee! :-D (I'm so full of hope, I could pop like a balloon! -- Hopefully, I won't though).
To do tonight:
Eat burgers w/ Paul
Make brownies, soda bread, & pancake mix for our trip this weekend.
Pack for that same trip.
(Gods... I've got two and a half hours...)
wish me luck. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
"Why can't you be normal?"
That's the one I tackled today.
I was expecting it to be a fairly angst-ridden, and fairly short, piece about "normal and me" being like oil and water.
Except then I got to thinking about oil and water, crude oil and ocean water, and how Normal = The Status Quo and, well, I got something that was a whole lot different from what I was expecting.
I feel a bit... I feel a bit like I should have been articulating this ten years ago, when I was fresh into university and all the idealism that entails - like either I should have been doing this ten years ago or, conversely, I should have been doing this now (as in: at the age of 28), but that '28' should have been in the late 90s.
I'm not sure why I feel that way, mind you.
<*shrug*>
Anyway. Here it is (it's quite long - that's why it, and the other poem, are behind cuts this time):
Angry, Educated, Middle-Class, White Girl
Finally Answers Her Mother’s Probing Question
Why can’t you just be normal?
She asked
for the umpteenth time,
eyes pleading,
Wondering, perhaps, why I would choose to make life so difficult for myself
Or,
Perhaps less consciously,
why I would choose to make it so difficult
For her.
Must be hard to brag, over coffee and cards,
when one daughter is a starving artist and
the other
abandoned
a perfectly good MA – and the accompanying earning potential – ‘cause she decided
the paper wasn’t worth all the grief.
When only that cherished
third child
has any intention of going
to medical school.
Why can’t you just be normal?
Truth is,
Normal and I have never got along.
Not since,
Gawky and Gothy at fifteen,
hanging in the library with those other
bookish and blossoming bi-girls,
I found my tribe amid strange and hungry orchids,
and knew that the impatiens, petunias, and
wooden, duck-shaped lawn-ornaments
of suburbia
would never be my home.
Truth is, I can’t be Normal because
Normal is crude oil, spreading
black and murderous,
across the ocean-deep diversity
of everything that’s beautiful and good.
Because Normal is a 9-5 job in a
Security-clearance building with windows that
Never open (and surprisingly meaning acronyms).
Because it’s Reality TV,
500 channels and nothing on but ads.
Because Normal is an airbrushed white girl on a magazine cover who is
Looked at, but never
Looking back.
It’s a black girl gyrating in a video, back to the camera, because
Normal only wants to see her ass.
It’s a native girl, pulled out of an East Vancouver dumpster, under the news heading:
Prostitute: Found Dead
because Normal doesn’t believe she could ever be anything else, and
doesn’t give a good god damn anyway.
Because Normal is believing that a
white, middle-class woman, working the same
white, middle-class job for the same
white, middle-class salary as a
white, middle-class man
means that Feminism got what it wanted and it’s
time to shut up now, dear.
Because Normal is
McDonalds
a drive-thru
an SUV
Because it’s
short-sighted
and foolish.
Because Normal is
Killing us
one cancer case at a time,
And I
Intend
To Live.
*~*~*~*~*
This was followed, very quickly, by an "oh, bugger - look what I've just written" piece - basically asking myself how I intend to live up to my words.
How Shall I Live?
So I wrote a poem
to my mother
explaining why I can’t be Normal, and why
“Normal” isn’t exactly something to strive for.
I wrote
(it turns out)
a manifesto.
(Well, fuck.
I didn’t see that coming)
And so I’m left, clutching
three sheets of
heartfelt hyperbole
in my hand,
Wondering
“Now what?”
How do I live up
to what I just put down
on paper,
a lightning hot strike of intensity
and intent?
These long, strong legs haven’t been to a protest march since the last time
Quebec threatened divorce, and
Frankly,
I’m scared shitless by the knowledge,
like a swallowed ice cube
that my white, middle-class privilege
won’t save me
when someone’s coming at me with a night-stick
and all I have to protect myself are my convictions.
How then,
I ask myself (because you can’t make a statement like that and not back it up with action)
How, then, shall I live?
This is how:
Walk
Everywhere that I can
(and bus everywhere that I can’t)
Ignore the tv
Sew new clothes from old,
Make bread from scratch,
Write,
Sing,
And honour this body.
Host dinner parties
by honey’d candle-light.
Touch this good earth with
Lover’s hands,
Coax beans and squash from composting soil, and
Truth
from this trembling heart.
*~*~*~*~*
So, there you go.
I submitted those two, plus "Out Loud" and "Love of Literature" (which, untitled, were part of my reaction to "Longing At Least Is Constant", the other day), to dig - an annual poetry 'zine in Toronto.
Later, I shall hunt through my other poems and see what I can find to submit to Bywords. :-)
Whee! :-D (I'm so full of hope, I could pop like a balloon! -- Hopefully, I won't though).
To do tonight:
Eat burgers w/ Paul
Make brownies, soda bread, & pancake mix for our trip this weekend.
Pack for that same trip.
(Gods... I've got two and a half hours...)
wish me luck. :-)
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
