(I had a “big birthday” this year (I know – it can be difficult to tell it’s a half-century, what with the beard and the web cam quality… and the connective tissue disorder…) and what with that, the inevitable changes people like me go through at this time, public perceptions of other aspects of ‘people like me’ in these interesting times, and a certain person’s two-word public put-down recently, this piece is very new…)
Forty-Seven < Fifty
(or: This Too Shall Pass)
I am a quiet piggy,
dehumanised for consumption,
stumbling as hormone shifts strip me of
privileges I once thought mine for life,
I’m striving to find a place in society,
propriety forbidding I dispossess
anyone else of comfort while I
navigate unpredictable waters,
body a slaughterhouse of assumptions,
a dumping ground for many things
we collectively deem “failure”, apparently.
(And nearly impossible for mortals to achieve
these days, let’s face it.)
I own nothing grounded in earth;
I possess a dearth of reproductive function,
lumbering like a frozen fool,
destined to never progress beyond
wasted adolescent, for lack of
offspring, walls to call my own for life.
I have nothing to pass on except
the output of this fevered organ,
more and more ignored as time wreaks
its curse and I am burdened with gags.
He says Quiet, Piggy, and silence
presses, suffocates, applauds the
mordant thrall of this epitome
while the jackals cackle, released
from good behaviour by their
putrid saviour and we’re told
Oh! It’s not that bad! It could be worse!
And another verse trickles into my fingertips
signalling the power of the liminal,
the highest prize of sentience
inexorably reduced to a useless sentence.
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words… endure forever.
Wretched prose opens up my cranium,
carves new markers for Here We Are,
startled daily by old commands:
Thou Shalt Not Sleep in Peace…
until thy synapses surrender their
burden of hard-won knowledge
of threats and punishment.
Know your fucking place, swine.
Strangers mining data, mining perfidy
tell me, confidently, that I’m a danger to
society, a danger to children,
projecting everything they fear about
difference into this sliver of flesh,
telling me that I don’t deserve to even
piss in spaces designated for the holy
alone, those who’ve ticked all the boxes
their bodies were allocated,
can’t wait for me and my ilk to
do them the favour of extinction.
Danger, am I? Threat to society?
Moi?
Interesting. I never knew I had such power,
that you cower at the thought of
more of this. More of me.
more of us. Oh, honey.
We are so much more.
So, for the score, I… we… will not be quiet, piggy.
When you’ve stripped us of everything,
denigrated our importance as hoarders
of words and nothing more, our scorn
will live on, recorded, transmuted,
translated, debated, because our core
is RAGE, not just spilled across pages
but stages, neurons, electrons,
a spectrum signalling the coming storm.
Best make the most of that shelter, friend.
Nothing is endless.
| Image from Raw Pixel |
