What is Wrong with Me?

Sometimes I worry that I might be a horrible person,
Because when I see others experience a moment of joy,
It opens up a deep pit of despair inside me;
I weep uncontrollably.
It’s not that I begrudge them their joy, not really.
It’s just that I so much long for a little bit of it for myself,
But that happiness, even when fictional,
Casts such a shadow in its brightness,
All I feel in that moment is the unending struggle,
I feel alone and worse—abandoned—
I see only symmetry—
How long I’ve endured in the past,
And a dreadfully dark mirror into the unending future.
Every agony I push aside just to function each day
Overwhelms me like a tsunami.
It doesn’t bring me peace or hope,
Only a black pit of loneliness—
The loneliness of being in a crowd of strangers—
I crave it so badly, but I’m too broken to move.
Eventually, those survivor instincts will kick in.
I’ll force the lid closed on my private hell.
I’ll get up and go on.
But deep down, I’ll still be asking myself
What is wrong with me?

Untitled (The year is still young)

The year is still young, but I am still yearning.
The news is far from nuanced or neutral.
We must begin at the bell, to bind or build up our expectations.
The exchanges we have can’t expand our options.
Do we dare to study the skills to build stability,
Or do we obscure the open doors, lest we offend the orthodox?
Do we let them dictate and dominate us?
Water cannot wash the witch from us, nor your weakness.
The options on this owe much to obscurity.
I can hardly be grateful when I’m holding such a grudge.
If I’m being hunted, the hostility helps me.
Witnesses whisper at me. They know it’s wrong,
But I glare at them, and groan at their inaction.
I wish I could make the minimal effort matter more—but this isn’t Mars.
I can’t be your judge. That’s not my job.
I can no more change who I am than a zebra—I won’t live in a zoo.
I have this crazy notion—your narrow view neglects reality.
I don’t trust your judgment—you are in a jail for the jealous.
With my wife, I’d drink wine to the world.
Make a decision before the damage you do is too dramatic.
The sands of shame sink us all. Soak in the sympathy before you drown.

Dreams (2)

I can’t abolish my dreams.
I’m on the brink of maybe getting one, making it real.
It would be a crown amongst the thorns,
One I’ve devoted most of my life to achieving,
But a dream I’ve been urged to expunge from my hopes.
What kind of future do I have without it?
I can’t survive in the gutter, looking up at a galaxy.
The hope of it haunts me, drives me to escape this hell,
But gaining even an inch is such a battle, even a war.
All I want is a little justice, to give me purpose.
Obstacles try to kill me with every step forward.
The lengths I’ve gone to get here.
Would I be happier if I let people murder my dream?
Would hoping for nothing be better? Could it compare to the night?
My origin is as an outlier, an other—what can I go back to?
The point is not to make other people happy, but myself.
How does giving up improve my quality of life?
There is no good reason to give up now, not now.
My strength is waning, but what other choice is there?
Giving up terrifies me.
The universe keeps calling to me.
Denying it would leave behind only a vacuum of despair and failure.
Withdrawing from the world is no solution.
You can’t xerox your goals and apply them to me.
I’m not you, and I yearn for more.
If I zero out my dreams, I might as well be dead.

Moral Panic

What are you afraid of?
What makes you think a scapegoat is really going to help?
This isn’t the age of sympathetic magic, so,
What is your excuse?
These things never turn out well.
Do you remember the Satanic panic of the 1980s?
I sure do, and guess what?
It was all bullshit.
Someone was just stoking a panic
To manipulate and control you.
Lots of people gave in an let them do it.
Surely, you’ve heard of the Red Scare?
Yep, and what happened except that a lot of people got hurt?
Careers and lives ruined, and for what?
There were no communists taking over the government.
It’s the same bullshit today.
Banning drag shows, why?
It was okay for Patrick Swayze in the 1990s,
So why the sudden freak out?
Women’s sports have long been dominated by the gender police,
An ongoing moral panic even for biological women, but now,
Are you so obsessed with your fears that you are okay
With your daughter having her genitalia inspected just to play sports?
Because that is where the law is going right now.
Moral panics are about someone taking control of you,
To manipulate you to their own ends.
Break free. Don’t believe people when they tell you to freak out.
Get some facts and ask yourself—
When will they come for me?

Essentialism

Essentialism is at the root of so many
Of the present woes that plague us.
Essentialism is the belief that people of certain types
Have specific and essential characteristics.
The idea that men are inherently rational
And women are too emotional, hysterical.
That men are inherently stronger and have more physical prowess.
That women are inherently and always maternal and caring.
That blacks are lazy and hypersexual,
Unintelligent and prone to criminality.
That bisexuals are sluts.
That Asians are smarter and Jews are good with money.
That Christians are inherently virtuous.
The list could go on, but it would not make any of it true.
Essentialism has deep roots in history,
Much further back than the slave trade.
All the way back to the patriarchy of the Indo-European invaders
Conquering the matriarchal culture of early Europe.
You see the legacy in the rape of Persephone,
The fear of the Amazons,
And the only permissible strong women must be virgins.
You see it in the writings of Saint Paul,
And in the purity of the blood myths of the Aryans,
And even in our words like “hysteria”.
To make others seem weak, we compare them to women.
Feminine is an insult.
Essentialism is at the root of assuming that white men are virtuous,
And should be excused for their mistakes, large and small,
But others are jailed for much smaller infractions
Because they are inherently violent, criminal and lawless.
It’s at the root of the drag show bans,
And trans healthcare bans and sports bans.
It’s as if melanin and testosterone are magic elixirs—
Too much of one degrades you; more of the other is power.
It makes it so easy to devalue others.
It’s why women are under attack today,
Because we can’t be trusted with making good decisions,
Or even knowing our own minds—
Especially if we are pregnant, or on our periods, or menopausal.
We’ve escaped this thinking in only small ways,
Though not in all circles.
Think about the value of royal blood and kingship,
But we have so much further to go.
These ideas make everyone invisible.
They keep power in the hands of those who already have it.
It’s at the root of attacks on voting—
Because how can every vote be equal if you believe this?
If we don’t attack the problem where it lives,
If we only argue about the surface stuff,
It will remain, deep in the underbelly of our culture, our psyche,
And will only come back the moment we look away.
Look at the last decade in America and you see it at work.
We can’t defeat any of them,
Until we tackle them all at once.

Untitled (It’s a radical idea)

It’s a radical idea.
We don’t all need to be like the middle 50%.
Stunning, isn’t it?
We don’t need to defy statistics.
It never works anyway.
Pretending to belong just squeezes the bars
To our prison smaller and smaller.
What an innovation just to be.
Are you arching an eyebrow at me?
Where would we be with no “rules”?
Where would my opponents be
If I could just untie my hands, my tongue?
Do I need to CAPITALIZE my words to be heard?
Or is the contrary the case?
I recommend you give it a try.
Sit with the feeling a while
Before you go back to misleading everyone.
The risk you run is that my rage increases
As you try to dilute my power.
Your sentiments are worth no more than mine.
Invite yourself to see a freer world.
Be brave and give it a try.

Stop Lying

I used to argue with people,
To share ideas, to change minds,
But I discovered there are some people
You just can’t argue with.
Not only don’t they listen—
They cannot be persuaded—
They also just lie constantly.
Whether they know better or they are delusional
Doesn’t matter so much in the end.
Their goals are to troll, to sow doubt,
To scream and rage and have a hissy fit,
And then to whine because you “insulted” their willful ignorance.
They are impervious to facts or evidence.
Sometimes, they seem like whackadoos,
But often they seem perfectly normal,
And then, bam!
The lie rolls off their tongue,
Or onto the page, so easily.
You have to stop them, call them on the lie,
But too often, they are given a pass.
I used to have more patience for it, but not anymore.
The lie enrages me. The complacency about it enrages me.
Don’t bother talking to me, you exploitative jerk.
Get your poison away from me.

Untitled (What emotion are you feeling now?)

What emotion are you feeling now?
I often don’t know myself.
Then it rolls over me like a tidal wave.
I am blown over by the power.
React. Regroup. Struggle to understand.
Is it protection that I seek?
The stillness is rational, logical.
Understanding my own head is so hard.
I try to decode my feelings from my reactions.
The minor chords are as strong as the drums.
We fall into the routine,
Like a ribbon that tied me together.
Pulling it loose is needed—but could be terminal.
How do we offset the rage and fear?
How do we clear the record and restart?
Or can we?
The fees are paid.
The intensity advertises too much.
I wish it was more ambiguous,
But I’m not ready for the asylum.
So I stumble along as best I can.

Untitled (Don’t speak to me of loyalty)

Don’t speak to me of loyalty.
I’ve already heard your admission.
I would have been okay calling you brother,
But the instability was nuclear.
Reports went unheeded.
Maybe I spoiled you with my patience.
In the end, we both paid the penalty.
You weren’t the only introduction to this.
None of this is random.
Attraction isn’t enough.
The results with this are not local, but global.
We aren’t dipping toes here.
Peace is unheard of without being in a coma.
Extend me courtesy.
Tread in my footsteps as you can.
I can’t reproduce by innocence,
But I also can’t imagine a resolution.
I wrestled a long time to get here.
The canvas is unraveling,
But, mercifully, I begin to heal,
Even though I remain of two minds and one body.

Untitled (What does virtue mean to you?)

What does virtue mean to you?
By some standards, I am a saint,
Though hardly by design, just nature and bad luck;
But it’s my other traits that would send me to hell.
They are no less natural to me.
It’s you that leans on essentialism,
But my nature is essential to me.
Not because of your say-so.
I can only be who I am, or else live a lie.
That I cannot do.
I cannot abandon myself.
Your views are the predator here.
Let them go. They make us both unsafe.
You demand that I learn, why can’t you?
Why must your preference for me
Prevail over my own?
Don’t abuse me just because we differ.
Purity and virginity are a myth
You push for control.
Somehow, I broke free of the spell.
You may try to beat me into a coma,
But I am not flawed.
I am valid as I am.
I will go on like the wind.