7:45 am I’ve been up for 3 hours
I’m clean enough for my first meeting, right? yeah-
I guess this is “makin’ it,”
but I have to say
What they say
I got this far by marching
to the beat of
My own drum, but to hell with the damned drum
My arms are tired, can someone help me
Can someone
help
I am a man but
I need time
to cry.
One part whiskey of striving
With conscience, intellect, and morality
One part sours of driving
Water, bones, instinct, and brutality-
Stirred, and poured over rocks
Of gender expectations, and normality,
Spat into the standard social box,
Left to question only his mortality.
I will not, the world will not –
Neither side will surrender –
I shall remain as I am truly,
And not as prescribed for my gender;
Still I look longingly to that season
When, to be gentle and tender is not XY treason –
When cats, wine, poetry, and a love of conversation
Do not forever brand a man as a victim of castration.
Vile are the hands of he
who builds naught with them, he
breaks only the precious wooden box
of a woman’s trust, with a single strike.
So putrid is the heart of he
who would turn away his child, he
retches at the homosexual,
his own sick flesh.
The flaccid muscle of he
who fails the promises he
sees no profit or pleasure in,
this still is a man.
A man like many men,
There are scores of such men,
Murderous, false and mercenary,
still whole men.
I am seething, each sunrise
I wake, half-a-man, each sunrise
Though I give, nurture, build,
My word is good, but I am half-a-man.
What nature gave whole to them
Is withheld from me, what flesh to them
is the focal point of man
I am told I do not strictly need.
prince nothing 