"You guys is dicks, I have untold value."

They've tried to sell me, so they say,
Debating my merits as table or whore.
Claiming they've paid Jay to kill me:
"For the right price, I'll do anything."
"That's what his business cards say!"
The crueler they are,
The more crass and offensive,
The closer we get as a group.
I feel lucky to know people who'll ridicule and slander me
The way this lot do.
They're good people
Once you get past the whole sex offender thing.

Drag

It's all a drag act.
Fake femininity,
Aspiring to maintain
The dream of divinity
Goddess, Oh limit me:
Appearance, demeanour and voice,
The pedestal trinity.
I learn to sway the hips, to paint my lips,
Extranatural
Like a billboard larger-than-life.
As long as you want me I'm worth it
As long as I'm fake then I'm perfect
Servicing standards unfeasibly high
Oh woman, you're one when you learn how to lie.

The Bass

Most nights my line is "I can't dance, I'm fine" but tonight I can't stop 'cause this music is mine.
There's a buzz to it.
A fuzzy tremble-beat beneath my feet
And with every fibre humming
It's so sweet to feel complete in the movement, in a moment of becoming.
It commemorates the muse in me,
Amusing me:
Are all the ways
I jerk and sway
A kind of praise?

Especially I treasure the lack of inner pressure;
I do it at my leisure
My time
My place
My change of pace, this perfect space.
The roar in the floor
The call in the wall
The bass.

Week starts again

I’m afraid of the life I have built for myself.
It’s left me with nowhere to go.
The twist in my chest tells me so.
I’m fighting the fright every sunday night.
The terror takes hold of me then -
And the week starts all over again.

And there’s deadlines to meet
And there’s errands to run
I take too many breaks
And I have too much fun
There’s too much distraction from everyone
I start making progress, I’m coping, and then
The week starts again
The week starts again.

Write A Poem Every Day In April: Invisible.

Inspired by Taylor Mali's idea of writing a poem every day in April, and helped along by the high amount of poeming my brain's been doing lately, I thought I'd join in. I hope you like it! This first one's a bit negative, yes, but it works much better to music. I hope to get a video camera one day, then I can show you what it's meant to sound like!

Over and under and round me and through me
You never quite saw me, you never quite knew me
I’m not blind, I know you’ve been flirting with fellas
And yes I’m a lady, and yes I am jealous.
It’s stupid, it’s pointless, it makes me feel foolish,
But I think you knew this,
Is that why you do this?
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
You’ve made yourself clear.
Not needed, not wanted, I’ll just disappear.
Over and under and through me and round me
Invisible just because nobody found me.

Butterflies

I am here,
And he is here,
And something else is here too -
That bungee jump, about-to-step-on-stage feeling.
The crucial moment, fight or flight?
The twisty, hopping, what’s-about-to-happen feeling
That they call
Butterflies.

I am there,
And he is there,
And butterflies are everywhere their wings all tangled in my hair
And, acting like I don’t much care,
I dare to touch...
But not too much.

Synapses firing and failing, I’m flailing for something to say
But “we never did too much talkin’ anyway,
And don’t think twice,” ’cause when I do I run away
And I want to stay.
I kind of like this guy,

But best I like the butterflies that tell me “Yes,
Be afraid and Be alive and Be young for once.”
The butterflies that cloud my eyes
With sugar-gem brightness
And almost hide that common sense is
Telling me: maintain pretences.
Warning me: don’t drop defences; you built the fences for times like this.

So I’ll try and pretend that the thrill’s lost,
That the butterflies died with the first frost,
That the cost was too high.
I’m trying not to show –
Trying not to see those things with fragile stained-glass-window-wings
Thronging the room from the back of my head to the front.

So, I am there.
And he is there.
The butterflies are everywhere.
And I’m still trying not to show – but no. I have to go.
I walk home to a cold bed
And turn it over in my head, the things he did and things I said,
’Cause when you pin it down, it dies,
And I must kill the butterflies.

Now this is nearly perfect ’cause I don't know how to end it, how to make the flutters
Still.
But I will.

Alphabetical polygons

A likes B
but B likes C
(and has a boyfriend anyway, poor A).
C likes D
and D likes E,
and E... well, I think he likes me.

E is hot. I really would,
but F's not over him. Well, good,
because I'm still not over G,
and I live with F, you see.

Tonight I might have upset D.
'cause E was cuddled up to me
And I can't turn a hug away.
(Oh. H was there; her ex is A.)

I'm sure it's not too hard to see
Why this is all too much for me.
I'm tempted to walk out; forget
The whole perplexing alphabet.

Well. I hope I've made it clear.
I'm simply wishing U were here.