As my birthday nears
I notice newly formed skin
Layers of fuck you
And it feels just fine
-a.r.
Painting: Fuck you by Marion Peck
Is it age, maturity, meditation, or simply filling out my own skin that makes me more and more comfortable telling those who expressly don’t like me, but choose to still hang around and judge me, to fuck off? Well…
Happy Birthday to me, and…
When is turning away
Simply saving myself
The static makes it tougher to tell
I’ll tune out what they say
Leave their life on their shelf
Learn my own way around my own hell
-a.r.
Painting: Jeff’s Clock Radio by Raymond Logan
Perfect permanent balance
Does not exist
Do not wish
It is simply the midpoint
Of our own pointy pendulum
While we find our swing
To the next extreme
A talent perfected
Only in death
– a.r.
Painting: Well Deserved Respite After a Particularly Brutal Goring by Bill Carman
Part of his Unbalanced series.
This morning I woke
Cradled under layers of
Antiseptic snow
I wish that I had stayed
Pure and packed in ice today
Melting hurts too much
Best to light me up
Cleansing fast by fire instead
The ashes for my bed
-a.r.
I’m bored of moral
Outrage over adult flesh
Given with consent
I’m horrified by
Moral ambivalence when
Consent’s not given
You are blind to both
By choice to avoid your own
Selfish discomfort
Beauty and consent
Power and autono(my)
Voice and choice denied
No more is it yours
To choose which kind of “she” we
Are allowed to be
-a.r.
Painting: Hypocrisy by mirabillisfuture on deviantart.com
My world revolves around nothing
It wobbles and spins like a top
And it’s hard to know truly
‘Cause direction’s unruly
So I snap-turn it before it can stop
-a.r.
photo: Spinning Top by noorieyuri on deviantart
A year of poetry
Seeped into me
It altered my
Anatomy
More slowly
It leaked out of me
And took with it
My sanity
-a.r.
Painting: Because by agnes-cecile
And right now is when
I fold in and let my skin
Fortress me again
-a.r.
Painting: Amelia’s Dream by Olga Brown
This morning
I cannot tell
If these dear birds
Sing their songs
To woo each other
Or
Fling them long
To wound the other
But my toes are cold
So inside I go
Perhaps
It’s just as well
-a.r.
Photograph by Lee Davis
My daughter’s too much
Like me some days there’s no hope
But in each other
-a.r.
Painting: artist and title unknown
