Observation 1: Why women stand still
There is no woman
Ever born who is not given a Place.
It is a home
Not a house.
A location that requires attendance.
Technically speaking the Place
Is not a prison.
It lacks the standard issue bars.
I had a Place.
At first, I welcomed that a spot had been set aside, just for me.
How special I felt.
It must have been a sight to see.
A young woman being convinced to stand still.
And I did.
Stand still.
Until I didn’t.
I fell out of Place accidentally.
Went looking for a reminder of why I needed to stay put
And unexpectedly discovered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
Not just the one played on me by my church,
But the one instituted against all women.
When I first stepped out of Place,
The female hall monitors sounded the alarm.
Woman get back in Place!
Your Place is safe.
Your Place is special.
Your Place is just for you.
Your Place is divine.
Your Place will reward you.
Your Place needs you.
No!
You will suffer out of Place.
You will lose your family if you leave your Place.
You will ruin your marriage if you move out of Place.
You will lose everything!
So!
You are turning your back on what you are meant to be.
All will be lost!
Yes!
I want to lose:
My purpose [defined by Him]
My future [given with His permission]
My eternity [where He would still rule over me]
My certainty [He lied anyway]
He created layers of security alarms imbedded in my head
One move out of Place and they sound.
I broke through them all, each new step I took
Until He was a faded mumble.
I rejoiced in freedom to roam
Out of Place.
[Momentarily]
Only to discover that
There are Places within Places.
I am still in a Place
Designed by Him.
This new Place is clever.
Makes me feel all free to be.
But what exactly is the difference
Between being on leash and wandering around a fenced-in pen?
Now I am surrounded by women welcoming me to freedom.
I am the recovered woman they think they rescued.
Why can they not see
The Place He gave them to graze?
The law could no longer blatantly
Call women property.
So instead He transferred ownership rights
To the Place.
He owns every Place.
The ones that determine
Safety
Futures
Opportunities
Choices, and
Bodies.
Places, Places
Everyone!
It is humiliating to admit
That I have stood still on command for two decades.
I am frequently asked,
So, what have you accomplished?
The answer I never give, but that is true
I stood in place.
I lie and pretend
That I have not just been released from captivity.
I over-compensate to hide deficits
From having played statue for so long.
Because it is impolite to point out His previous ownership
I alone have to cheer myself on.
Look at you, you are doing it!
Walking and talking without His orders.
Sometimes, I briefly consider getting back in Place.
In many ways, it is easier than roaming the pen.
It is exhausting to be free.
But not.
The laws of this land
Codify my Place.
The thing we say is neutral
Actually arranges the fencing on my pen.
With a straight face, He tells me my body is not my own
The state may have an interest in it.
For the good of the species
They retain ownership.
Which means,
I am on lease to myself.
I left my religion with its dogma and scriptures
And awoke to a state theology and its constitution.
The story of woman is a simple one.
Requires only the mention of Places and permission.
Many have fought to stretch the words
So that they cover women from the harsh elements.
But the piece of Paper is inadequate.
It was never meant to equalize.
Not when it uses fractions.
I have outgrown my Place.
And women have outgrown the Paper.
How can I figure out who I am
When I have to compete with other women for value?
I hate the roaming game we play
Where we line up side-by-side to compare
Resumes
Bodies
Possessions, and
Kids.
It is a busy work
That absorbs the minutes, takes our minds off what we lost.
I want a new world, one where woman is more
Than just a creature who counts her steps.
I am in that stage where I blame myself
For being so gullible, so used, so easily manipulated.
I do not recall the exact moment, but
I must have agreed with Him,
That I was too tempting.
Which is why I spent two decades
Believing I was a sin.
Standing in Place has required severing the place within me
That wants more.
Making me fidgety and restless.
Roaming will not be enough.
There is something more in me
He must not have claimed.
I am finding it.
And making it mine.
Because right now,
In this Place,
I only play
Free.
Critique 5: Everyday threats
Flinch girl.
Feel it close your mouth.
Hesitate.
Turn around.
Never mind.
Think of the big picture.
At what is at stake.
Tell yourself it’s strategic.
For the best.
The right course of action.
Instead of the truth.
Where you are so used to living as
Response.
Where He acts and you
Absorb.
So, flinch girl.
You don’t even feel it as obvious fear
Stopping you from
Speaking
Leaving
Objecting
Fighting
Saying No
It only feels like
Normal.
And possibly a slight
Loss of that self-confidence
Women lack.
If it was obvious,
A raised hand
Aimed at our face
Like physics,
We would understand
The velocity of power
Hitting matter
At a right angle.
And our flinch would be
Acceptable.
Expectable.
But it’s hardly ever
His actual hand.
And we were never taught
How to measure distance
Between His absolute power
And our physical form
When it is words,
Tone of voice,
That look
Of disappointment,
That is aimed
To annihilate
This self.
Sometimes I recognize
His incoming
Even when it lacks the normal markers
And internally
I flinch.
But because I fail to see who has taken aim
I suffer from
Delusion.
Second-guessing.
Instead I ask
What do you want from me?
Just tell me!
I won’t pretend to be above it all.
Knowing I will acquiesce in the end
Out of fear of being struck down
With our laws
That require me to put myself in harm’s way
In order to prove
He is a danger.
So, I flinch.
And don’t know how to stop
This perpetual version of involuntary womanhood.
And this is why
I want to start over
In some place
Where women
Never know fear.
Never sense His rising temper.
Never have to wonder
If a woman is vulnerable
To her own species.
He can’t see
Himself as
Existentially
My biggest threat
To survival.
The monster in my bed.
The one I spoon
Willingly
Kills.
Even pieces of this self
That would’ve had something to say
Had they not flaked off
While flinching
Like old eyeshadow
Put on by a naive girl,
Who learned the hard way that
The boy next door,
The one who smells like the best thing,
Has the power
In His hands,
In His words,
By His look,
In the space He takes up,
In the created world He demands,
To demolish,
To devastate,
To un-make,
To re-craft,
To promote,
To silence,
To kill,
The girl next door.
The girl I am.
The girl I never really met
Because He hits
Without even meaning
To aim.
As if it’s only His voice
That activates creation.
So, flinch girl.
Or maybe don’t.
If the law wants us to use up our life
To mark danger like
A red flare lit on a dark night
Then collectively
Showing injury
Might help Him see
Flinching women
Lined up on the side of
Every road.
A stream of red
[Blood]
Marking where we stand.
Because if we could stop
Living as an
Uninterrupted flinch
We could be
Something.
Some
[Living]
Thing.
Suggestion 13: Amend every belief
Have you, like I, been taught
About happiness?
To be happy.
To grow up and be happy.
To make good choices
To be happy.
To get to the end of your life and live in a way so you can look back
And see your happy self?
Half way done with life
I can say
That is not the proper way to describe the feeling
That we feel in the end.
Lies!
All lies!
More
Tales
Myths
Dreams
Hopes
And
Faith.
[Bought and sold]
He never allowed me
To see the future.
Certainly, restricted from prophesying.
But if I call it a guess,
Maybe a girl like me can get away with it.
So, I guess
That at the end of all this
There is absolutely no way to feel happiness.
No promise
Or promised land.
No where to go in the end.
It’s just end. And when its eve
Is upon us
We will see it’s always been Eve.
Which is why He named her so.
Because at the end
She comes back into focus
And all of us
Male
Female
[Whatever the hell we ever meant by that]
Are
Her.
And she never was about happiness.
What a waste
To believe in false words.
Concepts that jail
Him and Her.
Because
Power blinds Him.
Hope blinds Her.
And
Everything He became,
Everything she failed to be,
Ceases.
There is no liberation theology.
Which is just more time wasted.
Which looks like people who need stories
To help free them from other’s stories.
All coming from the same damn books.
Different chapter, same verse.
And when this planet burns,
Not because of the wrath of some worshipped far-away king,
But from the doings of our own local versions,
Who refuse to account for the fact that we have only one
Home,
One place where our feet can stand firmly
On level earth,
And lungs that refuse
Transportation to other realms,
We will remember that
Hope always lies elsewhere.
But hear this,
Hope always lies
And power always hides!
Maybe when we absorb that truth
We’ll stop with the nonsense
And the heavy dose of denial.
But our constitution limits such changes!
They will claim.
Since when did it become anything more than just
A piece of paper?
That memorialization of a second try in a stolen land
Should not hold us back
From evolution.
But I need god to die
Apparently
Before rational humans
Will evolve
And see
It’s time for a third try.
But they fight
Like their honor depends on it.
Some supposed Templar Knights hired for life.
Here to defend the status quo.
Securing our eventual death.
Where we all are sacrificed to some unknown
But it feels so real to them
Being.
And while burning they will sing His praises.
Gone
Before they realize
He was always just hope.
And like I said,
Hope always lies.
Some would say
All believers
Die happy.
Because if they are wrong
In the end, they never know.
But when did we hand over this one planet to them?
We think we are separating church and state
But by giving them space all these years
They re-populated the planet.
And now,
Because we think respect of a human means
Acceptance of everything their brain is capable of thinking,
Our survival depends upon
A zero-tolerance policy.
Something we have never understood how to mean.
But we save everyone
When everyone wakes up.
There is nothing to fear in this.
It’s just a momentary death.
And the worst part,
I can tell you from experience,
Is when everyone is walking around you like
It’s just a normal day
As if life had not just ceased.
But then
Just wait.
You will see
Colors
You never knew existed, and feel
The actual definition of love.
It’s survivable,
But we are not
If you insist
On dying for
Him
And sentencing the rest of us
Non-believers
To the same end.
Because in the end,
On the eve of everything,
We all become Eve.
And she
Never was.
There is no woman
Ever born who is not given a Place.
It is a home
Not a house.
A location that requires attendance.
Technically speaking the Place
Is not a prison.
It lacks the standard issue bars.
I had a Place.
At first, I welcomed that a spot had been set aside, just for me.
How special I felt.
It must have been a sight to see.
A young woman being convinced to stand still.
And I did.
Stand still.
Until I didn’t.
I fell out of Place accidentally.
Went looking for a reminder of why I needed to stay put
And unexpectedly discovered the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
Not just the one played on me by my church,
But the one instituted against all women.
When I first stepped out of Place,
The female hall monitors sounded the alarm.
Woman get back in Place!
Your Place is safe.
Your Place is special.
Your Place is just for you.
Your Place is divine.
Your Place will reward you.
Your Place needs you.
No!
You will suffer out of Place.
You will lose your family if you leave your Place.
You will ruin your marriage if you move out of Place.
You will lose everything!
So!
You are turning your back on what you are meant to be.
All will be lost!
Yes!
I want to lose:
My purpose [defined by Him]
My future [given with His permission]
My eternity [where He would still rule over me]
My certainty [He lied anyway]
He created layers of security alarms imbedded in my head
One move out of Place and they sound.
I broke through them all, each new step I took
Until He was a faded mumble.
I rejoiced in freedom to roam
Out of Place.
[Momentarily]
Only to discover that
There are Places within Places.
I am still in a Place
Designed by Him.
This new Place is clever.
Makes me feel all free to be.
But what exactly is the difference
Between being on leash and wandering around a fenced-in pen?
Now I am surrounded by women welcoming me to freedom.
I am the recovered woman they think they rescued.
Why can they not see
The Place He gave them to graze?
The law could no longer blatantly
Call women property.
So instead He transferred ownership rights
To the Place.
He owns every Place.
The ones that determine
Safety
Futures
Opportunities
Choices, and
Bodies.
Places, Places
Everyone!
It is humiliating to admit
That I have stood still on command for two decades.
I am frequently asked,
So, what have you accomplished?
The answer I never give, but that is true
I stood in place.
I lie and pretend
That I have not just been released from captivity.
I over-compensate to hide deficits
From having played statue for so long.
Because it is impolite to point out His previous ownership
I alone have to cheer myself on.
Look at you, you are doing it!
Walking and talking without His orders.
Sometimes, I briefly consider getting back in Place.
In many ways, it is easier than roaming the pen.
It is exhausting to be free.
But not.
The laws of this land
Codify my Place.
The thing we say is neutral
Actually arranges the fencing on my pen.
With a straight face, He tells me my body is not my own
The state may have an interest in it.
For the good of the species
They retain ownership.
Which means,
I am on lease to myself.
I left my religion with its dogma and scriptures
And awoke to a state theology and its constitution.
The story of woman is a simple one.
Requires only the mention of Places and permission.
Many have fought to stretch the words
So that they cover women from the harsh elements.
But the piece of Paper is inadequate.
It was never meant to equalize.
Not when it uses fractions.
I have outgrown my Place.
And women have outgrown the Paper.
How can I figure out who I am
When I have to compete with other women for value?
I hate the roaming game we play
Where we line up side-by-side to compare
Resumes
Bodies
Possessions, and
Kids.
It is a busy work
That absorbs the minutes, takes our minds off what we lost.
I want a new world, one where woman is more
Than just a creature who counts her steps.
I am in that stage where I blame myself
For being so gullible, so used, so easily manipulated.
I do not recall the exact moment, but
I must have agreed with Him,
That I was too tempting.
Which is why I spent two decades
Believing I was a sin.
Standing in Place has required severing the place within me
That wants more.
Making me fidgety and restless.
Roaming will not be enough.
There is something more in me
He must not have claimed.
I am finding it.
And making it mine.
Because right now,
In this Place,
I only play
Free.
Critique 5: Everyday threats
Flinch girl.
Feel it close your mouth.
Hesitate.
Turn around.
Never mind.
Think of the big picture.
At what is at stake.
Tell yourself it’s strategic.
For the best.
The right course of action.
Instead of the truth.
Where you are so used to living as
Response.
Where He acts and you
Absorb.
So, flinch girl.
You don’t even feel it as obvious fear
Stopping you from
Speaking
Leaving
Objecting
Fighting
Saying No
It only feels like
Normal.
And possibly a slight
Loss of that self-confidence
Women lack.
If it was obvious,
A raised hand
Aimed at our face
Like physics,
We would understand
The velocity of power
Hitting matter
At a right angle.
And our flinch would be
Acceptable.
Expectable.
But it’s hardly ever
His actual hand.
And we were never taught
How to measure distance
Between His absolute power
And our physical form
When it is words,
Tone of voice,
That look
Of disappointment,
That is aimed
To annihilate
This self.
Sometimes I recognize
His incoming
Even when it lacks the normal markers
And internally
I flinch.
But because I fail to see who has taken aim
I suffer from
Delusion.
Second-guessing.
Instead I ask
What do you want from me?
Just tell me!
I won’t pretend to be above it all.
Knowing I will acquiesce in the end
Out of fear of being struck down
With our laws
That require me to put myself in harm’s way
In order to prove
He is a danger.
So, I flinch.
And don’t know how to stop
This perpetual version of involuntary womanhood.
And this is why
I want to start over
In some place
Where women
Never know fear.
Never sense His rising temper.
Never have to wonder
If a woman is vulnerable
To her own species.
He can’t see
Himself as
Existentially
My biggest threat
To survival.
The monster in my bed.
The one I spoon
Willingly
Kills.
Even pieces of this self
That would’ve had something to say
Had they not flaked off
While flinching
Like old eyeshadow
Put on by a naive girl,
Who learned the hard way that
The boy next door,
The one who smells like the best thing,
Has the power
In His hands,
In His words,
By His look,
In the space He takes up,
In the created world He demands,
To demolish,
To devastate,
To un-make,
To re-craft,
To promote,
To silence,
To kill,
The girl next door.
The girl I am.
The girl I never really met
Because He hits
Without even meaning
To aim.
As if it’s only His voice
That activates creation.
So, flinch girl.
Or maybe don’t.
If the law wants us to use up our life
To mark danger like
A red flare lit on a dark night
Then collectively
Showing injury
Might help Him see
Flinching women
Lined up on the side of
Every road.
A stream of red
[Blood]
Marking where we stand.
Because if we could stop
Living as an
Uninterrupted flinch
We could be
Something.
Some
[Living]
Thing.
Suggestion 13: Amend every belief
Have you, like I, been taught
About happiness?
To be happy.
To grow up and be happy.
To make good choices
To be happy.
To get to the end of your life and live in a way so you can look back
And see your happy self?
Half way done with life
I can say
That is not the proper way to describe the feeling
That we feel in the end.
Lies!
All lies!
More
Tales
Myths
Dreams
Hopes
And
Faith.
[Bought and sold]
He never allowed me
To see the future.
Certainly, restricted from prophesying.
But if I call it a guess,
Maybe a girl like me can get away with it.
So, I guess
That at the end of all this
There is absolutely no way to feel happiness.
No promise
Or promised land.
No where to go in the end.
It’s just end. And when its eve
Is upon us
We will see it’s always been Eve.
Which is why He named her so.
Because at the end
She comes back into focus
And all of us
Male
Female
[Whatever the hell we ever meant by that]
Are
Her.
And she never was about happiness.
What a waste
To believe in false words.
Concepts that jail
Him and Her.
Because
Power blinds Him.
Hope blinds Her.
And
Everything He became,
Everything she failed to be,
Ceases.
There is no liberation theology.
Which is just more time wasted.
Which looks like people who need stories
To help free them from other’s stories.
All coming from the same damn books.
Different chapter, same verse.
And when this planet burns,
Not because of the wrath of some worshipped far-away king,
But from the doings of our own local versions,
Who refuse to account for the fact that we have only one
Home,
One place where our feet can stand firmly
On level earth,
And lungs that refuse
Transportation to other realms,
We will remember that
Hope always lies elsewhere.
But hear this,
Hope always lies
And power always hides!
Maybe when we absorb that truth
We’ll stop with the nonsense
And the heavy dose of denial.
But our constitution limits such changes!
They will claim.
Since when did it become anything more than just
A piece of paper?
That memorialization of a second try in a stolen land
Should not hold us back
From evolution.
But I need god to die
Apparently
Before rational humans
Will evolve
And see
It’s time for a third try.
But they fight
Like their honor depends on it.
Some supposed Templar Knights hired for life.
Here to defend the status quo.
Securing our eventual death.
Where we all are sacrificed to some unknown
But it feels so real to them
Being.
And while burning they will sing His praises.
Gone
Before they realize
He was always just hope.
And like I said,
Hope always lies.
Some would say
All believers
Die happy.
Because if they are wrong
In the end, they never know.
But when did we hand over this one planet to them?
We think we are separating church and state
But by giving them space all these years
They re-populated the planet.
And now,
Because we think respect of a human means
Acceptance of everything their brain is capable of thinking,
Our survival depends upon
A zero-tolerance policy.
Something we have never understood how to mean.
But we save everyone
When everyone wakes up.
There is nothing to fear in this.
It’s just a momentary death.
And the worst part,
I can tell you from experience,
Is when everyone is walking around you like
It’s just a normal day
As if life had not just ceased.
But then
Just wait.
You will see
Colors
You never knew existed, and feel
The actual definition of love.
It’s survivable,
But we are not
If you insist
On dying for
Him
And sentencing the rest of us
Non-believers
To the same end.
Because in the end,
On the eve of everything,
We all become Eve.
And she
Never was.