Fat Shaming

It's great,
really GREAT
that you love yourself.

Fuck Yeah!

But

No amount
of self-esteem
can unclog
your arteries

No amount
of confidence
can stem the flood
of cancer cells
from ravaging your organs

And no amount
of swagger
can sidestep
that .45 caliber stroke
you've got whizzing
through your brain.

So good on you.

You've redefined the parameters of "beauty"
to the point where it also includes
all the vices that will lead to
your untimely demise.

Mission The Fuck Accomplished!

But the truth
the cold hard math of it

Is that you
are fat
and lazy
and going to die
far too early

And this is all
Your fault.

You can blame society.
Blame advertisers.
Blame photoshop
for making the food look so
Good
and a healthy body look so
Impossible.

You can defend yourself
all you want.
Deep down
You know it's true.

Excuses
wrapped in an education
are still nothing
but excuses.

But no one calls you fat.
No one calls you lazy.
No one calls you out.

You've got the whole world
pretending
that will-power
does not exist

Because

no one wants to
hurt your feelings
while they watch you
kill yourself.

The Woman I Married

You are not the woman I fell in love with.

You are not the woman I married.

You are not.

The woman I fell in love with had perfect tits

and an ass most fly,

but she concealed these gifts in

plain sight so well

that even she no longer believed

that they were real.

The woman I fell in love with offered

apologies to everyone for everything

as though it were an essential phase

of a peculiar brand of cellular respiration

for organisms such as her

that have a biological need to constantly express regret

for taking up any space at all.

You are

not that woman.

Not

anymore.

The woman I married

was a master of disguise.

She snuck from milestone to milestone,

creeping between each grand accomplishment and dignified honor

as though at any moment the sirens might blare

and a SWAT team might descend

to take her away

and the worldwide news outlets would all report

how this little girl of negligible talent

and marginal intellect had ever

managed to defraud so many people

so many times.

The woman I married held her opinions

tight to her chest

vetting each of her words carefully

running background checks and

compiling a thorough dossier

before granting

them access to her tongue

for fear

that the air might fill with imaginary insults

the second after she left the room

and all the smiling faces that

she called friends would agree,

Oh my Gawd. What a bitch!

You are not the woman

I fell in love with

and married.

You are a shape-shifter.

Every morning it seems

the passage of night transforms you into

Someone stronger

Someone braver

Someone more self-assured

with more confidence

who commands more respect.

Listening to you calling out hippies

for all the ridiculous shit they believe

or extolling to your prudish friends in completely

unapologetic detail the many virtues of S&M and anal sex

without the slightest bit of fear or shame

is like music to my ears.

You are a song whose sweet melody

takes years

to begin to hum along to

And while you are not 
the woman I married

I love you and

I admire you

now more than ever

And judging by the trajectory of all 
the things I can measure

I will love you more tomorrow than I do today

And next year.

And next decade.

And next century.

And if I had a billion lifetimes

I wouldn’t waste one of them

without you.

A Small Dark Place

You are a fifteen-year-old girl.

You are standing in a closet

with a sixteen-year-old boy

who is beautiful and perfect in every way

Unlike you.

It’s dark

and you’re glad it’s dark

because you won’t have to see

how handsome he is and he won’t

have to look at how ugly you are.

And he’s only in here with you on a dare anyway.

And it’s now minute four of your fabled

Seven Minutes in Heaven

and so far Heaven seems like a pretty big misnomer

because neither of you have done anything
yet
except share each other's oxygen.

But you are so close and the heat

from his body is so warm

it makes your knees tremble beneath

the shortest skirt that you’re

allowed to wear outside.

Then, as if cued by some silent alarm

some tiny explosion of hormones
a billion years in the making

the most perfect beautiful boy in God’s sweet earth

reaches out and touches you ever so gently

on your stomach

And without a thought

you instinctively reach out

and touch

his chest

and you’re almost surprised to find

that he is just as real as you.

And he leans forward.

And you kiss.

But this isn’t just your first kiss

--this is The Kiss--

The kiss by which you will measure all other kisses,

for as his lips meet yours and your tongue

slips heroically into his mouth

synapses all across your brain are firing off artillery

blazing a new path through the backcountry of your brain

Like an elusive flawless game of Oregon Trail where

Everybody lives

and John didn’t break his leg at all

and Becky doesn’t have dysentery at all

and the ford across the river always holds true.

And the plethora of sensory data gets compiled and

categorized and filed under a folder in your memory labeled 

THIS IS WHAT A FUCKING KISS IS, GIRLFRIEND!

And from now until the day you die

Every kiss that lands on your lips

from lovers both

GREAT and forgettable

will stroll down the same path 

that was carved out by this moment

with this perfect boy

in this small dark place

and all of your friends

murmuring

on the other side of this closet door.

You feel his hand slip

from your stomach to your

left thigh

then up up up up up up up

He does it slowly

to give you ample time to stop him

to say No.

But

You

Don’t

Want him

To stop.

And "Yes"

floats out of your mouth

almost 

on its own.

And you feel his fingers caressing

your sex before he

actually gets there and

the burning in your tummy

verges on torture

And it swells

And it aches.

And you hate it.

Then he slides his hand under your skirt and

over your sopping cotton underwear

and for the first time in your whole stupid life

you completely forget to be embarrassed by your body.

And you forget to be scared.

And time and fear and shame

have become as irrelevant to you as

The Naval War of 1812.

He has barely touched you

when you start to come.

You are coming and now and

you know why they call it coming,

Because you have arrived, Young Lady.

For the very first time your

body and your mind have aligned
to occupy the same space at the same time

without you riding on a flux capacitor to

next week’s chemistry midterm or 

last month’s birthday party.

And a rush of reward chemicals that have

evolved perfectly

over millions of years to

promote procreation

flood your brain.

And you submit

to the same biological obligation that

tethers you to the earth along

with every other living thing from

cheetahs to cockroaches.

And it’s so dazzling and repulsive,

so gorgeous and obscene,

that you start crying immediately,

drunk on the discovery of your own potent sexual power

The Girl

who can make it rain just by wetting her lips.

The Girl

whose expanding iris can summon a tidal wave.

The Girl

whose blushing cheeks could melt the polar ice caps.

And just as the last ribbon of your childhood

Snaps

Slips

And twirls to the floor

The closet door flings open

And your tiny, most private of moments

Is flooded with light and

the shrieking catcalls of everyone

you’ve known

since grade-school.

And they saw everything.

And they know nothing.

And they will call you a slut

and a skank

and a whore

to punish you

for that moment

when you forgot 

to be afraid and ashamed

like them.

And the perfect

most beautiful boy on Earth

will prove himself

desperately flawed

and ugly
and common

and that will kill you.

And it will be decades

before you can put all this

in the right place.

When your breasts hang like boxing gloves.
When your thighs no longer quiver at a stranger’s touch.

When you can talk all night about his cock

and your cunt

without the slightest bit of blood redirecting to your cheeks.

And a kiss

Will be

Just a kiss.

And you will think back
to this moment

And your heart will
soar.

And your heart will
sink.

About Pussies

It is completely absurd that

people use the word “pussy”

As a symbol for weakness

and cowardice.

A woman’s pussy is tougher

And more gallant

Than any man who has ever lived.

Our entire species

depends

on pussies dilating

--often ripping--

in order to usher in the next generation

of human beings.

You could lay a path

from the Earth to the Moon

and back again

a hundred times over

using only the vaginal tears

of the unimaginably resilient

and courageous women

who have faced this horror,

but still,
we have the nerve

--the sheer fucking audacity--

to refer to pussies

as symbols for the
weak and cowardly.

Meanwhile,

we use “balls” as a symbol

of strength and courage

when they are actually the most

sensitive and

vulnerable real-estate in

the observable universe.

It’s just

unconscionable.

What We Do

I was at my dad’s apartment

when my sister called to tell us

that my mother was Stage 4

and the doctor’s only gave her

6 months left to live.

My father and I looked at each other

and without one word

we immediately,

and simultaneously,

began cleaning his apartment.

I took the coffee table.

It was littered with coins and

half-eaten packs of mint Rolaids.

He took the carpet next to the front door,

gathered up his dirty clothes,

wound an orange extension cord around his arm

which had been tangled against the wall

and plugged into nothing.

I picked a book up off the table.

Can’t remember what.

Probably Clancy.

The pages were warped by time and weather.

I tried to close it

But it wanted to stay open and contorted.

We didn’t cry then.

That’s not what we do.

We fix things.

And by God, we’d fix this.

We’d organize all those coins

into tightly pressed rolls

fit for a bank deposit.

We’d plug that extension cord into something useful

And iron out those unkempt Clancy pages.

Then we’d do the dishes

And the laundry

And paint the walls

And steam clean the carpet.

Then we’d get fucking serious.

We’d take it outside.

Sweep up all the deserts.

Towel off all the oceans.

Organize the stars into a nice sensible grid.

We’d take all the chaos

And give it structure,

Give it meaning,

Finally make some sense of this goddamn madness

Once and for all.

Because that’s what we do.