i was trying to sleep
but that thing next to my bed
kept scratching on the wall
and so i lashed out
but it was too fast for me
and i had to yell at it
and it shut up for a minute
but went back to its

scritchscritchscritch

like broken nails on stone
until i was like

“FUCK MAN I’M TRYING TO SLEEP!”

but it never responds
though sometimes it stops

for a minute

that’s when the race to dream starts
and i am sprinting hard to darkness
and just before the finish line
it starts again…

scritchscritchscritch

setting my hairs on end
and making me want to fire-bomb the bedroom
but there’s no sense to that
because it’s where i keep my clothes and shit

so i just lay upon my back bleeding curse words
while the bastard keeps it up
through the inky hours
till i get up with the sun
and it sleeps like the ass it is

the difference between light and dark
can be hard to discern –
sometimes

i walk in the black and it seems
like i can see shadows cast by absence

other times it can be so bright
i cannot see a thing

too close to the line
between the two
like walking along the equator
and losing the distinction
between north and south

it has all blended;
it is all the same.

you don’t understand…

all the moments and minutes of grand assistance
and the constant standing by your cause,
by your belief or your lack thereof;

these things that seem so
altruistic –

they are simply out-workings
of an intense overconfidence,
a crazy over-heated arrogance,

a conviction that no matter how much we help you
you will never exceed us.

you are not our equal.

Reading the news today I encountered yet another story from Pakistan about a young woman having had acid thrown in her face leading to disfigurement. In this instance the attack was by an older brother who had been making advances which were consistently spurned.

Meanwhile in France there is an ongoing legal struggle over a ridiculous attempt by the state to ban the burkini (a full body bathing suit favoured by some Muslim women not unlike bathing suits of the 1920’s era). This, of course, is being done in the name of “freeing” women from the shackles of a patriarchal culture and faith.

It is interesting that whenever women are spoken about the dialogue seems to revolve around their bodies and their faces. This points to a not-so-subtle reality that a woman’s physical beauty is being treated as her only value. In a culture’s overt physical attacks on women like throwing acid or in their attempts to defend women, again by focusing on her body, all that is done is a reinforcing of the idea that a woman is only valuable in so much as she is desirable and beautiful.

When a state like France focuses its liberation efforts on women by banning what they can do with their bodies (in this instance covering them too much) they betray that age-old patriarchal bias that says “your body and what you do with it is our business” thus again reinforcing the idea that a woman’s only asset is her body which leads to all kinds of social and cultural repressions – “your worth is in your body – if you do not appear to be beautiful to us (generally men) then you have diminished or little value“.

The idea that women’s physical beauty is valuable means that, like gold, it has been and continues to be treated like a commodity – a raw material that can bought and sold (or treated as such) to the benefit of the buyer and seller – no one is generally concerned about the commodity. There are still many places where women can be literally bought and sold. The sex trade is a perfect example.

Now what do we do with our gold and valuables? Why we hide them of course. We lock them away and keeping them well covered from coveting eyes unless it serves our purpose and then we blatantly show them off like so much jewelry at a society function.

Society, in its attempts to offer greater freedoms to women, still ends up speaking in a language that revolves suspiciously and primarily around her body. There are constant pressures toward weight loss, fitness, fashion and make-up etc. which all centre on how a woman looks and the mantra that “looking good can lead to feeling good“.

The most insidious thing about these pressures is that, in and of themselves there’s nothing wrong with burkinis, bikinis, toplessness, nakedness or head-to-toe covering, make-up, working out, losing weight, etc. – the real issue is the root motivator behind the pressures – “be beautiful” because therein lies your value when it should be “you are beautiful with or without any of these things because your primary value (and thus your equality) is not in your beauty (inside or out) but in your humanity.”

I have a teenage daughter and I am constantly fighting the kinds of societal pressures that make me want to lock her up – the same kind of pressures I never felt with my sons.

Ultimately what I hope for her is that she decides who she wants to be and how she wants to be based solely on who she is and not due to external pressures to dress a certain way and look a certain way. You know – the things I take for granted for myself and my sons.

if i write words
with invisible ink
perhaps
i will not have to read them
later