Voluntary Voice:
Dearest Mother,
Why is that
Man over there trying
On a dress?
Involuntary Body:
Throat convulses,
Eyes fixed,
Nervous little hands toying
With the hem of a school skirt—
Heart beating to
The herniated melody of
Overeager soldiers
Charging and stomping
To war—
Acrimonious mantras
Silenced to mere ripples
In the sea of consciousness—
My war is hollowed
To the internal bleeding
Of my identity.
Id:
The appetite to touch,
To stroke,
To poke,
To feel,
To hold
Was provoking every
Fiber and nerve of
My being as I sat on the bench
In the dress store,
Fingering
My own pre-pubescent
Stubble on my
Legs, wondering what it
Would feel like;
Marveling at how the
Chicanery of such
A tight fitted dress on
Such robust, fuzzy
Thighs would warrant such
Involuntary reason
For a girl to
Salivate.
“Look away, look away.
Stop staring.”
Such muscular, sculpted
Calves: positioned,
Poised, and showcased
In such lovely red
Stilettos,
Flexing and pulsing with each step
And lean
As differed colored sequined
Gowns shifted
And drifted down the
Racks of clearance items—
None good enough for
The lavishness of such an
Omnipotent vision of
Deviance.
Super Ego:
Snickers and sneers
Followed by shuffled
Footsteps down
Staid paths
Of traditional jeers—
Unyielding—
At the abnormal,
The morass, an addled
Surreptitious haecceity under
A probing exegesis.
This wayward gentlewo(man)—
The tempestuous
Strut—
Had me on the precipice
Of beautitude;
The dresses now
Yield gloomy glints of a
Sepulchral nature in
The midst of
Concupiscent xanadu.
Ego:
Furtive glances excite
My umbridged malediction.
And yet, my failed attempts at
Performing my limerence
Results in a relaxed, receding
Rift in the audience’s posture
As sighs of relief
Loom in my mind
From voices that aren’t
Mine.
I’ll put on the powder and
Gloss, trick and deceive,
But my heart will continue
To grieve—
*
The Unconscious (The Stage Manager):
The play has ended—begone!
Fictional romances never
Appease all onlookers,
Just as some killers
Prefer a knife to a
Gun: the intimacy
In death as uncanny
As one’s birth;
Cut the creature
Open, and what do you
See?
To the characters who live
Alien science fiction—
The fish bowl was tainted
Long ago;
When the curtain closes,
Continue to breathe
And parade your tail.
Ingest red lipticks
And paint those
Roses redder than
The ink that corrects
You.
Human suits
Preferred over
Clown capes,
Perfunctory effigies
Exacerbate avant-guard
Psyches—
A plethora of fire
Could not
Expunge this innate
Blasphemy on civilization’s
Whitest of sheets.
Supra Ego:
The things they loath
Become the things I love:
All their demons swallowed
With but a yawn from
A little girl.
My outward form remains,
But all hell
is within.