CAUL

i.

I've seen the best women of my generation

bruised and bought
trading nipple for microwave bottle
loud and lonely
spilling out of too-tight polyester,
waiting by the phone

I've seen them file themselves for later,
funnel their foresight into book burning,
dragging their bodies through red-angry streets

Mastering a borrowed alchemy
but ultimately alone;
in prisons with spectres and eyeless lions,
re-arranging their dreams to keep in flow with tides

I've heard them analyzing through phone lines,
critical eye scrutinizing, systemitizing, compartmentalizing
the men the women they've loved, do love,
will love again anew a waste,
weighing their own indexibility,
illuminating hollowed out cheekbones
under flashbulb light, round eyes open and empty
as robbed and abandoned tombs

Giving proofless poetry their whole selves,
combing through the same farmed fields until
they are nothing but echo,
vibrating below audible sound

I've watched them seduced by their own reflection
snapping necks back in forced jackal laughter
at jokes they've already forgotten,
holding up invisible walls with their
firm shoulders, cooking rancid meat over open flame
to protest the symbolism of ovens

I've seen them turn on their sisters, forget their mothers,
marry indifference, fall to the alliance
and concede their right to vote.

I've watched as they have laughed and cried,
fought and won,
shouted for real
and also for the purpose of a particular end
stand up and fight then lay down again
and let the waves retake them, rinse and return them
to the forgiving moon-faced morning

I've seen them lose sleep over impostors,
claim false victory, survive just barely,
deny their fathers (their mothers)
and refuse their names,
misdirect their fury, compete for cock
and throw themselves in front of moving trains
so you will finally notice them

I've heard them mythologized, eulogized, anthologized
according to all manners of archetypical systems

I've felt them hunt in the day, during night,
expecting invisibility in digital worlds,
half-wanting their footprints found
after half-heartedly covering their tracks

I've watched them dig shallow ponds
believing them to be true reservoirs of hope,
true excavations of self and other masturbations

I've seem them be bold, be beautiful, be the anchor holding,
dragged along the seafloor, care,
not care, choose life, choose future,
have no choice at all

breaking
bullshit
lack lustre
drunk-dialing
terror
growing trees to block out the holy sun

I've seen them break,
become human again,
release their fears into open wounds, tequila, the night.

But I have not seen truly, in the best women of my generation
an understanding of power involving a conflict of interest,
a hand under the arm of the mother

Because an understanding is not the same as belief,
knowledge of legislature, master of artifice,
affiliation with vagina-friendly playwrighting


In dreams, I see the best women;
they are stepping out of the shell, out of the sea,
scrubbing clean the testicle foam from their ankles,
walking barefoot naked, brilliant eyes,
conversing with the permanence of concrete highway
as they walk firmly west
blazing colour into
white night sky.

But with my own eyes I have not seen a chicken's-done, ready to roll
command performance to the call,
I have not heard an answer to the tacit question
an answer to the dull pulling question this night