Every Poem Breaks A Silence That Had

Women Have Been Driven Mad, “gaslighted”, For Centuries By The Refutation Of Our Experience And Our Instincts In A Culture Which Validates Only Male Experience. The Truth Of Our Bodies And Our Minds Has Been Mystified To Us. We Therefore Have Primary Obligation To Each Other: Not To Undermine Each Other’s Sense Of Reality For The Sake Of Expediency; Not To Gaslight Each Other.

Since We're Not Young, Weeks Have To Do Time For Years Of Missing Each Other.yet Only This Odd Warp In Time Tells Me We're Not Young.

White Hate Crimes, White Hate Speech. I Still Try To Claim I Wasn't Brought Up To Hate. But Hate Isn't The Half Of It. I Grew Up In The Vast Encircling Presumption Of Whiteness - That Primary Quality Of Being Which Knows Itself, Its Passions, Only Against An Otherness That Has To Be Dehumanized. I Grew Up In White Silence That Was Utterly Obsessional. Race Was The Theme Whatever The Topic.

We Assume That Politicians Are Without Honor. We Read Their Statements Trying To Crack The Code. The Scandals Of Their Politics: Not So Much That Men In High Places Lie, Only That They Do So With Such Indifference, So Endlessly, Still Expecting To Be Believed. We Are Accustomed To The Contempt Inherent In The Political Lie.

Can You Remember? When We Thought The Poets Taught How To Live?