As with most men, it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them.
Lest the truth be known, men
are nothing more than emotional skyscrapers
built with glass infrastructures
spray painted the colour of steel
and nicknamed strength.
Strange isn’t it
what walking contradictions are we called men?
At the age of five
men are taught to colonise one another
through games like cops and robbers
cowboys and Indians.
At the age of eight
we’re given helmets
then told to hit each other in the head with it.
Bleed but do not blink
cut but do not cry.
Be a man, join the military
die for your country
and if death comes for you
look it in the eye, say
‘bring it on motherfucker, I fear nothing but
intimacy.’
When it comes to intimacy
men quiver like fault
lines, crumble like cities
walking contradictions
are we called
men
sign peace accords while abusing their wives
accept the Nobel peace price while reducing health care
pledge to rid the world of terrorism
while simultaneously denying government aid
to any country that defends a woman’s right to choose.
During the 1970s the United States government forcibly sterilised
an estimated fifty percent of the indigenous population of America’s Mid-West
telling them the process was reversible.
Can one say biological terrorism?
Bio meaning life body
and in a global war against terror
maybe testosterone is the real terrorist.
If so, how many of these star spangled singing
flag waving citizens would continue do so if we made
terror not racialised but gendered.
Would the US military turn its guns on itself for
sex crimes throughout South East Asia
Africa
and the Americas?
Would MTV be firebombed for its objectification
hyper-sexualisation of women of colour bodies?
Would we stop looking towards the Muslim world for misogyny
turn our sights to Madrid?
Montreal?
New York?
Los Angeles?
Now I understand my sisters when they say
every woman has a story that’s been told to a maximum of one soul, maybe less.
This is why you will never hear me call a woman
slut — cunt
bitch — dyke
no matter what she does for I do not blame her.
I blame the men who have emotionally
physically raped her
corporations who through images
tell her they hate her
then put arms on shoulders
tell her how grateful I am to god
that She created her.
Men take note:
this is how you give love
this is how you receive hugs
pressed breast to breast
till egos deflate like oxygen
till flesh crumples
like emotional origami.