Free Verse and Tanka for Choice

Free verse? Poetry with no line scheme or rhyme scheme.
Tanka? Must be five lines and thirty-one syllables altogether. I wrote four of them yesterday for class; so they've been in my mind.
Just so you know.

I have no idea if these are going to go on Fictionpress or not, I have a distrust of communities I don't control/know.* Most people there have reviewed me well, but my poetry is usually extremely personal and doesn't delve into the feminist/pro-choice realms. These do.

I wrote them while I was escorting today. I'll probably write more about this. But for now: the protesters are truly sick fuckers. Misinformed assholes with no life. And one of the things I had to keep telling myself was: they will grow old and die and are not going to be remembered as anything but pain in the asses. Because this is what they are devoting their lives toward being. Not brilliant artists or doctors or businesspeople or writers or anything like it. They're not building buildings or fixing peoples' household problems or even being a good 'family man.' No, this is their life. This is what they have devoted themselves to. And the people who see them doing it hate them. I hate them.

Anyway.

While Escorting
I hate how you call us all young lady
as if we were reducible to our ages and bodies
when some of us aren’t that young
or feel older than we are,
and some of us are male.
And our stories?
you don’t know them, and you can’t,
because if we, if any of us told you
that what we’re here for is prevention,
or to save our own lives,
or to keep us from ending up utterly destitute
and those babies you love so much
in foster care or with us hungry on the streets,
you wouldn’t listen. To you,
there is nothing but rhetoric that
the Jesus you speak of, a merciful man,
would preach against, if he were alive.
Your minds have been twisted by
a language of hate, and I cannot see
how yelling about tortured babies
could ever glorify God

Pissed-off Escort Tanka
Oh, you did not just say that
not this week
not two days after
my wonderful little anniversary
burn in hell, bastards

(9/20/08)



*I control the discussion here/at UFPC. When I post at any other blog in the feminist blogosphere about my positions, I can guess that other community members will treat me with respect, agree or disagree. Dissenters might be allowed, but they'll most likely be mocked and castigated. Therefore, I 'know' the community.