This poem struck a chord, you might say.
Some men think they want to be sex objects.
Some guys even say they want to be women
so that they could be sex objects.
Reconsider this, guys.
I know what you're thinking:
bodies pleasures pleasures bodies
but this is what it is:
Nobody wants to hear anything but the body.
The deadly boring body
when everything of interest in your life
is going on in your mind.
And they "loved your show"
but don't remember what you sang
or, for that matter, whether you were the one who sang
or the one who played classical guitar
because what they noticed was your body.
And you might be,
like the character in Kelly Weber's poems,
asexual. You might be asexual
because of a disease condition that may kill you.
You might be sitting with your very sick mother
in the hospital every day, watching her die,
and she might be telling you about
how horrible your birth was for her,
because the dying want to tell all their stories before they die,
and people still think "sex object" when they look at your body
and that is all they think.
Nothing like: are you so tired you can't see straight?
Nothing like: did you eat breakfast on any day during the past week
and, if so, did any of it seem to have stayed down?
Nothing like: do you have positive pains in the places
of greatest interest to the people who only ever think about your body,
or do those places just feel sort of numb?
Nothing like: is it cancer
or is it mononucleosis
or is it merely lactose intolerance
or maybe Lyme Disease
or maybe multiple sclerosis
or any combination of the above?
Nothing like: and are you managing to write stuff, anyway,
however much of it you are burning, or will burn,
because you want to write all your thoughts out before you die?
Nothing like: and did you have a boyfriend,
before all this other kind of body-drama started,
and do you ever hear from him, or want to?
Nothing like: and if there was a time for kissing
in your previous life, was it age-appropriate,
because you're only just barely old enough for that sort of thing now,
or was it premature and guilty and traumatic,
and was it, in any case, profoundly private
because when introverts kiss we don't tell,
and which is worse: betraying someone you still love
by talking about a private moment with person,
or remembering why you stopped loving person?
No. None of that. It's just
body body body
hey baby you have a body
I asked you a question but never mind, I was looking at your body
I don't care about anything about you but that body
so who else is doing what to your body
and are you constantly, obsessively,
remembering what they've been doing to your body
and if not, can I try to make myself more memorable
to your body, of course, I don't care about anything but your body
I'm sure you're a good person because you have a beautiful body
or maybe you're a bad person in an interesting way, because oh that body
I don't give a flip about the content of your character, anyway
I might prefer to believe you were evil after I've used your body
but at the moment I don't want to think about anything but your body.
I once told a young man I had just walked 35 miles
and what he said, edited for Google, was:
So, can I use your body?
I once told a young man I was going to the hospital with my husband
and what he said was "I can be a nice friend, too,"
meaning I want to use your body.
I once had a cardiac reaction to chemical pollution
and fell over headlong on pavement
and a man who was old enough to know better
said, edited for Google,
Golly, I want to use your body.
"Well, know, you," Lewis Grizzard
once said, in the biblical sense
but that's the last thing one wants to say to them.
They would say Is that a promise, then?
So maybe the words one wants are more archaic
like Blast your bones and sear your skin.
And they think to themselves
You don't mean those hard words, because you have a soft body
and they say, unhearing,
body body body body body.
Guys, even women
cannot deal with this and
even a small amount of blood testosterone, at the same time.
You lose all sympathy.
You lose all empathy.
You lose all sportsmanship.
You stand there and laugh in their faces.
Do not try to transition into a woman
with an expensively surgically enhanced body
that would interest other guys, guys.
It will destroy the only pleasure you have in life.
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