I confess:
I’m throwing away my credentials now, giving away my degrees,
my academic gowns.
Seven tears not six crawled across my skin and fell to rest on my lips,
and it wasn’t Wittgentstein or Heidegger, Foucault or DeMan that broke
the gates that held my fate from reaching out to touch the clothes
of others in the world,
others who felt, and dreamed a lot like me.
It was with women with names and lives to match,
it was with Gong Li, with Sonja Sohn, with Patti Smith and Sylvia Plath,
with women whose names began with S or C, it was for them I found
that I could feel. And it was a day of reading, of music, of watching movies,
and it was..
yes it was alone,
yeah, yeah alone.
Totally cliche and embarrassing. Is that what it takes to say I’m a man?
You cringe. I know.
And I’m singing through the power of dyadic operators,
I’m dreaming of Poet Goddesses, of silk tan breasts, of tongues of venom
and honey alike, I’ve kissed them, I miss them, I’ve retreated from the fire,
I’m treating the burns with confession and verse, sometimes together
with Judith Hall and Ann Sexton, with women whose names begin with S or C...
And still I confess, I’m not ashamed, I know it’s not cool, I know it’s not distant or intellectual enough, but after all this time I’ve learned to love,
I’ve finally grown into my heart........But does it have to be this way?
