There is a depth of love that is most easily noticed by the way it breaks your heart. Not in a bad way but in that breaking is a way of being fundamentally changed. I know exactly who in my life I love to that depth. It’s a gift of middle age to be honest. Not that I didn’t experience it when I was younger but I didn’t really know what it was or how completely that love exists regardless of almost anything…it just continues to exist. There is almost no rhyme or reason to this love, it just is and it takes my breath away.
Monthly Archives: January 2017
A Poem by the Amazing Sandra Cisneros
They say I’m a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that’s what a woman was.
They say I’m a bitch.
Or witch. I’ve claimed
the same and never winced.
They say I’m a macha, hell on wheels,
viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,
man-hating, devastating,
boogey-woman lesbian.
Not necessarily,
but I like the compliment.
The mob arrives with stones and sticks
to maim and lame and do me in.
All the same, when I open my mouth,
they wobble like gin.
Diamonds and pearls
tumble from my tongue.
Or toads and serpents.
Depending on the mood I’m in.
I like the itch I provoke.
The rustle of rumor
like crinoline.
I am the woman of myth and bullshit.
(True. I authored some of it.)
I built my little house of ill repute.
Brick by brick. Labored,
loved and masoned it.
I live like so.
Heart as sail, ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess.
My sin and success-
I think of me to gluttony.
By all accounts I am
a danger to society.
I’m Pancha Villa.
I break laws,
upset the natural order,
anguish the Pope and make fathers cry.
I am beyond the jaw of law.
I’m la desperada, most-wanted public enemy.
My happy picture grinning from the wall.
I strike terror among the men.
I can’t be bothered what they think.
¡Que se vayan a la ching chang chong!
For this, the cross, the calvary.
In other words, I’m anarchy.
I’m an aim-well,
shoot-sharp,
sharp-tongued,
sh arp-thinking,
fast-speaking,
foot-loose,
loose-tongued,
let-loose,
woman-on-the-loo se
loose woman.
Beware, honey.
I’m Bitch. Beast. Macha.
¡Wáchale!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I break things.
Comments Off on A Poem by the Amazing Sandra Cisneros
Filed under Uncategorized
The Power and Responsibility of Art
This is poetry…and whether you like it or not, whether you agree with its point of view or not, it is doing what art should always be doing…it confronts and it declares and it should make you think and think hard. Because none of us knows every truth and if you want me to see another point of view, maybe your point of view, show me a poem as passionate and courageous as this one.
Comments Off on The Power and Responsibility of Art
Filed under Uncategorized