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Poetry of Women

Legacy

once upon a time we praised Queens.
we praised the Queen of the Nile; Her eyes were the rubiest of red gem
I had ever seen. She was the most beautiful dream
I ever thought I could dream. And She gave her life to me.

the scene we made was gold and when Her story unfolds history is told.
She had patience of the old. Her zeal was real.
She said She’d give her half to me and She did.

She gave the other half to you; to young women never forced to run,
but those who could stand;
stand alone, an army of one.

you were given a dynasty that the wisest of the wise or the blind could see,
but we, as a construct of society have forgotten that you are Queen here.
have you forgotten what You mean here? You are royalty.

how could you let them take blood from Your stone? take mud from Your rose?
You are all yellow rose, stripped, written in prose.

my Queen of the Nile, Her throne was bones, all the while, She gave you a kingdom.
You had everything you ever needed and then some. Her legacy was stolen; ripped open. tell me are You young, wild or broken?

either way, just remember, You are all something, aren't You?
You are all beautiful; even when You grow old, still see the new in You.

liberate Yourself today.
today, learn that love can't conquer it all, until You conquer the fall.
and my Queen gave You these things, so Princesses please remember Her great return lies within each and every one of You; each and every one of You are Legacy tonight.

This right here is Legacy tonight and You are all invited because once upon a time,
we used to praise Queens and tonight;

Tonight, We still do.

 - Steven Valentine, Poet
BIOMANUAL

In other lands,
women like me,
After scarification rites,
Dressed in ebony and ivory circles
Stacked up On their necks,
Fill their vaginas
with live snakes
For fertility.
So don’t complain, babe.
                        

At night I float up the sky
and I engrave chalky scribal spirals
on the left quadrant of the firmament
All I see is my small white fist chipping
Away at the stars knocking down imaginary beasts
of fluff
On which ignorant girls & boys ride in love.


Beauty breeds pain, babe,
which the free learn best from the slaves.


Between the wed dead woman & man
Gapes a dark wet black hole
Through which buoyant boys & giggly girls
Slide back & forth forever
making babies.


Beauty hooks me like a lover by
the gut, by the uterus to be exact,
Where Zeus’ sperms swirl
like mad silver boats
On nights when my hands smell
of tobacco & pussy
& I can go to sleep if I lick them.

The rest of all time
the spirits speak to me
Cuntinuously.

At night all the jolts hit
like questions: Who are we, Where
Are we going taking this, What
16 yr old pussy
Is she talking to at 3am
& isn’t picking up my calls
Why are we not watching TV
instead of our tears
mingle on the headstep
I meant the headstone where
we’ve been sitting way too long
when we could be stretching
doing our sadhana holding space
flowing our temples through some kriya or assana
Here, yes, here
on this nondescript perch where
we were propped up when
we plopped out of the maker pussy
onto this sepiatone escarpment
that craters in the foothills of a peak
and looms over an open-sight gulf
in this wood or brick or concrete home
for centuries already,
tearing away.

There’s no music
In the word hunger.


You said: I live with the secret terror
that I’ll watch you move
away one day
and now you are
moving out and when
I ask why me,
you say,
I warned you.

The one truth that matters is:
I love you with my mind
also.
But I like to live a little.

I want men falling from rooftops
For me
but on Lesbos
Where I was born
there are wilder birds
Than boys
To catch for toys
 
Does that mean I am a gun
from the feminine
in which both names mean war?
 
Amerika is the herpes on my mouth
the empty spot in my photo album
 
I can dredge any coffee cup for a wish
and read it like the book of every fate
 
this finds me in the pink of health
and I wonder how I will stay sick
 

-EURYDICE EVE








Do Not Die, 331212

They make is seem like they care about you.
A baby walking down the hall,
holding the officer's hand.

He tells the baby what to do.

They pretend to guide the baby's unknowing innocence,
towards a better tomorrow.

All drugged up.
All slumped up.
A slumpie in a soft jailed crib,
desperately waiting to know where to go.

The store does not have that kind.
It's the clinic.
what does the baby need to be properly sedated?

Just tell me so I'll know what to do.

Placed to sleep.
A place to sleep
Like a baby, like a dying baby in a soft jailed crib.


I am that baby.


Mandate me, Search me, Provoke me.
Take me away, for there really is no danger to follow your ways.
That is what you want me to believe.

I am no longer a baby who follows the officer down the hall.
Who I blindly followed
Who I blindly followed
Who I blindly followed
born into the soft jailed crib.


It is they who did us wrong
Who blindly betray our trust
Who want us to blindly follow them into the darkness of their systematic birth canal.


My name is 331212

I was born yesterday and will die tomorrow

You betrayed my trust.
You removed my name.
My time is now yours.
You can erase me.

I am nothing and everything: a threat to your plan.

My name is 331212

Things will not go as planned.


-Beláxis Buil






II. When we Fly

When we fly 
we sometimes feel the drop. 
When we resist, 
the nature of love persists.
Destruction is means for a fresh start.
A new way, a new love, a new family.
Death and ruination make passes to immortality. 
The home we left behind brings wind to fan the air beneath my wings.
[one of us rises]
The space the hope created betwixt the falls and dark starts is where my new home takes shape.
[another one of us rises]
The space where our dreams smell sweeter than the scent of rosewater treats.
[the last two rise together]
And the windows of my eyes stare out of this hole in the wall knowing that one day this dirty ditched basement will be but a memory.
The simple reign of the old destruction now making a brave new start.
[we all dance like children]
In the emptiness of our past a doorway creeps open to show us how we got here.
[we all start laughing]
Abandoned children of an abandoned war who rise from the rubble of our empty shelled ashes.
[we all fall down]
Forsaken generation, soulful and willfully breaking political boundaries to make a fresh start.
[we softly rise from the dead]
It’s now all up to me. And You. And WE. Together in a United Treaty, WE create the next wave of synchronized Humanity. 
And WE,
are Lost, No more.
And we are here, 
to settle the score for all the Children who survive the war. 
The broken and the sewn children mending fresh paths for humanity’s rise.
Because there are still ways all hope may be won. 
Because the war game played left me deep in the dust of devastation:
I am nothing. 
I hear the death drummer burst his deep bass through the walls of my home. 
I hit the dust. 
I become dust. I escape the dust. I miss the dust
I am to begin again, 
as a child of war.
A migratory pattern that I strive to the end,
To fill the tide of darkness with all of the light that my broken heart can send.
Inside creviced chalices,
Red love abides, 
Ruby drops spilling as my heart is beating for a new day to dream, 
a new way to make a life in languages unknown, faces and places unseen. 
So much heat in the bulletproof vest of my happiness,
The gory glory of re-setting the broken hearted story. 
Thus, I yearn,
And thus I rise in the tidal wave of war facing humanity. All the children of war, rise together as we settle the peacekeeping score. 

-Sanam Erfani






XIV. Light Cometh

The Light Comes Nigh,
Nearer to Oneness
Than midnight Sky. 
In mourning there lies a secret,
A delicate treatlet opening doors to shades of helpless hope that no one knew.
Come find me in mystery’s fold,
Turn the faces of old to see risings anew stepping through hands of time that only ancients knew. 
The veils are breaking down again for you,
The way opening for blessings to brew. 
Five years ago I burned in flames,
My earthly belongings, my dear friend, my beloved, my name. Everything I had became nothing and homelessness held my hand and head.
A beggar on the foot steps of friends who gave me couches and beds and even one cold night in a stairwell where with angels I was held. 
From the deeps I rise to face a dark night with my shadow in tow. 
Together my light and my dark are squaring the woe. 
P t s d was what stole my family soil and soul,
Warriors losing battles enough to forget not to grow cold. 
But my heart, after 43 years of battles unwun, antiheroes unsung,
Lies awake through a dark night of my sun. 
No one but me is here for this dark day. 
No one but me knows the harsh journey I have led. 
My feet are battered,
My soul full of pockmarked wounds,
My heart beating stronger,
Pangs of regrets begging forgiveness’ Dawn. 
I sit in prayer,
A whisper of faith beseeching me:
Hold onto the light,
Dear one,
And you shall see your darkness is new life. 
The burned soil of your poverty is being repaired,
The homeless nomad is coming home to rest. 
This weary heart may not believe it yet,
But the road to my healing has found a new bed. 
Never give up. 
Never give in. 
The road to love 
Is often deeply hidden. 
Live in the mystery 
And love without possessory.
Give back to the land,
Eat food as medicines you see.
And love will find you again. 
As will some form of family. 
As One you begin a new castle.
Your way be writ in stone,
A crystal palace where your hearth 
Is finally to be your own. 
In losing everything
Even your dignity,
You win the heart of courage 
That rises with Love for all eternity.

-Sanam Erfani



Parthenon of the Gucci Gods

You nearly made me pee in my wholly trousers

Your head was cocked back, as a speck of light bounced off your cheap ass Walmart grillz,
You know, the ones you wear around all them sweaty tan, brown, golden body girls

Every time I see you step into the Parthenon of  the corrupt Gods
my supposed safe space- but rather-more of your safe space of scams, deceitful attacks
a meeting hall of virginal sacrifices, witch hunts and self-righteous declarations
the declarations you play so cunningly well
like a hurt lamb
a lamb wearing wool,
but really a wolf in sheep's clothes
or a wolf wearing Walmart grillz
and Gucci, Gucci, Gucci

I excrement pain
I know of your hysteria
a hysterical jackal
a hysterical hyena

prowling around my supposed safe space
in the Parthenon of the corrupt Gods

Today you shed off you sheep's skin
your wool
your fur
whatever the hell it is that you wear

Today you show up- amongst the Gods
wearing a bright beaming Gucci suit
It's Gucci, it's Gucci, it's Gucci
you like cucci
and you begin to recite a history
while you hold a book
in which you recorded false accounts

The history begins how you begat tones of addictions and horrifying songs of torment
your child calls
your child cries
and the Gods all love your pain

They are corrupt
like you
All the God's sit there
in their Gucci, Gucci, Gucci
they like cucci, cucci, cucci

Oh, so delightfully do you sing
the song they want to hear
Your notes muffle out my cry
my cry, from my belly

And all the Gods jeer at me
their Walmart grillz shining ever so bright
using the illuminating power to shield their corruption
They sing from their rotten mouths 'Shield the Parthenon from any harm!'

THEY are untouchable
they are above the law
above the land
above the stars

Your song is a poisonous gas,
a venomous laughter jolts from underneath the clouds of your toxic hymn
but your voice falters
it cracks

lightning strikes at your vice
your wicked ways
your Gucci,. Gucci, Gucci suits
and cheap ass Walmart grillz

Your mouth shatters
your teeth crack
your voice falters
the Parthenon of the corrupt Gods crumble
Your power is gone
Your Hitler is dead
Your poisonous gas fades out
Your safe space is now mine

I conquered, I conquered, I conquered
Your terrorizing words are now flimsy, fumbling sounds
your tongue flaps away in the wind
it was a game
you are pathetic, you were all pathetic

The sweaty brown, gold, tan bodies
are now white, pale and sickly
They are like fleas jumping off your skin
your sheep's cheap skin
crawling
biting you
gnawing away at their disappointment in you
hating you in return for the falsehoods you gifted them

You fake
You, scam
poison

Give me back my safe space
Give me back my Gucci , Gucci, Gucci suits
the ones I bought, for you

-Beláxis Buil





BIOMANUAL  
A poem in the form of A Brain dump

Occupy the Man
Beauty will save the world
Does the Body like habit more than love?
Does the Body like love more than reason?
Does the Body bloom in patterns?
Raw, nasty, shocking, in your face, face-off.

Between me & the world, bet on the world.
everything comes and goes and is mortal.
So Eat Me

experimenting with lalala.
Smell of rage, smell of rape.

Smell of being wanted by the Man. 

The concentrated succulent pleasure of the rip and pull of a moving body of water between
Me & the world


Am not who I am?

YOUR LAUGH IS LOUDER THAN 9/11, MOM!

My god appears in front of me in the body of the bird that alights then takes off into the sun 

May I take flight upon the sight of God
breath of life breath of light breath of god, 

May I live As a stranger and a pilgrim.
I Am not who I am but I am also who I am not.
I Am not One but I Am also not All who are not.
I Am not who my Mom my Son my Dog my Bro my Bestie my Squad my Boss my Folk even You know me to be. Not who I know me to be. Not who I think I am. You & I are who I Am.

If the whole world were a single nation, I’d still be a foreigner. 

-Eurydice Eve







III. I dream in shades 
I dream in shades of a magenta sky
Where the warmth of my blood pulses
With the rhythms of this morning’s hustles
A simple look from the Sun is all I want
A subtle ray to cover me healing wounds
One by one the rays come
Cover me with their warmth
And I rise to the call of the dawn
Phoenix calling forth my heart
Each moment a right of passage for me to groove
For me to shift and find my way through the toil
Because all I feel is this moment 
And all I am is for this endless limit. 
Love holds me as I lightly laugh
Weeping tears through my shining teeth. 
It’s all a question and the answer is within me.
-Sanam Erfani






Flowers.

Near the creak a white house stood
Sitting quietly in a vacant lot  of white, red and marigold
Flowers.

Secrets wafting through the air 
mushroom clouds of aroma
To sweet to want to share, to rotten to want to smell

Giant locusts jumping amidst the beaming summer days
Yet seek refuge on tempestuous days 

Days darkened by the burden of existence
Leaves to weak to fight the chaotic whirlwind of freedom
Heavy is the tree whose limbs crack off

Twigs mount up, guarding the passage up the winding road to the white house

A house that should be made forgotten
In wreckage
In sand
In dirt
through time



Forget those who lived there.
Bring in the Flowers. 

Guarding the trails are large serpentine creatures with large mouths 
And forked tongues
Their forked tongues stand in place of the blades of grass
It slices my skin 
it stings with truth



Flowers. Flowers. I see Flowers.

The house sings a hymn each night, as the winds blows through the winding halls
Corridors so long one, might have thought to have escaped into another creature's dream

Another dream
Another place
Another space
Another home

But there were Flowers. Flowers. Lots of Flowers.

Home amongst the giant dinosaurs and crocodiles
Where I waltz with wind and rain
Dancing with huge dandelions
I am free and untamed
The jungle
The wild
The free and untamed
Is where I see Flowers, Flowers. I am a Flower.

-Beláxis Buil


Glass Door

This is the life

Lying frozen behind a glass door
Flowers wrapped around my head
Babies breath dangling from my eyes, nose and mouth
Like tender spiders making their way to heaven

This is the life

Blooming petals tell stories of life so precious, uninterrupted
By famines caused by war
Or the guns that shoot through the sky
And I lay here protected, behind the glass door


All seeing
All knowing

I am frozen with fear
I scream,
Yet I can not hear my own pain

My voice

Perfect dandelions remind me of how lavish life was once

This is the life

My dress is wet
I am drenched in sweat as I lay frozen behind the glass door
A coffin for memories of what was once real
A real hell
A real heaven

I could feel
​
Life

Born into a coffin
Waiting for the next breath of dangerous air to pass
Clocks ticking
Breath taken in

I exhale and see the mist of life spread across the surface of the glass door
I press my face against the damp glass
It cools me down

My hair has spread on the surface of the glass door
Like roots seeking to quench their thirst
Find their home

Flowers fall at the tip of my toes
My dress falls off 
So limber
So frail

This is the life

One that seems free and far removed from you
From Hell
From Heaven

It keeps me to me
I feel
So precious
A flower
So guarded
With roots
Naked in a glass coffin

I see
I know
I am protected

Living in my sanctuary
Free from hell
Free from you
In my heaven

This is the life

​-Beláxis Buil






Miss you

I sit on a bench
and I miss you

I watch the stars twinkle in the sky
but I miss you

I closed my eye for a second
and I missed you

I am sitting in the car, not knowing where I am going
but I miss you

As I squint my eyes and sneeze out loud
I miss you

When I look down at the floor
and I don't see you
I miss you

As I catch my reflection in the pond and all I see is myself
I miss you


I am looking at expensive cars, but don't know why
but I still miss you

When I blink, I miss you

I kneeled down to look inside my backpack,
and I missed you

But when I stare into your eyes, I don't miss you. I love you.


-La Vie Miu Buil


Picture



​














-Ian Habib





A Woman's Hymn


Rodent, rat, vermin
Dirty, rotten, filth

Disgusting lying scoundrel

A soldier of ra.....


Liar 

Always lying

Thief 

you stole my skin, my hair, my grace

I fight back
I pull your teeth, your skin and hair

I, I, I, I........

I want to kill you

​I,I,I,I......I


kick the shin
punch the face
gut your stomach empty

wounds of earth…. 
battlefields

Empty, she felt
leave your history without a trace of war

Wicked stench
Sinful gaze
Your presence.. I abhor

You rotten, dirty scoundrel
Don’t call me a dirty whore

-Beláxis Buil





haiku de tu

Maybe if I change
My hair color I will think
Of something to write

Maybe if I leave
Maybe if I run farther
I will stop thinking of you

Maybe if I stop
Writing about you I can
Sleep better at night


-Itxenia Anaid Cortez




transphantasmagoric i {2012 2020}

everything as we see: vision of the invisible
now i embrace your ghosts
the voluminous fantasies that are consumed    
                                                               patterned    multiplied   
   patterned    multiplied       patterned    multiplied   
pa  tter  ned              patter  n ed    p atteRRRn ed    patterne d    patter n ed          patterned    pattTTTTTTTerned    pA  ttern   ed    patterned           pAAtterned    patterNeD  pAAAAtterned    patterneDDDDDDd    paTTTTTTTTTTTerned    patterned    patterned    patterned    patTTTTTterned    pattEEEEEEEerned    patterned    patterned    patterned        patterned       patterned         patterned    patterSSSSSSSSSSSS 
                      victims of reason itself
that boast the death of the supreme 1                                               
do not die within yourself

cut up yourself in multiple vicissitudes
the discredit of the dominion over your so vain conscience
the passions in which one is consumed in search of nothing
                              
-Ian Habib
                      





Todo bien, todo bien, todo bien
Sucedera otro dia, te vi aller, estamos
bien(?)

Todo bien, todo bien, todo bien
No soy ella
Yo soy yo, Impaciente, enamorada,
miedosa y desesperada

Te vi aller, todo bien todo bien todo bien
Mis dias continuan

-Itxenia Anaid Cortez






Mamá

Old, faded photograph

Passing memory
Passing thought of mother sitting by the shattered window
looking out, peering at the man screaming down the street

Ice-cream, helado
Tengo frio
Hace calor

A young girl
Two-toned shoes tied to the end of long, sprawling legs
Running faster and faster
Mi corazon
Tengo miedo

Running home from school in her blue tartan skirt
Shirt half tucked flapping in the wind as she runs towards a faded memory

They are rebels 
They are rebels

Opinions silenced
Behaviors acted out in a Shakespeare-n garden

Una montaña 
Not a garden

Bravo! Bravo!- go on with your show!

The anger makes her jerk

Her quivering half-empty smile appears 
a crescent moon
Soon shadowed by the darkness of her wrath
Luna media llena

Ciera los ojos

Childhood flickers before her eyes

Then is now
Now is not forever

She kicks the tierra with her feet
A photograph floats by

A torn image of her mother

Half girl
Part woman
All gone

-Beláxis Buil





December Fifth
Run and get high off this oxygen
Run to get high, less toxic love and intoxicants
Run to pique the interest of the devil, trailing angels
Run right toward the rainbow
How long before you make it there?
Run up 20 flights of stairs until you let the pain go
Run to get these vines around your heart untangled
Run to wash the troubles from your mind,
Let the rain flow
Run, but take a break, unless you mean to stress your ankles
Enslaved by negative thoughts but now running like I’m D’Jango
Run, from the dark to the light for different angles

-Samarah Green-Toupe






Missing Airplanes
Are the black kids safe?
Does that make sense?
Like a missing airplane, do we even exist in the first place?
Or are we just black imprints?
Here to disrupt and dirty up our birthplace
Tell mama, say a prayer for my court case
She looked me right square in my poor face
Poor, foolish child does that make sense?

-Samarah Green-Troupe





Thursday nights with a slice of you,

30 minutes for 3 feet,

quiero un poco mas de voce, no sé

tus marmeladas de sol derramados en tu voz

Sour and sweet all over me, what I gotta do to keep you?

Lychee, mango, pitaya, kiwi, nuezes dulces me como de ti

-Itxenia Anaid Cortez






BORN ON LESBOS

A neglected nauseated Medea 
gave me birth 

contracting meekly against a cracked 

up aeolian clay wall 
that tawny village women 
were belatedly whitewashing 
for the bride
she had been 
until some mythic weeks before, 
I came out blinded by the gold 
Hellenic light until the midwives 
busied their bodies with mine 
shading my first view of life
with their low-hanging breasts 
behind whose vast swaths
I saw old red graffiti words 
scribbled on the opposite wall. 
My first words. The sign read:
‘Take Revenge On Kronos.’
I understood it to mean ‘Chronos’
& instead of killing God, 
upholding the tradition of 
castrating the holy father,
I have been killing time.

-Eve Eurydice






  Why 
Tell me a story.
In this century, in this moment of mania, 
Tell me a true story.
Make it true because it withstood the test 
Of time.
Make it a story of great distances and shape
Shifting humans.
Make the name of the story be time.
Tell me the story one of deep delight
In holy and queer time. Men say
Even God likes to be desired 
In the way a teenage virgin just 
On the verge 
of opening to her completion 
Is. That’s a natural story 
Without an ending. 
Tell me a story of the greatest hunger 
A human body can contain.
Tell me why my power is centered 
In what I don’t know and can’t control,  
And I will believe you. 
Make the telling an Olympic sport. 

-Eve Eurydice





Dear 2020

People are crazy
More murders on the streets

Then there is our President, Donald J. Trump
I think he works for COVID-19

"The World IS Ending", says the scared one
"It's NOT Real", says the stupid one 

"2020 SUCKS", proclaims the right one

One thing is for sure...

Dear 2020, this new century stinks

-La Vie Miu Buil-Fleming


​




A Whoopi Winter day

Tall, red brick buildings standing gloriously in central New York


Mothers passing by, panting and pushing dark, gray strollers

Others roller skate down Central Park, quoting Sylvia Plath and Whoopi Goldberg on their IPhones, trying hard to impress

It’s so God damn hot on this winter day
Toiling throughout the city in my heavy coat and screaming baby swung around my arm like an expensive purse

Buzz, buzz, buzz

Blow, Blow, Blow

I just remembered, I am a mother
A mother on a leave of absence

I swat a fly
I close my eyes and release a deep sigh

I have a kid
She is running around ape-shit

I dance, move in circles around my life

I pretend to go on a sabbatical, taking the time needed to think about the dandelions
And how the wind blows through my hair

My life lead me to motherhood
I suppress the past and remain connected to the present


Happy anniversary to me

Every passing second, minute, hour, day and year moves me further into moments of uncertainty

celebrate my uncertainty, a work in progress

a mother to myself and a mother to many others

Choke on the words spoken by Sylvia Plath and Whoopi Goldberg
These are women of the moment,
These are the women of the past
Yesterday, today and tomorrow they are mothers of word, pure honesty

I remember now, I am in New York doing something important

I am being a mother

-Beláxis Buil





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