Poetry slam Thursday

Ok, there's a poetry slam Thursday. I haven't been able to write
anything new lately. Not necessarily writers block. I don't believe in
that. Just apathy a bit. And then there's that Rilke quote.


But I love the competition. So what I'm going to do
is present two poems that I haven't done before in the slam. And if I
make it to the final round, I'll do the math poem.

Anyhow, these poems aren't on the blog either so I'll type them up here.

Let's call the first one "Let a woman be a woman."


He thought to himself,
"what's wrong with
a woman being a woman?
Isn't that actually
as right as life could be?"
But at the same time, he wasn't sure
what it meant.
Oh, it was by far his favorite part
of that old Prince song:
Let a woman be a woman,
let a man be a ma - han.
If he has a daughter,
he will tell her
she can do anything a boy can do.
She can be a mathematician,
an engineer, an astronaut, a warrior.
She can be president, pope even,
if she wants to.
But he thinks to himself
and more than thinking,
he feels those statements
are true
and at the same time
not true.
At the same time
not true in a deep, deep
sense that he can't really articulate,
but can only, really grunt.
Let a woman be a woman
let a man, be a ma - han.
But the politically correct thing to say,
he knows, will be that
there is no difference
between a man and a woman.
And while that may be pc
every man he knew was
too much of a man
to overanalyze that.
Still he smiled and remembered
what the old monk told him
while he was hiking through India:
I don't want to be the mango,
I want to taste the mango.
And he reasoned that mangos
don't want to be men.
They want to be eaten.
Lately though, he wasn't so sure
about anything in the natural world.
Up was down, down was up,
tops were bottoms and bottoms were tops.
And he wasn't sure anymore
if women were women
and men were men.
He was turning these thoughts
around in his head when one day
in the middle of a casual, boozy conversation
he said,
"If that's what she wants,
then what's wrong with a woman
being barefoot and pregnant.
I mean, if that's what she wants.
Staying home with the kids"
He said that, but
he just felt so confused.
He wondered, am I really a neanderthal?
Why, then, can't I grow more chest hair?
Why isn't my voice deeper?
Why won't someone sing the song with me?
You know the song:
Let a woman be a woman,
let a man, be a ma- han.