#POETRY "To the Maidens"

To the Maidens;
You less than skinny,
stockings runned, pock-marked, less than perfect beauties
You who can not compete with airbrushed lies
But live full out in your speckled skin wonder
Worsened by the unknown chemicals in food
Supposed to feed but poisoning us.
Those earned feathery eyes
Sparkling behind oceans of tears,
Shed in moments of pain or joy
They do not compare
To the soft weather of your hands
Worked to keep mouths full
Of sunshine and hope
Tired, oh yes,
 but in those moments of wondering,
 Whether to ball into rage or comfort, you make choices
To laugh,
To breath,
in spite of polluted air and better beauty products
made only to consume what has already been consumed
hips made to sway
lips made to smile
cracked open you are and you run anyway
on feet bounding through blistered dreams
cause this, girls, is what it is to dance
and this, is what it means to live
in a world that doesn’t believe you’re worth saving
Hair, wild, burning through forests of
Doctors making surgical options
To make a better you,
And politicians making god-like decisions
That they were never hired to do,
And believers so lost in their own pollution
They forgot the holy words left by their savior’s blood.
But these are stitched into your fingernails
Hollowed into your marrow
Gray mattered gospel it can’t be broken
They try to erase you and yet the angels sing praises in your name,
The vibration of their voices shake them all awake
Crumbling institutions that can not save,
Because we knew that already.
Holding onto pieces doesn’t put them back together
It just makes us stronger.
These tree-trunk legs were made to work
And dance and hold ourselves up when no one else did.
This, you fire-dancer, keeper of the down-trodden, lover of the beast, speaker of the truth, shoulder-crier, breathless rebounder, giver of all you have got and then some more,
you are what makes this world bearable.