Gender

February 22, 2023

OF A WOMAN

I wasn’t born a woman,
I cannot bear a child,
I cannot carry a fetus nine months
I cannot feel the morning sickness,
I cannot nurse a child once born,
I cannot cease to be who I am
because I had a child,
I cannot be raped and made pregnant,
I cannot be subject incest
making me pregnant,
I cannot go through the pains of labor,
I cannot have an emergency c-section,
But as a man
I can sit in judgment on women
I can try and control their bodies,
I can try and eliminate their choices,
I can do all of those things
but I refuse for I was born
of a woman, and I honor
her right to choose what is best
for her as I reserve the right
to choose what is best for me.

January 18, 2023

MACHISMO

He was fond of saying
that men need to toughen up,
show more fortitude, take
time for serious male bonding.

He would prattle on about
how so many men were
not true men anymore,
warped by modern society.

I tried my best to avoid him,
to quickly end our encounters and
when I could not, for he would
inevitably complain of loneliness.

Still, I would much rather be
in the kitchen, knives in hand
preparing a fine meal beside
the woman I so deeply love.

September 9, 2022

HE/HIM

When he says he thinks
that it is rather queer,
you wonder if he uses queer
as a non-gendered pronoun,
and if so you think he
might just be right.

But what if he is a verbal
luddite, locked in an archaic
lexicon, unable to deal
with an ever more complex
social and sexual world
where what was is, and what
never was is, and who is
what is what is in flux.

February 19, 2022

EASY, I SAID

I had great plans
for the day, a simple project,
easy install said the instructions
and an hour in, nothing working.

Of course it was a weekend
so I called for help and
the professional worked
another two hours before
announcing nothing doing.

We concluded the product
was dead on arrival, as were
the plans I had made
for the bulk of thd day,

but there was the cost
of the service call, of course
at weekend surcharge rates,
to make the failure more painful.

February 13, 2022

THE BARD OF BROOKLYN?

If he were to appear here suddenly
I suspect Shakespeare would
be running a small theater group
in Brooklyn catering to an audience
drawn mostly from the LGBTQ
community, alternating productions
of gays and lesbians with Trans
and gender fluid having free choice
to reflect their true selves and not
in the roles genetics cast them.

If you asked him why, he’d say
that it was all Elizabeth’s fault, her
rule all roles were to be played
by male actors, no Joseph Fiennes
to set the old girl straight, a Puckish
way of putting it he’d admit, and
is it any wonder that a damned Scot
took the throne on her death,
he would add as a bellicose Falstaff,
she was a shilling short of a pound.