The Showdown

So, I've been dealing alot with the conflicts between feminine/masculine performance traits lately.  I've found myself challenged and even attacked on several fronts as a direct result of patriarchy and gender oppression.  The issue keeps showing up, so much so that this is one of those "you will walk the floors during the wee hours of the morning until you write me" poems.  I hope you feel something.

Enjoy!

The Showdown
I am so in love with the thought of your hands holding me suspended
in the throws of passionate, revolutionary,
“we got this baby,” kind of kingdom building
that I almost mistook the crushing pressure of your thumb
against my trachea,
daring me to breath,
threatening my speech,
for the tender caress I feel when we build,
black man

and I am so tired of this breathless, speechless, deafening silence
instead your words and privilege holding me suspended
back against brick
feet frantically kicking around ideas of how not to
insult your manhood in my defense
stilettoes scraping only the surface of common ground
your firm grip and disjointed performance of masculinity
set me atop this makeshift pedestal

you condescend from below
daring me to fall to your level
lest I might dirty my wardrobe
for the role of Goddess
or worse

tear away this fabric to expose the expletives
slut, whore, bitch, cunt
you have tattooed on my flesh
redefining me at your will
I didn’t want to fight tonight
I didn’t want to scrape and claw
my way out of another corner or margin
where shorn acrylic tips and shards of
ladylike reserve are piled in the corner
remnants of the last time you came for me
but here we are again

you, selling black love like snake oil
perpetrating fraudulent protection of the black woman
while stroking yourself erect to the
animated Sarah Baartman on your flat screen
in each hand you molest life and death
squeezing too tightly in both to allow
our bloodlines to ever intersect

I am drained
screaming my battle cry
through a crushed windpipe
praying ancestors and angels
to their posts for the both of us
maybe Shango will push aside your locks
to offer “you are enough” in a whisper
or perhaps Tomyris will guide my hand
to the place I should strike for a clean decapitation

this is why…
I didn’t want to fight tonight
because if you don’t stand down
hold your hoteps and disrespectful hirambees
long enough to admit that you cannot
comment on or assist my condition as woman
until you unhand your dick
and my neck

pause

acknowledge the relationship between your
bulging erection and my collapsed form gasping
parallel my brain deprived of oxygen and blood flow
to your brain deprived of oxygen and blood flow
still think yours is bigger?

If you do not stand down
because my hands are too small to
deliver lethal pressure to your airway unassisted
your refusal will force me to reach for the cool steel of supremacy
wrap a manicured hand around a pearl plated .22
look you in the eye when I squeeze
tell Tomyris I’ve got this

Gramma said you can’t fight a man,
you’re gonna have to kill his ass
and darling, you should never bring a knife
to a gun fight.