A poem I wrote

[undergroundpanther]

Speaking of catcalls from cars...Here is something I wrote when I was 15 or so.



Prison

My body is a prison where my spirit dwells.
A captive held in chains of skin.
A dungeon of flesh.
I am forced to live within.

I hate this body, this feminine fat.
Jiggly thighs and belly rolls
wrapped in dimpled cottage cheese
it is such a humiliation.

I writhe within this body wanting out..
knowing diet is a game where..I lose nothing..
I try it again,

Eventually the unwanted flesh melts,
the swollen tick feeling goes away.
'beauty' comes at a price,they say..
I convince myself,I can move, I look better!
I can buy smaller jeans!

It is conditional,because my stomach is frustrated,
consuming itself for want of food.It will not go away.
I will ignore it so I can feel kind to myself again.
I am not addicted to pleasure.I am worthy of love too.
See!! I lost 20 pounds!! And the world admires me.

Walking down the street 20 pounds less
I forget my prisoners fate,
Enjoying the sun streaming day,wandering
in a new T shirt and Jeans,
ignoring the inconvenient scent of tasty treats.

My chest is tied down in a harness
as to not move the wrong way and attract unwanted gazes..
Held as still as plastic.
Still despite my precautions,
Greedy boys steal a look,and perverted words are thrown out the window of a swiftly moving car,
It hits me in the heart like a cuare dart..
Sickly churning up the pain it taking,
the illusion of beauty for a day,away.
My prize for 2 months deprivation.

And I am forced remember my "place" and it is not safe
to walk down the street like I was a human being...

When...
I am tits and ass on parade.
Just an object to be fucked.
I am cut up into parts again,
Side of meat hanging on a hook for all the guys to appraise,
Market makes me into another slave..to fuck..Why did I lose weight again?I feel like such a sucker....And the car is long gone.

The rage is swallowed for it has nowhere else to go.
I want to drown myself in chocolate embrace a sugar high safe from greedy looks in a cocoon of cellulite.
But no, I can't do that again ..So
I walk on home.

The sun is shining but not for me,I am all alone.
I never asked for this.
I want out.

At home the rage speaks with tears burning acid.
I shut the door,I see my body..in the hall mirror
And I HATE.

These tits mock me with their bovine pendulous sway
as I take off the straight jacket of elastic plastic wire and polyester ,Reminding me I am just a cow,and I HATE.

An uddered nurse,I pound them both black and blue
and still they mock me hanging there like tumors.
Why was I made for baby boys to feed upon me?
I want to escape.
Mother role is sickening to me,for I am no mother, I need a mother more than any grown man that has made his wife into one.But I am not allowed I must be "the nurturer" the handmaiden,the saddle and vapid child.. I HATE.

Sex is nothing but a rape rack made for men . And it is taboo to say, I do not desire to exist for the pleasure of rapists to deposit their clorox scented domination into me like toxic waste dumped into a lake.

I want to be loved like a worthy being.

I WANT OUT.

I reach for the door,the one marked exit..
Razor blades dance rivulets of red.
Pills of 5 colors decorate my bed
washed down with a big icy cold glass of diet cola..
Just like the ones in ads held by people that look so damn happy and thin.
I remember...how that stain is
Between my legs, a gash that never heals,
that smells like dead things.
The thing they always want, more than they want me,the thing that I HATE

I plug it up ,this secret shame I never wanted.I HATE.
Cramps and every time it does,I must pretend it does not hurt so bad.
I smile with my aspirin breath, sipping mug wort tea pretending all is fine,Outwardly denying I am imagining ripping the throats of those catcalling cowards out with my bare teeth.
Wanting to scrape out my uterus out with a fork.To make it all STOP.
Acting so concerned as my skeletal "friends" ask me if they look fat in their size 2 jeans.

I wish they all would shut up, and go away.
I wish the udder would get cancer and DIE.
I wish the gash would close up and disappear..
If only it would all just shut up.
I want OUT
I HATE.
I want to be anything,anyone but THIS.


I wrote this poem when I was a teenager.
I was coming to terms with my trans issues
and the cultural issues about women.
It was before my first psych hospital.

When I get catcalls those same humiliated,violated feelings come up sometimes.But now sometimes I lob a bottle of soda at the car and raise my middle finger high and laugh.Sometimes I don't care, Now I fight back and I do not take any crap,I give it back I do not take it in.There are things worse than being alone or being hated.I know in my heart now I am more of a man than most men are and more of a woman than the "friends" in size two jeans were trying to be in all the wrong ways.
It didn't come easy.

Somewhere along the road..I had to make a choice to define myself my own way and let the whole world's opinions of what I should be,should do, should think or feel die within me and I had to find what I liked, I thought, I felt and what I wanted to do.It's my life and my body not theirs.
It was kill THEM and silence their lies and sickness and throw away all the things culture says or kill myself..

I am still here. I won.

[progmom]

1. Hi undergroundpanther....

It sounds like you have arrived at a very healthy mind space. I'm sorry for what you went through as a teen. :hug: Thanks for sharing this with us.

[lukasahero]

2. Wow. Just wow.

Just wow.

:hug:

[Cerridwen]

3. Oh

I am crying.

:cry: :cry:


What kind of crazy, sick world do we live in that someone like you, with so much strength and heart and depth of feeling, soul and love, can be made to hate her own body to such an extent?

You survived and continue to survive - "I am still here. I won."

Thank you for sharing your strength.

[undergroundpanther]

4. I feel trapped by existence

I's hard to explain this without sounding nuts or at least like I am in a deep depression to most people.

I really do hate this world.This existence is hopelessly flawed,violent,sad.I do not hate the good stuff peppered in it though.

You see life in order to live in the way it has to in this reality has to parasite or destroy other life to live.This is ghastly.. You cannot exist here without destroying life.And slowly we all are dying a slow motion decay(or sometimes in a almost sadistic way it speeds up).

We all succumb to old age, diseases,injuries, natural disasters ,toxins,human made deaths/traumas,suicide,and we are CONSCIOUS of our approaching inevitable destruction and we have no clue as to WHEN..This knowledge is sadistic when you have brains like our brains are,in a body that seeks homeostasis(health) and is forever frustrated and knocked out of homeostasis and happiness by existance... We have kids and we do it knowing full well they are subjected not only the ravages of time disease etc. but to other people and their sick conditioning,cruelty,mind games and this ghastly sick pay to exist money based extortion scam called "the market"and the insane sing for your supper,sing to be loved and worthy bullshit mind games people and society made up to control everyone somehow.

I can say with confidence I never wanted to be here. I was trapped here.Forced to be a conscious entity that was born because my parents fucked.. I am a prisoner here because they wanted me here or because their selfish genes wanted it..
I find beauty is here yes And fun..it's when things are good I enjoy it..And I do knowing full well it passes like the bad shit does.it is good for me to expect nothing,the disappointment is not as painful then. Changes are inevitable and I am so tired of it all.. I am sad that everything dies because of the transient nature of such an unstable existence that is slowly winding down into chaos and decay..There is nothing I can do to stop it.I can care and cry all I want I am a pawn in a cage when I see people killing themselves and this planet and they want to LIE about it to themselves.And shoot me because I am the bearer of bad news they don't wanna hear because I would rather look at the human condition and look at choices in an empowering way rather than dance around the truth and be merry as we kill ourselves making the sickening process of nature a little more senseless sadistic malevolent and cruel than it already is....

I can think positive all I want,and it will not stop the capricious cruelty of the way material life is itself.Reality will do what it does regardless of what I think and intend.

Truthfully I look forward to death because either

A: I'll be dead and my existence will end in totality for me and therefore I will not be conscious to feel any of this shit anymore forever..and the choices will stop along with freedom and awareness and existence in all it's psychotic changing contrariness.


B: I'll be dead and free of this body and life and it's attendant woes and wonders the whole mess will stop when I cease sensing..and I can go back to being body free consciousness.


C: I'll be able to escape the flesh binding my consciousness here when it's "pattern decays enough and I can go away from materiality or fade out forever or find a place more suited to me,and voluntarily live there...

D: I'll have another chance if you believe in reincarnation that is to end the cycles of life and death and rebirth that is so pathological and tragic.( I am not sure if I do believe in reincarnation or I don't I do not understand what conditions it has to stop or reoccur anyways, I know I do NOT want to come here again.)

Or E: I'll be born again in a different body in a different age that's more sane or in a world with less pain trauma and insanity in it.Or it will be the same..or worse..I just do not know the answer to this..and I cannot know until I die.

I find existence is the cruelest joke there is .. and life is not alive really,we are all dying and struggling,suffering,everything beautiful is rotting,changes are not always good or bad,and traumas more often than not are what shape our lives and consciousness way too much,and it is by necessity (nature is red in tooth and claw,evolution is a parade of cruelty demanding death or for us to compete over resources to be the most"fit".Pain and threat is a constant companion, to the living..

Besides the fact every child born faces many obstacles to peace or happiness..they gotta deal with manipulating controlling adults that seek to make them be someone they want them to be rather than letting the kid discover who they are,or who they are not ,Plus adults abused by their parents or cultures who do not face their own psychological traumas and the sickness they endorse or enable will dump it all into the next generation and disease them in their own image.

So many people I see will spend a lifetime living, enduring or dismantling psychological garbage other people dumped into them,as kids ,undoing programming,getting programmed,wanting a loving cosmic parent to say all this shit works out in the end and if you live through it without breaking certain social/religious taboos or killing yourself you get a prize, etc.

The world is a monster.And kids will suffer for their parents,because they love ,parents suffer for kids out of love for them,but sometimes it's selfish love parents have too.If parents fail to shape their kids consciousness in certain ways,. society does it for them ...if that don't do it culture and 'peer pressure' will..if culture can't make them think the same way as others agree is "sanity" they will be put in mental hospitals and "retrained"by "professionals" who invent and promote eugenics based 'norms' who abuse people in the name of health. Society will do whatever it can to kill the heretic ,rebels awareness of how crazy and senseless life in Plato's cave is,how corrupt society and the domestication process that we all undergo really is.And how empty authorities and rulers really are.

The scariest thing I have found is most people do not want to have freedom from this dying life condition they refuse to admit they chafe at these fetters,and cry at traumas and death and frustrations we heap upon each other from cradle to grave so needless and sick,..because in order to even be able to hope to become free of the sickness of this existence it would require one to want freedom from the human condition too .Escaping any condition that hurts requires one look at it fully from all the sides without flinching or going into denial or self deceiving or playing make believe.Most people are terrified to stop playing make believe and go as deep as far as the rabbit hole goes...Most people would rather believe something that blots some of it out,they turn away,and feign helplessness or omnipotence..still we go on telling ourselves everything is ok and we submit to powers that be,rather than ask why do we need and create all this shit for?

For me I exist here regardless of what I want. It is very hard to kill your own body. After 25 times trying I gave up.. I wait for death (that is I hope it all stops I hope it is not worse,but that's the unknown ,death is a big unknown and I will not know my answer until it comes for me as it applies to me.. Religions all guess about it,and everyone guesses as to why shit is how it is and what death is like and what happens after death,Speculations abound.there is no answer no certainty in this..I happen to have an approach to spirituality that is atheistic but mystical at the same time..I SEEK.I am very against the "creator" and these so called gods that seek to rule over and play games with me,I am a Malthiest,a heretic,seeking answers to all the WHYS whether I get answers or not I seek to SEE..I want real freedom from trauma and suffering not just for me but for anyone else willing or wanting to come along and escape in any way that they can..that does not create more suffering.


Because nothing I do or don't do really matters here,I will never know if I was an important part in changing things or not..I don't know how futile it all is..and because suffering is everywhere traumas,violence,beauty and blindness and self deception is ever present and constantly changing,and we are so damn ignorant blind and confused I think it makes no sense to me it has no reason or justice or sanity at all,no purpose..or grander plan,we are all blind seeing glimpses as we go stumbling around stomping each other and powerless for the most part,we take shots in the dark with technology,sometimes we have no foresight sometimes we lie to ourselves too, we hope to help, but we end up harming..we do it knowing some choices requires suffering, so we take more from others for our own comforts,modeled after the demands of survival in this sick world the only one we know.

So, regardless I choose to assert justice,an anti abuse stance, beauty,freedom of thoughts, kindness,freedom from authorities and authority systems that demand obedience and unearned loyalty, and all the other beautiful stuff this world tends to try to destroy in people because it threatens whatever"powers that be" tempts "fate" or whatever. . I choose kindness for the same reason a sociopath gets off on hurting others..I love,I care,I share, I help just because *I can*. I seek to create a culture that values compassion and clearheaded justice without cruelty and domination, I make that choice, there is no other reason other than I want to ..it's my preference to erase the traumas people inflict on each other.....I don't need a god or a "reward" or a karma score sheet to goad me.I don't care about the great beyonds opinion of me anymore.Fuck it I do what I do because I want to and I can.

We all will suffer and die here sometime..Shit happens because I am NOT in control of reality,Sometimes it bends my way or seems to hear my intentions, regardless of how well I live my life,or how bad I am.Nothing matters.

I have nothing to lose in this sick reality I want to end by caring and being gentle and binding the wounds I see everywhere in myself and in others,trying to help and assert my choices and do the changes I would like to see occur just because I can...I do,and if others think it's a choice they want and they do it too,well I feel a bit of joy,because a change happened.. But I know full well I can't control anyone else,so I persuade or just do,because the human condition is insane,existence is flawed deeply, because it is..why I dunno.Life hurts,it's senseless,violent,sickening,ignorance ridden psychotic dream. I want to stop the pain,and I do what I do because I choose to do it No other reasons.


I am an existentialist,t a nihilist,but unlike the nihilist that uses nihilism to negate choices,I choose because I can. I assert my choices because good or ill MY choice my decisions is the only thing I can control in myself,all the ye s's or no's I choose and do a billion times a day....How that choice I made plays out I can't always predict or control. but I know a choice is all I got to do every second of life. So I try to do my best and all..but sometimes it is not enough to sway reality to change.I have to choose so I do. My heart shatters everyday because of what life is and my heart goes out for the suffering.
And that is life,life is fucked..oh well.

I choose anyway because I can if I don't make my choices reality makes it for me.I also know sometimes I have no choices life deals me piss and piss makes a lousy lemonade no matter what you do.Sometimes all the choices on the table SUCK. So you pick one and piss on it and don't beat yourself up over it.All I know is I am not drinking this piss,if I can help it ,even if the world is pretending it is sweet lemonade and wants me to drink and be merry with them as death comes to take their loved ones away,they try to "balance" a sickness they did not create the flaw that wounds..I know I am a prisoner here this world is NOT my nature,and because I know this I can admit I want OUT of this mess ASAP..But I stick around here because I can,I assert my desires and choices in this fucked up world because I can and this existence hates me for it sometimes and so I say to reality,fuck you,and throw my middle finger high and do what I will, just because I can and I damn the torpedoes.Were all gonna die anyway.
Fuck it.Hug your loved ones today for tomorrow or in the next second even,you might not be able to again.

Live life like you're gonna die because you're gonna.


http://www.lyricscafe.com/s/shatner_william/002.htm

There you have it,my philosophy of life in a nutshell.

[Hello_Kitty]

6. Not only are you not nuts

You are possibly one of the sanest people alive. I relate to your description of yourself as a sort of atheistic mystic. That's perfect. For me, the "mark" I want to leave on the world, if I'm able to leave any, is that at least one other person besides me realizes that kindness is not weakness. I too feel like I'm waiting for the sweet release of death to free me from the pain of knowing the truth in the deepest level of my being. It's like it's imbedded in my tissues. But I'm not ready to die yet. Hell no. I'm going to learn and grow and seek the wisdom of like minded people. So thank you undergroundpanther.

[ismnotwasm]

5. Oh my God, how powerful.

When I was 15 or so there was this girl who used to dress like a boy at the high school I was busy not attending. I don't know if she was transgendered or not, but it seems likely. She was tormented on a daily basis, I believe. I used to run away and live on the streets so I knew many different types of folk:) so I understood her a bit better, I think. She started dating a friend of mine (female of course) And you never saw two people more in love or dedicated to each, until society (families, friends, just growing older)tore them apart. I will spare you details, you have a full plate, but neither one of their stories ends very well. But I remember my friend dedicated the song "Wildflower" by Skylark to her (One hit wonder)That song has been in my head ever since, and gave it framed to one of my stepdaughters after her mother's suicide. When I was on the streets, it was the gay people, the transvestites, the transgendered who saved my life. They steered me away from some very destructive choices, some of them were making these same choices themselves at the time. They told it to me straight, THIS is what it's like and THIS is what will happen. They took me in, protected me had they not, my life would be very different today. I never forgot or never will. I can't pretend to understand the place of pain a poem like that comes from, but I saw first hand what happens when someone is rejected at every turn, and by everybody. May you find serenity.

[Hello_Kitty]

7. Your poem

Captures what most of us discover at the time when we're on the precipice of womanhood. There we are, with our hopes, dreams, and brilliance, wanting to go forth and conquer the world. And the world tells us: You are a piece of ass. All that matters about you is your weight, shape, and tits. Don't bother. You are to be seen and not heard. But if you are seen and are harassed or raped, it's your fault for being visible.

You're right, though. We have won. Every day that we go on and tell them to take their bullshit and stick it up their asses is another day that we have prevailed. If you are here, you have won too. Take that to the bank.