If you’re not feeling nice, why act nicely? It just gives people the wrong impression.
I like this.
table of lamps and candles
I’ve been taught something quite different from this idea. It’s only dawning on me now how niceness can distort. Being civil and considerate, acting with kindness – I get. There’s something clean and mutually respectful about those choices in behaviour.
Nice, though, when you’re not feeling it. When you examine the results, they’re never good.
In a year-old effort to consciously rid my behaviour of anything that even hints at passive aggression I’ve arrived here. This week alone I’ve observed myself behaving nicely because I was bored in a conversation, another time nice because I was nervous. Another time nice because I was intimidated and lost my opinion so therefore my real voice. Curious, I tried several times to be nice as an expression of … niceness, but this always turned into an act of kindness.
Nice is a default for me, then. Perhaps nice is also a smokescreen.
In any case, it has become apparent that I hide behind my niceness, which is rude.
Last Bell, 2016
My default niceness also gives others the impression that I am nice.
Ew. Like mezzo piano. 30% grey. A picket fence. A hallmark card.
My poetry isn’t nice.
I need to re-think my behaviour.
More
Bitch.
I’ve denied you good purchase longtime
to my detriment
your hard instinct for closure
your abrupt, disruptive
your not-nice.
Witch.
I can feel you
inside my belly,
Drumming your Know.
Your Know Drum more becomes
the weft and warp of my song.
More. More.
Crone.
You grip my neck
like the carnivore you are
twist it in the shake
that will break my love
for the past
for sentiment
for soft truths.
Those won’t do.
These new truths are hard.
these blades samurai-sharp
this warning bell held aloft, ready
I grip the rim, white-knuckled.
Skin.
The outer me erupts
in antagonized boils,
swell to seep
weeping
Skin.
My containment.
The outer package of
muse love, milf-love,
tantalize, mythologize
my untouchable, touchable skin.
Skin as articulate now
as it wasn’t then,
so tuned when I was younger
to a man’s finger
to his hands, his thrust
Only then would it speak
only then could I hear it.
Now it names Sunlight
the brush and cover of hair
the shocking envelope of lake water
a draft of air, a blanket
my Crone skin
hears sound
feels ache
knows exuberance
craves beauty
yearns for peace.
Crone.
You call me home hard.
klm 19 April 2016/March 2017
