Keira McArthur

If you’re not feeling nice, why act nicely?  It just gives people the wrong impression.

I like this.

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.

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