Sunday, January 13, 2013

Here’s what you will be told:



Find a man
Seek protection
The world is scary
Don’t go out
You are weak
Don’t care so much
They’re only animals
Don’t be so intense
Don’t cry so much
You can’t trust anyone
Don’t talk to strangers
People will take advantage of you
Close your legs
Girls aren’t good with:
Numbers
Facts
Making difficult decisions
Lifting things
Putting things together
International news
Flying planes
Being in charge.
If he rapes you, surrender,
You will get killed trying to defend yourself
Don’t travel alone
You are nothing without a man
Don’t make the first move,
Wait for him to notice you
Don’t be too loud
Follow the crowd
Obey the laws
Don’t know too much
Tone it down
Find someone rich
It’s how you look that matters,
Not what you think.


Here’s What I’m Telling You:

Everyone’s making everything up
There is no one in charge except for those Who pretend to be
No one is coming
No one is going to Rescue you
Mind-read your needs
Know your body better than you

Always fight back
Ask for it
Say you want it
Cherish your solitude
Take trains by yourself to places
You have never been
Sleep out under the stars
Learn how to drive a stick shift
Go so far away that you stop being afraid of Not coming back
Say no when you don’t want to do something
Say yes if your instincts are strong
Even if everyone around you disagrees
Decide whether you want to be liked or admired
Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out What you’re doing here
Believe in kissing
Fight for tenderness
Care as much as you do
Cry as much as you want
Insist the world be theater And love the drama
Take your time
Move as fast as you do
As long as it’s your speed.

Ask yourself these questions:

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?
Why am I adding a question mark at the end Of all my sentences?
Why am I apologizing every time I express my needs?
Why am I hunching over?
Starving myself when I love food?
Pretending it doesn’t mean that much to me?
Hurting myself when I mean to scream?
Why am I waiting
Whining
Pining
Fitting in?
You know the truth:
Sometimes it does hurt that much
Your mother wanted more than that
It’s easier to be mean than smart
But that isn’t who you are.” 

Eve Ensler

Friday, July 6, 2012


 

Ode to a Treehouse   
a poem my cousin Hannah wrote




deep in the backyard jungle
Just beyond my mothers prized tomato plants and raspberry bushes
I brush shoulders past 4, 7, and 11 year old versions of myself
Scaling the rope ladder (carefully), an expert demonstration for those behind me
Wooden walls tinged green by moss and rot
Leafy, sky-high home of séances and first kisses
Billie Holiday is barely audible through the static of your old transistor radio
Echoes haunting a childhood paradise
Past laughter and whisper soft secrets
A thousand tedious afternoons of gin rummy and daisy chains
Sweet cakes and milkshakes
Daydream dalliance, dragonflys delight
Our last days as children
Painted on the inside of our skin
We lay on our backs
Stretched out like laundry on the line
Stargazing through the Plexiglas roof
You say
In 100 years, no one will remember our names but theyll still be looking at these same stars

Saturday, April 21, 2012

childhood






I miss being small and believing the world was

 an infinite universe of potential, when your little

 it’s like  no matter how terrible things can be you

 have  this undeniable imagination that gives you 

the ability to believe in magical things and this 

resilient naive optimism that all your dreams will 

come true when your older,

 It’s not until you actually grow up that you 

begin to realize that life is never as perfect as you

 imagined however nor is it as terrible as you had 

feared, rather a compilation of mundane moments that you cease to find the 

importance of until it’s too late and they’re nothing more than distant memories.


-Alicia Carey





Sunday, March 11, 2012

                                                Having a coke with you

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.

-Frank O'Hara