little blue flowers

to be women

i am here to bite the bullet
and massage the lead with my tongue
and peel apart your copper alloys
so that we may open fire
on this hate you bring
to the table and the bedroom
and the television.

your sister lost her virginity
to a man
you knew once;
he's locked up now
after a long and tiring trial.
she'd almost lost.

your mother crossed an ocean
with you carried safely
in her honeysuckle womb
after the man who put you there
left.

your first love is gone
and i know you blame fate and distance
but the man she is with now
does not shame her for her clothing
or her choice of words that echo
a blue truth you'd rather hide.
not all men are you,
thank god.

i am here to bite the bullet
and show you that
the women of your life-
as well as the women who are not-
are dangerous
unkempt
toxic
goddesses
with braided crowns of bleeding thorns
and scarred, mangled features
their eyes are halfway to equinox
and the thrones beside them
are not empty
but simply
accessory.

they are not here to bite the bullet
but rather keep within the walls of
humanity just enough
so that mankind may look upon them
and see a flicker,
a bejeweled breath,
sweeping in their dark eyes.

their children are aglow and ageless
but if a man steals one away
the rest follow after with
shadowed, ruined memory
of the time in the flowering womb
of their mothers.
they seek their own footsteps ahead
and fall prey to primary place.

corrupt rulers and stubborn princes
rugged warriors, sudden fathers
they consume titles at every crossroad
scrounging up their ego in heaping
handfuls till they nearly burst
and overflow the excess
into their femmes
like it's a gift.

i am so sick
of biting the bullet
while these men bite into the skin
of round, waxen fruit.

the bullet has bitten me.