What Matters

What matters is the terror
that makes the indignity
pale before
the need to cry out
in self-defense
of your body,
notwithstanding the
threat to your mind
or the threat to your
voice--
but the terror of control.

That word,
control,
the specter of unseemliness
and the collective distaste
at the messiness
of so-called undignified
or unrespectable people;
the idea there should be self-control--

it's a lie.

When others have control
of you,
they strip that dignity and
they determine what seems
and make a new story
from the silence
of your stolen voice.

That undignified self
is a self robbed of dignity.
That unrespectable self,
is a self denied respect.

That control--
that some people have when
they shoot themselves while in handcuffs.

That control--
that some people have
when they find the strength to heave themselves up
by a bed sheet.

That control--
that some people have when they remain a threat
after ten or twenty or thirty
bullets fill their bodies.

That control--
that some people have when they
can provoke getting their body slammed
with a certain look in their eyes.

That control--
when all the education and self-determination
end up in an altercation
and a trip to a weekend
incarceration--no round trip.

That control, is a control
done unto,
and is done without respect for
your life.

And that is what matters.

And that is a situation very much out of control.

What it Takes

That phantom spell,
that dinner bell
that wreaks the breaks
from the ribs to the legs
My story swollen bellied to tell
richly feasting at
a wishing well.
My addiction lies between my brain
and my hips
to have something pass my lips
my dependency on carbon
fuel and simple sugars
and fats make me all that this body can be--

otherwise in the ditch is me.
Simply stating the biological necessity for sustenance
and who doesn't crave it?
But while we are here
where there is life save it--
restore the ecology that makes
menus complete and feed the faces pleading
that want for feeding
Unless we can feed the least of us--

Understand
the worms will make a feast of us.