Poem Note to Self 2

 

You carry the mark of our history

Of pain unacknowledged, of trauma and family

Of Maleness with presence often ominous

The illusion of strength and history of dominance

 

At times you have learned your feelings to hide

As pain, shame and sadness you’ve kept well inside

Your chromosome Y you sometimes abhor

                                                                    While some hope in men you seek to restore

 

You move uncertain in the footsteps of intimacy

Your skin shaped by touch with no care for privacy

Of ancestors troubled through chains of depression

Masculinity shaped through guilt and repression

 

I see you divided, divine and mundane

As validation and love for you I obsess to obtain

I’ve blamed how I see you on the actions of others

Yet love for you I’ve placed on the shoulders of others

 

Your status uncertain in faith and religion

Body, spirit and morals spun in complex cosmovision

Where sin and unholy weave with compassion

Inner and outer in fraught interaction

 

The irony is some see you as blessed

While other pray for your healing, obsessed

You are often a canvas of thoughts others’ projection

Of special or suspect a confusing reflection

 

You are my mule, my shadow, my vessel

As between love and shame for you I continually wrestle

Complex body of mine that I seek to control

May I not win against you at the cost of my soul