Alternate Realities

At five, it was dolls.
Little white houses,
Long, carpeted halls.
They had dresses.
Long, blond tresses.
I didn't have their blue eyes
Or their long, curling lashes.
I bit into all the lies
Of pretty pinks and sashes.
At five, I learnt
I had to be leggy
Just to be loved.

At fourteen
The rules hadn't changed.
I learnt the codes.
To cook, to clean,
To keep house.
To iron a blouse.
To remove stains.
To wear little chains
And call them jewellery.

Twenty came and went.
As did the boys.
The lean, the mean.
The poetry spouting geek.
The touchy-feely creep.
The sensitive dweeb
Who turned into a tiger
Once inside a cage
Of his choosing.

Another decade disappeared
In calling names,
Being called some.
A feminist, a dragon.
A crier, a whiner, a woman.
Outspoken, radical.
All insults.

I learnt to bake.
To keep accounts
And keep house.
To walk straight, not slouch.
To plump cushions
To mend rents.
To clean kitchen vents.
To swear.
To drink the guys
Right under the table.
To say no.
To go out after dark.
To not need to be looked after.

And the five year old cried.
The teen threw a tantrum.
The rules rewound, rewrote.
The leggy dream
Never did come true.

Rain Rage

Slash the sky.
Fall.
In a million meteors.

Lash windows, doors, walls.
Break and enter.

Impale the earth.
Throw down spearheads.
Shatter.

Hang on to rails.
Linger on stairways.
Slowdance down panes.

Once spent
Or satiated,
Stay.

Make puddles.
Splash gently.

Sing to the wind.
Soothe the grass.
Kiss them well,
The flowers you tear.

Slip in silently,
Slide into my dreams.
Speak in sibilants.

Till the next staging,
Coil into a secret.
Stay.

Static

A blip
On a green-black monitor.
An irregular rhythm
On a night-skinned drum
Plays in my head.
Syncopated thrums,
In three long nights
Each a year long.
Mornings, noons, evenings,
Swollen, consumed.
Paltry remainder-
An unforgiving insomnia.
Loops of that still dream
That uncoils and stretches;
Lulled into ennui.
Another day
A lifetime away
It might awaken.
Rebel.
Climb on a string
And hang in the sky,
My blameless moon.