Author: Inthegazeoftheother

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A Mother’s Birthing Flight

  
credit: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/03_04/lonelyDM2803_468x562.jpg



On a late Sunday she was born early
her mother in teary wondered weary
looked her in the eye and challenged
“Grow stronger and quicker than me
and don’t ever take nobody’s charity.”


Then she laid her baby down to die
her own ailing heart beat-less inside
but that baby survived, grew round,
fed by couple-strife seeking solution, 
by priestly advice for consummation.


“Raise a child in charity’s appearance
and through her grow into one; hence
your conflicts will vanish in loving care
when hours turn into decades quickly
and so save a loving vow’s guarantee.”   


Today she sits on a birthday morning
and stares at the street cars passing,
no one stopping by for cake and gifts;
she regarding the hours of a first light
contemplates a mother’s birthing flight.


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Would You Watch This Documentary?

  
The divorce rate for first time marriages in the United States hovers steadily at about 50% according to the Census Bureau’s reports over the last ten years. Yet mindlessly and merrily, Americans march to the altar like lemmings to the cliff, only to free fall over the edge into the depths of that statistic. Despite the concerted efforts of great minds in many fields–psychology, law, medicine, sociology, anthropology, to name a few–there has been little progress in lowering divorce rates overall. 


Except for rate shifts with the rise and fall of the economy, most notably couples choosing not to divorce in a down economy because it is cheaper to live on separate sides of the house than pay attorneys, divorce rates fluctuate little. During some periods, marriage trends toward cohabitation over licensing.


Though there are probably as many reasons for divorce as there are married couples, common factors such as communication, religion, finances, childrearing and roles contribute to the irremediable breakdown of marriages. And while cheating is the last straw when it comes to suffering an unfulfilling relationship and often impels filing divorce papers, it is not so much the cause as the symptom of the bases for disagreement. 


Poor communication about feelings, especially about sex, is a significant cause of injury in marriage. The experts, including Esther Perelman, have written about sex as the communication trouble spot, the sensitivity surrounding sex and the expectations of couplehood, in particular: the beliefs that two people merge and thereby are able to read each other’s minds and that sexual performance critique leaves long lasting scars on marriage sex life, are problematic. 


Though male dissatisfaction is not unheard of, the complaints are more likely by or rooted in women regarding men’s inability to sexually satisfy. Reciprocity in the sexual satisfaction arena breaks down.  When one party is getting satisfied while the other is not, resentments grow and withholding sex or certain sex acts the other enjoys, often results. My evidence is anecdotal, but I am fairly certain the data validates my assumptions.


Why is sex so complicated? I suspect sedimented beliefs and inherited cultural myths about female bodies and leftover Puritanical sexual mores contribute significantly to the complexity.  


And though orgasms are not all there is to sex, they are significant, especially if only one of the couple is having them. In any event, the lack of orgasms coupled with the inability to talk about that lack not only to mates but to friends and family for the discomfort we dysfunctional Americans have in speaking about sex generally, circles the perimeter as well as forms the shadowy core of the divorce abyss. 


Perhaps learning about how women orgasm is a key to lowering the divorce rate in this country. And here to educate all of us, people of all genders, about female orgasm is a documentary by an expert:

“Our culture is obsessed with depicting and idolizing both vag-gasms and intercourse as the ultimate in sexual expression,” says Trisha Borowicz, a filmmaker/molecular biologist who studies orgasm ‘just for fun.” “Everyone acts like there is not a definition for female orgasm when there really is a pretty damn good one.”

Science, Sex and Ladies is Borowicz’s attempt at not only dispelling myths about female orgasm but also teaching how they are achieved. She attacks the accepted model of penis in vagina penetration as the “norm” for fulfilling women. By boldly and explicitly explaining how female orgasm is produced with a real vulva to diagram, she supplies important facts to expose the lies many women grow up believing in the absence of valid information.

5. Contrary to popular belief, most women don’t take “forever” to come. Most women come as quickly as easily as men, given the right stimulation. Men would also take “forever” to come if they were only being stimulated by, say, someone diligently rubbing their pubic hair.

That’s number five of four other fantastic facts needing to be known and provided courtesy of Jill Hamilton’s review of the Borowicz’s documentary in Salon.com (The simple “secret” to making a woman orgasm no one understands). A link to the documentary is provided in the article, well worth the read.

While educating the populace with vulva diagrams is not the antidote to divorce, disseminating accurate information–truths about how women work–improves the health of everyone, especially teens susceptible to the porn industry that fills the gaping hole parents leave when they do not or cannot inform their sons and daughters about the wonders of the female body–no easy task. 

I know my own daughters resist the awkward masturbation and sexual satisfaction conversation that they perceive as foisted on them. Disturbing notions of our mothers as sexual beings haunts the deep recesses of our collective subconscious for centuries, one of many deeply ingrained twists to our sexual proclivities. No wonder we’re screwed up.
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Penises in Men’s Fashion

  

Here’s something you don’t read every day? Why the penis is having a moment in men’s fashion. Simon Chilvers explores this tantalizing title in today’s Guardian.


In January, at Rick Owens’ Paris fashion week show, penises swung gently down the runway. The designer – who has a made a career out of creating highly expensive leather jackets – sent out several models minus underwear in tunics featuring peepholes, cut to reveal their genitals.

There is nothing like the mention of genitalia in a headline to draw a reader in. No words other than maybe an f- bomb will pique curiosity as much. Penises, in particular, however, are not often blatantly dangled before the public eye compared to the endless preoccupation over women’s body parts, how they work and why they won’t work when they are misunderstood, in particular. Now place penis in the same sentence as “fashion world” and no one can resist sparing the ten minutes to read on.


Rick Owens’ motives are questioned and critiqued in this article:  Is this penis-peephole style production a publicity stunt or truly thought provoking work? Unquestionably, I am ignorant, but in the fashion world that I am hard pressed to believe values intellectual or activist stances in clothing styles over promoting profit-making, I lean toward the former, not the latter.

Owens, for one, claims his motivations were pure: “I was just questioning why we keep penises concealed and why exactly it’s bad to show them,” he tells me. “The social rule to keep the penis hidden just gives it a power I’m not sure it merits. But isn’t it great when something is sacred and profane at the same time?”

The bigger question: Why do Puritannical attitudes toward nudity still exist in this country? And does over exposure to penises and vaginas desensitize viewers to the intimacy associated with those parts or is that a line just to keep the pornography biz going strong–you know, forbidden fruit and all? The author characterizes “male full frontals” as “the last taboo in an otherwise hyper-sexualised society” with “power to shock and even anger.” Why the anger and whose? Not surprisingly, men’s anger about having to look at other men’s penises or have their own penises looked, that’s whose and why.

McLellan, who also shot the naked story for Fantastic Man, which featured men aged between 22 and 52, and was accompanied by an essay on the ageing process of the male body, said the shoot was about creating characters who were appealing but “not necessarily in a fanciable way”. Jop van Bennekom, co-founder, creative director and editor of Fantastic Man, says that as well as showing diversity, the shoot offered “an unbiased look at the male body without it being sexualised”.

Irony: the fashion world with its built in bias toward women cares about the exploitation of men. I guess this is why I am cynical. The industry’s product is the ubiquitous imagery of women whether exploitive or celebratory and it literally makes money off the backs of often undernourished or photoshopped female bodies. So now designers and photographers are trying to step up on behalf of men and their sexualized bodies while perpetuating practices that reinforce sexually discriminatory practice.

Top female models are often inured to nudity. “If you ask a female model to take her clothes off, you don’t really have to get permission from the agent,” says McLellan. “But if you ask a guy to take his clothes off it suddenly becomes a big deal.” Andrew Garratt, a model booker at Select Model Management, confirms that male nudity is always discussed before a shoot, and no naked shots of the model would be supplied to the photographer in advance. Many male models, he says, have turned down very successful international photographers because they didn’t want to get naked.

In so far as peep holes bring the discussion of objectified bodies into light, any body’s body, I am all for them. Exposing the industry practices, its perpetuation of gender and body myths and the concomitant consequences of stereotyping is enough justification for the collateral cynicism and backfire of turning men’s attitudes toward their own anatomy into gold–clearly commercial objectification. 

The penis shouts: Look at me and look at yourself feeling uncomfortable or amused! Shocking an audience to buy product is nothing new, after all. It’s just more entertaining when the often ironic, illogical yet complex human conditioning and responses are exposed in doing so. 
As men’s fashion continues to break out from the shadows of women’s, there is increasing scope for stylists and photographers to push the idea of what masculinity means. Could we see more objectification, too, bringing menswear closer to the women’s fashion industry?

I hope so.
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The House of Mirrors

image

 

credit: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/06/25/t-magazine/25leandro-redstone/25leandro-redstone-tmagArticle.jpg

 

Windows open the flies get in and buzz around occupant ears
and the neighbors see if anyone’s home to borrow a few eggs.
Prying eyes into unshuttered houses make movement cribbed
self-consciously checking on words, their tone and expression
so no one calls the cops when the screaming sounds so loud
that anxious stares cannot bear the cruel curiosity any longer.

Unlocked doors welcome strangers in along with friendly foes
to sit in the kitchen nook to wait for cold beer and sandwiches,
served in feigned welcome smiles wary of wrong impressions.
When doors swing wide the wind bellows loudly, wild howling
that outsiders mistake for babies neglected and other abuses
a lure for authorities of watchful interrogations lying in waiting.

An open house with glass walls like an atrium of family fronds
is a sociological study of disordered habits of broken subjects
where gourds are lasered open with surgical knives illumined
reflecting wide-eyed grimaced faces of fun house mirror halls
that release shrieks of wailing laughter hysterically unleashed
while witnesses nod in knowing affirmation of suspicious spin.

Confessional containers confine the inhabitants in cool cages
bars silvan with tales and typecasts for the people’s comfort,
the rack to rest their hats on in assurances wide in ever after.
“We always knew she was untrustworthy, her nose in the air,
and look at her children’s friends with the pierced nose rings.”
To lay bare what can be seen is like carelessly losing a home.

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Felicitations on the Auspicious Occasion of Your Natal Day!

Congratulations to all who have survived another day

Opened their eyes to the sky and the light just to say

Thank you to whomever it pleases for my birth, today.

 

And in case you didn’t know, here is the skinny on birthday celebration ritual as we know it here in America today.

This is Why You Get to Celebrate Your Birthday Every Year.

  credit: happy birthday mistress 

Wait for the last one on this short video:  it’s worth it.

#peace

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Love Dance Ritual

  

Love dance ritual
downright habitual
hello, a kiss
reply, a miss
a mental hiss
Why resist?
the game on
a wink, a stare
returning glare
another beer?
Why not?
It’s clear
you’re here
to pluck my pride
take that ride
think of it now
driving that plow
rich fantasy
in bed with me
skin off my back
oily ass smack
tense smile
stay for awhile?
bar stool bitch
making his pitch
Come play with me?
so good you’ll see.
nothing better for free.
smile in secret
will her submit
what you want
Come on cunt.
Give it up already.
Wait, hold steady.
She’s loosening. 
not leaving
eyeing my crotch?
turn it up a notch
She’s so hot.
need what she’s got
How about dinner
with a winner?
Come on, come on
Let’s get it on.
This play’s too long.
And now she’s gone.
no biggie
She wasn’t pretty.
This one’s hotter
not such a rotter
How ya doin’ tonight?
See the moonlight?
What a great smile.
Been here for awhile?
Buy you a drink?
a leer, a wink
the dating game
just a frame
for the mighty lame
a sad mime
silly rhyme
painted velvet kitch
the love switch
turn me on turn me off
I’ve had enough.

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Roses of Song and Myth: the Love Lie

 
Credit:   http://assets2.madewithcolor.com/2014/08/11/17/57/30/934/Marigold_Rose_3.jpg

The rose is not flattery, nor flattered can she be.

Her colors never brighten so with admiration.
Her white is white and pink is pink regardless.
Sun is her food, water her delight and nurture
she needs nothing from hands, no clip or two
no more than her nature designed so provides.

A stem releases bloom from inside itself formed
its patterns deep and wide configured long ago
running through time like speed of sound-light.
The evolution of her growth and being precede
all hands that pluck her bloom from bony bush.
She needs no more than nature draws from her.

For when she is clipped, she poses as love sigh
tall, thorny languor along the chilled lip of glass,
a vase for her thoughts to showcase her beauty.
But hollow and thin she starves on water alone
no earth to feed her fibers, her soft petal velvet 
of colors destined to rot, odiferous swill of death.

The rose bleeds not from thorns as do your gods
for she needs protection from prey; all who harm
love in the name of hunger forcefully feed on her.
The host of vines and verdure are not loving kind
but raw and real as the rain that beats her roots, 
suffers her drowned to make her stand woody by.

Patience and virtue and kindness do not clothe her.
She hangs no myrrh between her breasts to lure.
Nature is not a song for her nor an allegory rhyme.
She fails as ideal and lasts only so long as her DNA.
For her name is rose not love by human confusion
and sings a song the words unknown to mankind.

Leave her an earth that grows her feet strong-free
and make her not your words a sign of loving,
for she is not an idea, symbol or object, no agent.
Neither is she subject or lust or desire or longing.
She is not inspiration, romance or pheromone but
life stuff, permeation, breath, not your philosophy. 
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Living by the Numbers

 
credit:  https://danutm.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/big-data.jpg


I am a woman who wades in numbers,
soak myself in abstract configurations;
I jet-stream massage statistics to know,
find the answers, solve the riddle of it,
the non-numerical, innumerable queries
cried in words, a seemingly literary call,
but responsive to figures and values one
of twenty-four-seven and three-hundred
sixty-four in sixty times fifty-two or so set 
give or take, plus or minus, more or less.

“I’ve got your number,” no one ever said,
but clichés are like that, ubiquitous stain
on creativity’s spine like the cafe au lait 
spot on the leg or neck, a birth mark blot,
red, brown or invisibly zero’d out erased.
Countless ones perched in memory slate
have added up the sum total of me, mine,
all I ever was and will be with smug sure 
black and white like chalk on the boards
while flunking 365 true or false quizzes.

But not you, caresser of amassed details,
not data strokes, the airy waves of ideas
you throat-throw in fast, furious pitches
speeding in, aimed as weapon or homer,
at me batting less than top ranking 1000,
an average way below that .264, a mean,
the high and low of its streak of 9 no-hits;
I can never catch up, analyze every word
to track your wins from losses and defeat
the purpose, our aims on par, hole-in-one. 

We sport and play, linger and dally over
tenderous scars and spots, skin wounds
that narrate each misstep, spill or crash
we each separately, singly, absorbed in
seconds of lost sight, a blink of timeless
clicks of the clock in a silent living room
when we were youth without any history
past an endless future of anything goes.
But now, in lengthening hours, sun light
of sinless spins marks us immeasurably.

When you and I are old enough to know
that the feet we were, those inches along
the road miles we never traveled in truth
did not matter as many or few glimpses, 
insights into the relativity of relationships
fleeting and forever moving us in spaces,
places of perspectival generosity, a glee
of open doors, 1, 2 and 3, any alphabet
of understanding what counts, laughter,
touch, dream, a lantern glow in the mist.

I am a woman who drifts by the numbers,
ten by ten, mostly, often two by two-some,
just to tease the moment with complexity,
a game too many of us weak minded play.
“Age doesn’t matter,” you say, yet it does
to those who count; we count on them too
to whisper wordless songs in even tempo,
carrying the tune of eons engraving aural
flesh in a lilting lullaby, humming mindless
motion that apes the arrows of linear time.     

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Ode to a Bailiff

  



While the others scowled, flared and puffed
in practiced postures of professional despise
you, old and world weary wise, spoke true
chatter from the heart, a human reaching too.
Your limits were, like mine, of love and family
the mystery of marriage and the ache of lonely
failure at being the man of her unmaking sight.
Only your boots were polished and sturdy black
while my socked salmon sandal clotted dust
sliding along the crusted filth of our asphalt path
your cuffs clanking the metal of your burly belt
the ones that shhh-ould be clamping my wrists.


Our bridge was my crumbling past statuesque
in its esteemed alkalized marble cool pin-grey
and the advice from those harrowed halls of din.
“Be steady. She will know. I am sorry. So hard.”
While I slow-death paced back to churlish grins
we exchanged human trade in good will spirits,
you, speaking to me as if I mattered, I listening
as if I could care at that moment juggling misery
and hope and the doom of a mis-pieced puzzle
air born cluttering the fetid air with dizzying spin.


We both, in slow walks of dim bludgeoned halls,
wondered where we went wrong, a confusion’s
connection of human heart sunken inside echo
of conscience in the concrete confines’ meeting.
I loved you then like a mother’s son, my savior
only for your voice, even, pleading, wondrously
unprepossessing, acknowledging me breathing
as a fellow traveler, sharer of one crimson grief
barreled over the tide of ticks scratching at skin
burrowing inside the stream of killing us daily.
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In the Center of a Dream

   
Sitting in the center of a dream

is an endless empty space
a hollow black hole I fill 
with the quadruple rainbow of jellybeans
or the sludge of broken drain pipe leaks.
And when I awaken the day tastes sweet
or salty tears silence the coo of morning dove. 

A candy vendor and a plumber,
I circle the morning mood
and inventory the cracks 
putty the holes with tongue wincing treats,
a nectar for my tea and a fuel for empty.
And when I navigate the world in a day round,
the flavors fade lost in the buzzing of honey bee.

Returning to the hive at night
the piping all but drifted off
to the soundless sea,
the hey-day mist lingers at crenulate margins
of memory leaf strands teased out in ache.
And when I shutter sight again to sleep it out
visions flicker inside the cave to thus prefigure me.      
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