What Was Supposed To Be

         This afternoon I was supposed to be in New Hartford, Connecticut being officially named the Maine Beat Poet Laureate for 2018-2020. I really wanted to be there, mostly to meet the many others traveling from all over the world for the National Beat Poetry Festival. As is so often the case for me, life just didn't cooperate with my plans.

         Had I made it to the festival I was going to read a poem I wrote just for the event. I knew it would be accepted there, that the content would not be questioned.  It won't come off well in print. It is a poem meant to be read aloud. A poem that took decades to come out. A poem that had been hidden in the dark. I'll post it below, if only so that it is finally in the light.

 

220 Myrtle Street

Manchester, New Hampshire

It appeared on my Facebook feed.

A photo and a writeup of things

I didn’t know.

It is an Italianate villa, circa 1867.

It is selling for just under one mill.

It has had only four owners.

And one of them was 

my first molester.

There was a virtual tour

of some 27 pictures

of gorgeous rooms

impeccably decorated

with expertly curated antiques.

But no photos of the attic where

the pedophile music teacher

brought me

and stood me

in a sea of empty violin cases

and lay upon me his big ugly hands

with nails grown long for plucking.

And I thought since I had not yet even

breast buds it could not be sexual

having never been taught

such monsters are among us

or that

my body is my own

or that

I could say no to an adult, a man.

So I let him play me like a violin.

And set me up for decades

of letting my defiled self

be mistreated repeatedly.

And as with that rich white man

I would protect each and every one

from the consequences they deserved.

Until at last, my last,

one was elected to defile my democracy.

And I said at last

               fuck silence

and I climbed down from the attic

screaming Me Too and Times Up

and vote like the God damned lives

of your daughters depend on it.

Because they do.