Category: poetry

‘my incurable anger’

The liminal space of airports can take me one of two ways: either I feel elated by the possibilities that travel may hold, or I feel lost, rudderless, unmoored.

It’s not surprising I guess that what with everything happening in the world right now — the latter pulled me in deep last night, as I traveled back from Germany after seeing our (beautiful, precious, smiling and laughing, curious) grandson. Thank goodness for new life, right now especially, truly.

In the airport I found myself surrounded by businessmen while waiting for my flight. All men. All working. All seemingly contained, professional.

And for the first time in years and years, I was furious at all of them — so furious that I struggled not to cry. I wanted them to be up in arms. I wanted them to show that they noticed what was happening in the world. That they knew they were privileged. That they understood their positions of power — and that they rejected this power, wholesale. Then I wondered how many of them were abusers. I wondered about the women and girls and boys in their lives: were these men good people?

Who knows. All I could see, all I could read in their faces, was that they were unperturbed. Contrary to the triggering and beyond I was going through: they felt safe. They had no reason not to feel safe.

Let’s say that again: they had no reason not to feel safe.

Then I actually did cry as the plane taxied and took flight over Cologne. I saw the lights of the city below, and knew there were thousands of abused people there — the vast majority abused at the hands of men.

We have every reason not to feel safe. I have every reason not to feel safe. I want to scream: look, why don’t you — just open your eyes! You have done this. You run the world so you always win, so you are safe, happy, prosperous — and so you can bask however you choose in the entitlement bestowed upon you by being born male, into a patriarchy.

But they are not looking. Not those men. Not then, and possibly not ever. They don’t have to.

Which is why I cried: I must look. My eyes are stuck open. Every day, and especially right now. Millions of us have to look. We have no choice but to know about all of this, from the inside — and none of us, not a single one, wants to.

We are flayed raw. We are so tired. We are so heartsore.

***

This morning the words that circled my mind in the airport at last found their poem: one of Twenty-One Love Poems, a sequence by Adrienne Rich, the great activist feminist writer, one of only two or three writers whose work has echoed through my life. I first read her poems in 1980.

I’ve added emphasis to the lines I’ve been hearing over and over….

IV.


I come home from you through the early light of spring
flashing off ordinary walls, the Pez Dorado,
the Discount Wares, the shoe-store… I’m lugging my sack
of groceries, I dash for the elevator
where a man, taut, elderly, carefully composed
lets the door almost close on me.—For god’s sake hold it!
I croak at him.—Hysterical, he breathes my way.
I let myself into the kitchen, unload my bundles,
make coffee, open the window, put on Nina Simone
singing Here comes the sun… I open the mail,
drinking delicious coffee, delicious music,
my body still both light and heavy with you. The mail
lets fall a Xerox of something written by a man
aged 27, a hostage, tortured in prison:
My genitals have been the object of such a sadistic display
they keep me constantly awake with the pain…
Do whatever you can to survive.
You know, I think that men love wars…
And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds
break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly,
and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.

our ribbons, our shoes

Today is Mothering Sunday here in the UK, so I dedicate this post to my mother, another survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by her father.

Last week I was in Newcastle (UK), where I helped do a LOUDfence on the railings of St Mary’s Cathedral. As ever, the act of tying ribbons — colourful, fluttering — releases something purposeful in me and I think in others. The tags which are attached by the ribbons recount grief, and loss, and sorrow, and in some — betrayal. They also speak of support, validation, and the determination to make a difference in every walk of life. To say loudly: we hear you, we believe you, we are so sorry. And we want this never to happen again.

A new and powerful symbol in LOUDfence is the introduction of empty shoes: children’s, priests’, religious sisters’, laity’s. They all represent people who aren’t there, who can’t be, and people whose shoes we need to walk in, to be with, and hold close. Abuse is a destructive force. It rips us from those we might love, and from the roads we might have walked.

LOUDfence is making a difference. It’s reaching beyond countries, and beyond regions. Beyond silence and silencing. Victim survivors from every walk of life can see themselves — can feel themselves held. Know that they are seen too, in some cases by the very people who did them harm.

Change comes through a gathering which reaches critical mass, a tipping over into the clear sense that we MUST enact cultural change. On all fronts.

I’m so proud to be part of this movement. Next stop: West Virginia USA in April.

***

Antonia Sobocki (founder of LOUDfence UK) asked me to write a poem for the Newcastle LOUDfence. Here it is. I am not usually one for writing to commission – I tend to freeze up! – but this time I had the gift of a pair of baby shoes I had found in my mother’s belongings after her death. Here are the shoes, and here is the poem.

(apologies for the poor quality reproduction here — the clumsiness of WordPress!)