Looking in the wrong places

For years we have been looking in the wrong places.

Clever scientists in white coats with pens in their top pockets

Promised to save us from our madness if they could just

Hoe our heads, weed our white matter. They’ve been

Looking for the place where all the dark things go

The terrors, the fears, the memories, the madness.

Where does it hide, reside, inside?

Man says the brain, the brain is a pain,

Logico rules so it must be there.

Fix the machine, oil it well,

Stick it back together, the nuts and bolts.

But woman she knows in her blood, in her flow

In the pulses of the womb and her stomach turned to stone

In the clench of a fist and the callousing of a heart

In the terror of a tumour…

The body is her unconscious.

This soft and supple tapestry of miracles

That is where we store our shit

The landfill, dump of our lives

No temple this,  we use our bodies as a dump

No one taught us to empty the trash.

And so it builds up

The shadows, the dark stuff

In our veins and clogging our pores.

When we cross our legs and bite our tongues like we were told

When we turn a cheek and choke back tears

When we swallow the poison spewed by a lover

When we fake an orgasm and our body screams No

But our throat is silent.

And the good girl goes mad.

The body holds the unconscious and nobody knew.

Except us… but they couldn’t hear us.

They just called us mad.