Poetic Revelations

So today I performed a poem in front of an audience for the first time. It at an event for sexual assault awareness, called Take Back the Night. You might have heard of a similar event before. I was nervous, but it was really chill, so that was good. I wish that I could have put more feeling into the poem, but next time I'll do better. I am going to be performing at a event on May 23rd. I am going to write a poem soon and practice it, so that it can really be good and I won't be so nervous. Poetry is becoming a bigger part of my life. I've been writing poetry for many years now, but was always too nervous to say it in front of an audience, but I really wanted to say this poem. I love spoken word, I watch Def Poetry all the time, and have even memorized some of the poems that appear on there.

Here's the poem that I said tonight:

I was raped once. But in my mind I've been raped every day of my life because what happened that day has been spinning like a turntable in my head. Back and forth, spinning, around and around, spinning, playing, again and again. Everything from that scence stays warped in my head. And this has become such a part of me that I'm thinking that I should PLEAD insanity.

I was raped once. And every since that day I've been raped 365 days a year. See I was at this party and yes I had been drinking, and yes my shorts were short. But this time I was just looking for a good time without sex.

I didn't say yes but I didn't say no. Because I didn't feel I had the right to. Because someone like me should be happy to have someone like him want me, sexually. I didn't say no but I didn't say yes either because I was afraid of disappointing him. I believed my own being to be so feeble that my sole purpose was so please him. So I lay there as cold, quiet, and un-inviting as my body could sub-concouisly muster. And I wondered how it feels to fuck a partner, who remained so still. How it feels to dominate, how it feels to hate, what created you. I tried to answer these questions and others in my mind while my insides were simultaeneously being ripped apart. I thought about why both of us in this bed hated me so much that we didn't see that it was my right, my right, my right, to say no. No matter how much I had been drinking, no matter how much you consider me a ho, it was my right, my right, my right, to say no.

But he didn't just hate me, he hated himself so he subjected that hate on the opposite of himself. Like the KKK on the black man, like the rich on the poor man.

I didn't say yes but I didn't say no. Because I was afraid that he would try to hurt me if I rejected him.
So as I lay there, being no agent in my pleasure, my freeing or my captivity, I searched for a place in my own mind, where the sun shone like diamonds and my body was mine.

I am the video vixen. I am the ho. I am the bitch. I am the girl who wanted it, who deserved it. I am your girlfriend, your mother, your daughter, your sister, your friend.