"FACINGFACES 2002 - 04" SELECTED POETRY (Part 2)

from the play, Daddy meets Durga

Call to bear arms

Help slay the Buffalo Demon
Bring your best arms
your poetry
your spear

your fire
your art

your spiders
your dreams

Help Slay the Buffalo Demon

provide your vision
of destroying the terror underneath
where you walk every day
where the sidewalk
moves with violence of the day

where your voices have been sent to
execution
punished for their life

where it still smells
of fetid masculinity
of the worst kind

based on God the Father
acted out by boys
with nervous wallets or guns

sometimes 40, 50 year old boys
who write long words
to protect their laws

They all resemble Daddy
in one way or another
They all take a life from me.

The one in my belly
or in my song

The one I had as a girl
or maybe older

It was not given
It was stolen

in the ugliest of ways
with weapons and force
A threat that tonight
maybe you will be
extinguished
much faster than how you came.

Help Slay the Buffalo Demon

Bring Your Best Arms



Never take it lightly

It is never to be taken lightly
This raised hand
struck across our skin.

Never
take it lightly
This festered contempt
amongst our men.

He may be your father
He may be your husband
He may be your lover
while making love
even pretending
to hurt but

never
take it
lightly.

At the first sign
of vileness
smothered in passion.
Do not excuse it
so politely.

NEVER TAKE IT LIGHTLY.

Your daughter
Your mother
Your sister

Cannot learn to take it
in the eye
on the face
with the skin
Cannot learn to live with it
sometimes for 60 years

never take it lightly

Cause what he does in the bedroom
will be what he’ll do in the boardroom
will be what he’ll do in the big boys’ room
will be what he’ll do with your womb

So send them away
Away from your skin

Until they too
will no longer
Take It

Lightly.

© Margaret Kruszewska - Polish-American