To live today is to live in a world that wants to diminish us.
To be pressed upon, constantly, to be less than, to live in distrust.
They do it with pharmaceuticals, they do it with supplements and powders and promises.
They do it with bars and shakes and crisps and keep us as your hostages.
Fat free, caffeine free, sugar free, nutrient free fantasies of tasteful humanity.
They poke and they prod us with lies and disgust.
They bind and staple and nip and tuck.
They rob our youth of hopes and dreams and possibilities.
They rob our middle age of self assurance and deny our capabilities.
Longing becomes the norm. Hate becomes reborn.
They control us with guilt. Stitching our flesh into your demoralizing quilt.
“Shame on You…” for being so fat?
“Shame on You…” for being healthy, too?
“How dare you not do as we tell you to do!”
We are not to be diminished, contorted, controlled or prescribed.
We are done with your idiosyncratic lies!
I will not be weighed like so much meat.
My flesh has value and won’t accept defeat.
You cannot separate my fat from me.
You won’t get the best of me!**
I’m no more and no less human than you.
Yet you insist, “But I’m better than you!”
The fuck you are and the hell with your lot.
It’s my guts, my glory, my intestines without knots!
Keep your scalpels and calipers and body fat ratio machines.
Wanna know where you can stick your oversold thin fantasy?
Nothing tastes as good as a free mind feels.
But you’ll never know when you’re stuck on their hamster wheels!
I smile a thoughtful smile, wider than my hips.
I love with my whole self, not a smaller version of what you sell as “health.”
I won’t sit or back away quietly.
I’m far too busy fighting for equality!
So yell if you must, from your trucks, cars and bikes.
I’ll keep on keepin’ on, stepping up to bullhorns and mics!
We are fat! We are free! We have pride and can be healthy!
Stop with the judgment. End all the shame!
Our bodies and minds are not playing that game!

So, yeah…um…I watched the film “Howl” Friday night and while I didn’t enjoy the film as much as I’d hoped (or wasn’t in that frame of mind or something), the writing, the poetry, it really stuck with me. And the above just sort of poured out of me Saturday morning. I miss poetry. I went through quite an obsessive phase. I read all I could and wrote until my hands would cramp and it’s all gone! The memories of what I read and wrote. And all of my poems are long gone, too. I used to only write when I was depressed and for a lot of time that worked out well. This is probably the first that wasn’t about a specific person or instance. Like I said, it just came out. Ha!
Thanks for reading.
<3
S