Posted on:Poetry Prose Uncategorized WordPress

Give it to me straight

Ever had the validity of your relationship assessed by the nation?

Then don’t tell me you understand.

Tell me you’re enraged.

Tell me you’re disgusted.

Tell me you cannot believe how low humanity has stooped.

But don’t you dare tell me that you understand.

Unless your worth & human rights are being dangled among legislatures like a bill,

you and your fellow jury need to remain exceptionally quiet until freedom of expression is a right I too can exploit.

You don’t understand, you pity; you condescend & through this reaction, you unknowingly flag me as divergent. 

You insult me as an individual by allocating me my own compartment in your over-organised cerebrum,

based on the “type” of love I feel.

I appreciate your support but your support needs to convey a gender-typecast neutral disposition to feel supportive.

Indifference is freedom.

You’ve got it wrong.

You don’t understand; you just stand.

I’m under.

©haylesmaree 

Posted on:Column Poetry Prose WordPress

A Silent Soliloquy 

Why should I have to hide that part of my identity,

to save people the “discomfort”?

I’m not comfortable & I’m not safe.

Your friends and family tell you to be an individual,

but never think to structure conversations to permit that individuality.

“Have you got a BOYfriend?”

“We need to find you a MAN.”

“Is that your GAY friend?”

So, by the time we’re ready to announce that which should not require a declaration,

you’ve already crafted an identify for us

that shifts our “announcement” to a “re-introduction”.

“My name’s Hayley. You’ve known me for a while. But your immediate assumptions moulded me into a shape that I’m now responsible for breaking down.”

Everyone, please be conscious of the way in which you interact with the people in your life.

YOU have been unintentionally constructing their identify for them & now THEY have to undergo a process of deconstruction.

What’s more, they kept your projected image because it was accompanied by love & acceptance.

Now, all they have is themselves,

and that’s not a familiar face anymore.

Should I have to hide my identity to make you feel more comfortable?

No.

But you can’t hear me.

I’m bi myself. 

©haylesmaree 

Posted on:Column Poetry Prose WordPress

Coming from Darwin & Dawkins 

Coming out…

Of what?

From where?

Where the hell was I before?

How have I emerged from a place I didn’t know I previously existed?

A place I can only assume didn’t actually exist until I strayed from “the norm”;

a label you didn’t know needed to be created for me,

until you realised you couldn’t accept or understand me without it.

Some kind of an “explanation” for my identity-

A requirement that doesn’t apply to you;

you and all of your straight edges.

I need a badge and you need nothing because you fulfill an assumption

and I fulfill a sense of unfamiliarity requiring a name.

I’ve turned into a “something” needing “figuring out”,

by people who are not figured out but incidentally do not need to justify their innate orientation to the world like I do.

Coming out…

From where?

Who was I before?

I am “me” yesterday, today and tomorrow,

So why is “me now” different to who I was yesterday,

simply because who I actually am is not who you assumed me to be?

The raw truth:

Assumptions, labels and preconceptions are your flaws,

not mine.

Who’s coming out?

You are.

You’re coming out as judgemental,

I’m just coming.

Jealous?

©haylesmaree

Posted on:Poetry Prose WordPress

Straight Jacket 

At 13 years of age, did you announce, “I’m straight”, whilst shaking, crying, hyperventilating, suicidal, contemplating escape, pondering a new life in a far away places, considering how you’d cope without a family, questioning your sanity as a result of the warmth you feel for the gender not expected, and wishing yourself harm for no reason other than the programmed ideologies of humanity?

No?

Didn’t think so.

©haylesmaree