Hymn For Medicated Mermaids

As a child, I was taught to respect
adults,
doctors,
priests,
the man on the bus with his hand on my knee.
All the assembled assholes of the western world,
I've been through them
one
by
one. 

I'm a sweet little bee
with a million stingers.
Go ahead and pat my ass now--
I'll make you feel my pain if it kills me.

Ladies, you almost-friends of mine,
discuss me til your lips fall off. 
This one says this
and that one says that
about my manner and my choices and 
the teeming cosmos of all you think you know but don't.

Today a famous perv got 175 years for exercising his shriveled soul
at the expense of others.
Not enough, but better than business as usual.
Meanwhile,
us bitches,
us drunks,
us suicides,
gather at the river, lifting our skirts and wading in
just as if it, and we, and our better angels

hadn't already gone on without us.
________

Image at top: Annie Murphy

Larry Nassar's victims speak out HERE. 

With Telescopes

With telescopes,
everything becomes scientific.
I held still so long watching an insect on a stalk a half mile away,
that birds nested in my ears
and rented my head to a carnival.

When I open my mouth, it's oompah bands.
When I publish, it's pablum.
When you kiss me, it's junk data, but repeatable.
____
 
a 55 for real toads.