Wild Women (Don’t Trust the Doctors)

I was once a domestic woman who slept at the foot of the doctor’s bed like a cat.

One day, a war was waged on the heart, and he was called in for service,

sent away to care for the soldiers and their decaying minds.

I went with him. Who wouldn’t?

Any girl will follow you into the trenches like a dog on a leash if you ask her to.

I was quiet, an introvert, sitting by my master’s side.

Until one day, motivated solely by anger (and by anger I mean art),

I ran off and became a wild woman.

I grew yellow fur with leopard’s spots all through,

And sprouted claws from my young fingers.

The doctor swore he would hunt me down and make a nice rug out of me.

The men, they followed close, through the solemn woods.

They came upon us with their rifles and their heavy boots,

And we went in bare-footed and ready-clawed.

“Poach the wild women!” He cried, “Poach the wild women because they are animal and dumb!”

Doctor, you have infiltrated the quiet space that is my heart.

What do you do when the cats regress to leopards?

What do you do when the dogs regress to wolves?

What do you do when your own soldiers turn against you?

What do you do when you realize that the mumbling voice in your head has been God all along?

What do you do when you realize he has not come to save you?

Doctor, I would read to you my poems of the flesh

But you’ve taken away my notebooks

And emptied my head of its dreaming.

Doctor, I know that this song is nonsensical and discordant,

That I’m pressing all the wrong keys,

But I’m having trouble getting my mind together these days.

Doctor, I’m sorry for making a mess of myself

But I shot that bastard because man is cruel and not made in God’s image.

You should understand, doctor, what it means to be small,

But you don’t speak animal.

And doctor, you can tell what I am just by looking at me.

I stand here, nailed to my very own cross.

You see the odd way that I dress,

And the cracks in my hips,

You see the way I speak,

With a tremor in my forehead.

You see that I am strange,

that I am a freak of nature,

you see that I am not quiet, that I am crazy.

You say I am sick and I want to say that I was born sick but what I really mean is that I was born an artist.

And what could I possibly do about that?

I am my father’s child.