Boiled Motherhood

How well I remember the food
that I was served when I was young,
the soft texture of which
was meant to encourage me to eat.

I also remember Mother selecting stories
to tell me to keep me walking beside her
when I was young. Stories of her being single;
where the single life was a challenge.

When I look back I regret that I did not think
to ask her more thoughtful and harder questions.
In this way I played my part in our resisting
a more durable and deeper held maturity.

Motherhood was like over cooked food;
it was about making women seem soft,
the easier to make boys use weak reason
so as not to be a test to their parents.

Fathers needed their distance
to be seen to be 'the good provider',
and wives were often more resourceful
than anyone was ever admitted them to be
or little boys could begin to recognise.

Incomplete Works

A woman's work is never complete
because, institutionally speaking,
men never recognise it's full value.

There Is Nowt So Queer

as making war for making citizenship homophobic,
and negative or forgetful of so many other minorities
and communities too. Learn from nature-there even as life
is maintained by limited aggression, diversity comes first-
without diversity there is less to be aggressive against....

Know Thyself?

The above words are 'Know Thyself'
in ancient greek, and are one aphorism
among about 140 which have survived
the centuries from the the oracle
at Delphi, in Ancient Greece.

This is where rulers and military leaders,
all of them men, asked questions
about what they should do to rule well
of the prophetesses who resided in that place.

It is typical that men with doubts
will treasure certainty-but be the last
to recognise where certainty should start
-with wise, quiet and very distant women.