It's Complicated - Propaganda

We are often our own demise and

I am becoming procrastination

You are so often so wrong about you and you don’t even know it

Self-identified as particleboard, papier-mâché, duct taped

And you are wrong, and right, and confused

It’s complicated, but so is a star

A flower, a quasar, a friendship, a marriage

May we be refuge for the complicated and

As for me, well, I have zipped up my emotions into this dusty duffel bag that

I’ve aptly named poetry

And I’ll be on my merry way as soon as my pride turns me loose

And unmangle the last morsel of manhood I could produce

Ma’am, I seem to have misplaced my confidence

Last place I’ve seen it, it was at the altar of your love and

It’s complicated and

I am becoming… complicated

We may scratch ourselves raw to erase the image we were made in

Smoke, snort, sex or drown out the silence

We may waste our life savings on makeovers

To try to rhinoplast our daddy’s nose away

But no nip, no tuck could cut away the sense of obligation

We are becoming what we are not

But what we are is inescapable

You are a masterpiece fighting to be a silly selfie with a hideous filter

You are heavens handmade calligraphy

Slumming it among papyrus fonts

You are the complete and perfect works of a perfect and eternal poet laureate

With a laundry list of identity issues and

Sometimes your plumbing don’t match your urges but

Your femininity it forced a force field that protected our posterity

Your masculinity it mustered up moxey to conquer mountains for our families

You are the rightful heir to not just a kingdom

But a universe and you have your daddy’s eyes

Stop being so traitorous

You are revelation revealed

Pyramid constructors, conductors, conduits of lightning

Yet you speak, and you breathe this arsenic carcinogenics, and it causes car

sickness

These scars are our witness

To love hard is hard living, but it’s life

It’s who we are, it’s messy and uncomfortable and complicated

But so is a star, parenting, childbirth, love, and us, and us