Noel Negele- Two Poems

On A Conversation With A Feminist

 “ Not all women are equal to all men

 Just like not all men are equal to all men

 Just like not all women are equal to all women.

 Not all lives are equally worthy

 But all lives are equally worthless.”

She continued to state that I’m a sexist guy

( But that’s okay, according to her,

 Because there’s always hope for betterment)

She continued to believe that life is

An incredible thing, which it is,

But she also thought that we were singular flowers

Of one of a kind importance

And that didn’t sit well with me,

And she also believed in God, the almighty,

The one from the bible, and I know this is wrong

but I grabbed her ears, this woman so much in love

With her own face,

And I squeezed and crashed my face down on hers

Digging my tongue into her mouth

To show her that in a world where

An ugly, mean son of a bitch like me lives

Is a world not created by God, the almighty, the one from the bible.

It also proved that some of us

Are not singular fucking flowers

Of one of a kind importance

ANTI EVERYTHING

We sat at a park bench 

I was sleepless

Holding onto a coffee

I didn’t want to drink

And said to him:

Man, if you think about it

Our lives are fairly empty

No women, no jobs, not much of anything

We wake up to these uneventful weeks

Unremarkable days adding on each other 

Without quit-

We eat and drink, we fight and sometimes we fuck

And not much else happens

I have to go he said

And I stayed there for some time

Looking at a small dog being chased

By a laughing child-

Two little birds with a climaxing intimacy 

Surrounding me-

Sometimes it all gets better for you

The air has the scent of spring

And you feel somewhat healthy

And confident about things-

Maybe you’ll attend some classes 

Or actually find something to strive for

Any purpose will shed light into the fog 

Of your life

And you expect it any time now

I was thinking about these things

And more- all positive and naïve

( but it’s alright, it is wise to allow 

 Some naivety in your life to make

The hours bearable )

When a girl sat next to me on the bench

Can I sit here she asked

Of course I replied 

And we sat there together

Two silent strangers looking at each other

Discreetly from the corners of our eyes

And I felt the urge to talk to her

I need you I wanted to say

Your flesh and the sound of your voice

When you whisper

She had her index finger of her right palm

Below her upper lip-

Something of a tick of sorts

And I wanted to listen to her

I needed her eyes to be fixed on my eyes

As she would go on and on about her dreams

No matter how grandiose or mediocre

But all I said in the end was

“ There are a lot of microbes on our hands”

And I stood up feeling ill from something

That old familiar ongoing disdain

For all things living 

Cropping up-

It’s like those times

When you want to smoke

Or else you are going to slaughter someone

But the packet is empty-

Or that toothache that’s splitting your

Skull in half-

Or that problem in your stomach

That won’t go away –

The day starts to rot one hour at a time

Piling into weeks and then months

With very few moments of ease to find

Somewhere in the smile of a stranger

Or a straw cat that is not afraid of you

But then the rotting crawls back into place

And there are years of this

Lives of this

Rotting

Inside and outside

Nothing but a stretching continuum of despair

With those intolerably brief moments of peace

Life doesn’t have to try to brake us

We are already broken

Maybe from birth maybe from childhood

Little things will shatter us to a million pieces

Like a lost bet 

Or two bad dreams 

Waking you up into the darkness of your life

Pushing you outside in search of a 13 foot manila rope

After googling on the internet

How to tie a very good knot

Able to hold however much 

Your lousy ass weighs.

Yes

Sometimes it gets very bad

Indeed.