Take Back The Night, Ann Arbor!

All out for take back the night in Ann Arbor! April 6th, 2012 @ 7:30pm at the diag on the UofM campus...
This is part of sexual assault awareness month (April) and y'all can expect more than just this as part of sexual assault awareness month.

Michigan, turbulence but charm.

So I know I haven't posted lately, I have been through a lot. Well I hitch-hiked to Michigan with Bones where we settled down in a homeless camp in Ann Arbor called Camp Take Notice. At first I was impressed by the tent city which seemed quite resilient and at that point appeared to have a good sense of community and fairness. When we first got to Ann Arbor, Bones started going by the name Grit and when we got into Camp Take Notice it seemed like everything was great. Over the time we were in Ann Arbor, Bones became increasingly controlling. Eventually he started returning to beating me and making me have sex often whether I was in the mood or not. Nobody intervened until two people from occupy assisted me in mustering the courage to leave where I slept in the Occupy Ann Arbor camp and within a day he came there looking for me in a drunken rage. He (at one point) raised his hand, clenched into a fist, to me and said "I'll bruise you, bitch!" The cops came and pulled him away, handcuffed him and put him in a cop car. Since then I've been in an undisclosed location in the Ann Arbor area, with a personal protection order against him through the court system. Camp Take Notice however concluded that I must have been lying, blaming me for this. I was officially banned from CTN. The response from the camp was not one of justice but one of embarrassment, victim blaming, patriarchy and hatred. I've been really disappointed in CTN for their decision to blame me instead of Bones/Grit/Patrick Dean who abused me physically, sexually and emotionally. They have taken a position that by default views women as lesser humans and as inferior to men.  If a man gets drunk and hits another man he gets kicked out of CTN. When a man gets drunk and beats the woman he says he loves and puts a knife to her throat they treat it like a personal issue between the two people that make up the couple. The double standard is really problematic. To this day I still relive the trauma often in night terrors, flash backs and general fear and anxiety.

Poem "Soaking Out Saturday On Sunday"

Quiet Sunday evening
It melts out my pores
And cries out my being
Soaking out the Saturday before

A night I barely remember
Since it felt like a dream
Of soaking in the summer
So much longer than it may seem

The smoke fills the air
Hanging like a banner
Forgotten by midday's glare
The music's hum and a singer's stammer

And yesterday's times
Leave me with today's calm
Growing with the vines
And withers with the song

Poem: "Redemption In Pain"

As the stench of liquor and beer clears
My scars disappear along with my tears
You serve your hell as you shake
You've begged forgiveness for the mistake

Beads of sweat drop from your face
In my kisses, salt, I cry the taste
You have redemption in pain
Not a cloud in the sky yet you make rain

I long for clear skies for both of us
And for the past to be reduced to dust
Our love is the Earth under our bodies
It will outlast anything that is brought in the breeze

Poem: "Nervous Smoke"

The salt can't scrub away the burn
This will last until I learn
My face will still feel it
In this other room where I now sit

Is that what makes a man
To make me feel his hand
And here is the blame
Painted over my name

The tears match my food
But I eat nothing in this mood
Just some nervous smoke
And the tears that make me choke

Poem: "Fire Painted Passions"

I bleed my screams of pleasure
A feeling we fight to capture
His hand prints on my body heat up
The fire painted passions in love

There is a pressure and I push back
hoping for the sting and smack
I'm feeling his presence flowing through
Rebuilding me from inside as the fire grew

Impact and a fight of arousal
Each slap each time he'd growl
We fall back to reality of our bed
A kiss and sweet words are said

Poem: "Shroud: I Live So Gracefully"

The sun pours through the windows
Getting me intoxicated
The light breeze blows
Like the life I created

This is a life I live so gracefully
One would  never know
By what appears so peacefully
The fire life can throw

But mixing pain and passion
A love set ablaze
Tighter the knot I fasten
As my mind floats in space

And there are no tears this morning
Just a feeling of emptiness
It is simple, cheerful and boring
You can't see my swirling feelings

All anyone can see is clouds
With peaceful skies
The calmness itself is just a shroud
It's the rebirth of each day that dies