Objectify

Beautiful perhaps
But not just body parts for use.
There’s no permission on my part
to allow the showing
of what is mine and mine alone.
I’m not here for your viewing, your voyeurism,
your leering glances and hungry eyes,
slobbering mouth and greedy hands

I’m not here to be above,
to save or worship,
to be too fragile, special, soft,
to hide behind doors or be kept inside
or left behind in the daily fray.

I’m not here to feed your thoughts
or fantasies of submission, domination,
perversion, bloodlust, death at your hands.

Nor am I here to take from you what is yours,
to put you down, to make you less.
We can share this world together.

When even art depicts the ugly,
the brutal rapes, dismemberments,
when words and music call me names
that too makes me less, takes
my humanness, and cuts my soul.