texts (next draft)

I finally got a “third hook” for this at Thanksgiving. Changed some lines, shifted emphasis, etc. Comments welcome and needed.

” In a 1971 magazine piece about women’s liberation, Mailer compared the dehumanization of technology to the effect of feminists, who he said were abolishing the “mystery, romance” and “blind, goat-kicking lust from sex,”
— from an Associated Press obituary of Norman Mailer, November 10, 2007

on the Friday night
before Norman Mailer died
at age 84
in a New York City hospital

a 17 year old boy was dragged
to a women’s poetry reading
in a bookstore
300 miles away

finding himself for the first time in his life
outnumbered and rendered
apparently irrelevant
by hundreds of women of all kinds

openly being
all kinds of
woman
all he could think of to do

was text a friend
a couple of times
first to say
lol they’re singing lesbo songs

then
after more time
and more poems
had passed

norming
what is maler
he
typed

wtf
i feel mad weird
some of these girlz
r manlier than me

did he really mean to say
i feel mad    romance
mad    blind
goat-kicking lust

or
some of
these girlz r    
abolishing the mystery

Norman Mailer died a few hours later
unaware of all this
still pugnacious right down
to his failed kidneys

he who once stabbed his wife
loathed feminism
boxed everything
typed incessantly

thumbs flying

two weeks later
women at a holiday table
are sitting around discussing
the scars on their arms and fingers

gotten at work
on machine presses
from hot grease
and kitchen knives

all of them say
worker’s comp told them
the amount of money they were owed
for the wounds

depended entirely
on how pretty they were
before the cutting
and burning began

that boy got up
and left a world
of women behind
without hearing a thing

norman mailer
died with his last thoughts
twitching in his own blunt
fingers

poets
take their cut
at fashioning
new armies of the night

but not all of us
are prone to mutter
when something
is picking at our scars

some just get back up
their handsome faces set
pushing their bodies through
their hands open in spite of the script

but do not mistake that for acceptance
remember
these girlz r
mad