“Dear Cis People…”: Vomited Verse for Your Reading Pleasure

So, here’s a little fun fact about Yours Truly: in addition to fancying myself a proficient wordsmith (there I go fluffin’ my ego muffin), I also happen to love poetry.

One week ago, I attended a poetry event at a coffee house with some friends and had brought a little something of my own to share. During what I would describe as an obscenely sleep-deprived state of senselessness lasting well into the wee hours of that same day, I vomited enough verse to fill three pages and, voila! A poem was spontaneously born despite having had ample time to write it through the course of eight days.

What can I say? When it comes to inspiration, I am procrastination’s most humbled bitch.

The performance itself was fairly decent. No microphone and ungodly lighting searing my vision, I stood before everyone and drove the sweet message home with shaky hands and a menthol cigarette bobbing between my lips. If I was under the impression that the (figurative) vomiting had ended with the final period I’d punched onto the last line, I was very wrong.

But, do let’s skip the claptrap.

Dear Cis People…

I bet most of you don’t even know
what “cis” means.

“Cis” is short for “cisgender”;
the opposite of “gender offender”
and those often gender offended
just so happen to be of the “cisgender”.

“Cis” is the privilege that
never speaks its own name.

“Cis” is a condition, as in
“under one condition…”, and it makes
no exception.

“Cis” is the sovereign of the
superfluous
segregation
of
the
sexes.

In fact, “cis” is the antithesis of straddling
two extremes of the she-he spectrum:
one foot singed into unfamiliar pink ashes,
the other beaten to a bruised shade of blue.

“Cis” is the thorn embedded deep
in my birthing hip,
the stifling iron grip siphoning
every last drop of originality
whilst boasting a kind of confined
individuality,
claiming, “You can be whoever you want to be,
But know your place, young hes and shes.
And that place rests idly between your legs.”

Well, Cis People, forgive me if I beg to differ,
but since when has the measure of my character
relied solely on the breadth
and the depths
of my vagina?

Dear Cis People,
you’re welcome.
I mean, I know how curious you are
for a glimpse into the perplexing complexity
of my genitals, what with
the short hair,
the big thighs,
the bravado “tainted” by
my fleeting feminine wiles.

You may look upon me
with nothing
but a steady “she” readied at your lips
because, folks, that’s what being “cis” is:
never needing to second guess.

“Cis” is never having to shell the shock
of waking up each day without a cock, but
what “cis” doesn’t know is that
a dick does not a man make.

“Cis” is settling for an identity crafted
without your permission;
the blazing brand stamped into
the flesh of freshly birthed newborns
and what “cis” seems to forget is
that narrow-minded notion passed
down through generations:
the idea that your desires,
predilections, penchants, vices
views and volition share
one single
solitary
channel down
to your deltas and peninsulas,
culminating into one fucking simple fact…
“You are what your crotch dictates.”

Dear Cis People,
It’s not entirely your fault.
We all fall prey to the cis-tematic
erasure of selfhood as we are
fashioned into pleasant tropes,
thereby securing us each a spot
in society’s regurgitating
Assembly Line of Gender.
And should we bend,
they are quick to mend us.

I am, indeed, a faulty product,
my lovely Cissies.
I stand before you a cocksure man saying:
“Better my tits bound
than these slender wrists.
I am right there with you
because the fuck if I know
what it means to be “Cis”.

Sincerely I’m-not-bitter,
Lore