Response poems – sometimes they’re necessary

So I wrote a response poem, I won’t even say it was a good poem but rather a knee jerk response. It was something I needed, a bit of therapy I suppose.

I have read it twice in the last week at places because I guess I needed that.

I wrote it because a man told me I seemed angry in this poem https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=879626902198244&id=252755928218681. He told me to “move on to a higher plane”.

He tuned into a radio show and heard it. The radio show (which aired last Friday on Central Standard KCUR) featured me for a full hour, started with a poem I wrote about my mother as a super hero, talked about my service, compassion, ministry, prayer, love, family, “the talk”, my ratchetry lol, etc. It painted a portrait of me if you will.

Of this whole hour long show this man felt the need to reach out to me through my website regarding 45 seconds of a 3 minute poem played during an hour long show.

Because the performance was pointedly angry towards the end about rape and the ignored intersectionality and diversity of its victims.

I cannot get over the fact he told me to “move on to a higher plane”. As if telling survivors of sexual assault to move on isn’t insult enough but to project that a person giving an emotional response is not on the correct plane or is somehow lower than you or …. IDK … Just … IDK

Art is the tool God gave me to move on with.

I ministered to myself with this.

I don’t know any other way to live than this.

Survivors deal, suppress, reppress, move forward, move with and continue on their own terms.

His response … all one sentence of it … is still messing with me.

It reminds me how many of him are out there.

It reminds me how far …
we haven’t come.

~Shao