"As With Most Men"

As with most men, it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them,
Let the truth be known that men are nothing more than emotional skyscrapers,
built with glass infrastructures, spray painted the color of steel and nicknamed "Strength"

Strange, isn't it?

What walking contradictions are we called men...

Men are taught to colonize at the age of 5 through games like cops and robbers,
cowboys and indians
At the age of 8 we are given helmets and told to hit each other on the head with it,
Bleed but do not bleed,
Cut but do not cry,
Be a man, join the military,
Die for your country, and if death comes to you,
Look it in the eye and say:
Bring it on, mother-fucker, I fear nothing but intimacy.

When it comes to intimacy men quiver like fault lines, crumble like cities

What walking contradictions are we called men...

Men sign peace accords while abusing their wives,
Accept the Nobel Peace prizes while reducing health care,
Pledge to rid the world of terrorism while simultaneously denying government aid to any country that defends a woman's right to choose

During the 1970's the US government forcebly sterilized an estimated fifty percent
of the indigenous population of America's Mid-West telling them the process was reversible

Can you say biological terrorism?

In a global war against terror, maybe testosterone is the real terrorist
And if so, how many of these Star Spangled singing, flag waving citizens would
continue to do so If terror was not racialized, but gendered?

Would the US military turn its guns on itself for a sex trap across Southeast
Asia, Africa and the Americas?
Would MTV be firebombed for its subjectification, hyper-sexualization of our women of colored bodies?
Would we stop looking towards the muslim world for misogyny and instead
turn our sights to Madrid, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles?

And I understand my sisters when they say every woman has a story that's been told a maxim of one soul, maybe less
And that is why you'll never hear me call a woman slut, bitch or a dyke,
No matter what she does, because I do not blame her
I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her,
I blame these corporations whose images tell them they hate her,
And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how great to life and
to God that SHE created her

Men, take note, this is how you give love,
This is how you receive hugs.
Press flesh to flesh till breast crumple,
Like emotional origamy.

- Mark Gonzales