does it matter
that you don’t care?
should i reject you
for my self-esteem’s sake?
you’re so beautiful
i feel privileged
just to be noticed
by the likes of you
let alone to lie with you,
to hear your most private moans.
i think of all the girls
who would be so envious
should i have the freedom
to tell…
but your wife
can never find out
so i must keep silent
and it’s just as well
our private time
is just for us
is it not?
was that me you spoke of
to your friend?
i hope not
…
does it matter
that i don’t matter
or do i?
i daren’t ask
beauty
here i am
look, it’s me
with my bulldozer of words
plowing together phrases
building sentences
shoveling nouns and verbs
like dirt and gravel
mashing them together
ungracefully
see? it’s just me
little me with my
massive machine
the wizard of a world
where ruby slippers
attract witches
mashing them together
like frankenstein
who was that? just me
with my fingertips
dancing on the keys
drawing you in
drawing me out
so we can meet on wet pavement
mashing us together
like chums
just here, it’s me
with my choices
by the millions
how to build the words
with a diction bulldozer
a thesaurus machine
mashing them together
to impress off your ass
LGH
for PM
Star
You are beautiful. Yet sometimes I look at you and I see your skull beneath your flesh, your smile the ivory evidence with which you grace your adoring bootlickers.
You’re a crime waiting to be committed.
You are a star. Not only in my mind, but in the real world. I’m loathe to question what I did to deserve the favour of your regard.
You’re a scandal of obliviousness.
You are a thief of hearts, a plucker-out of eyes. You’re a weakener of knees. You don’t care that I care that you’ll take any one of them at the pop of a button.
You’re a violation of trust.
You are beautiful. You use it like a weapon to perforate the thin skin of those who dissolve in the devastation of your gifts.
You’re an injustice of nature.
In your artistry I see the wickedness of your self-loathing. I see your skull, white as the lights which sustain your ego. In those who bow to you I see your vulnerability.
You’re a consequence of disarming riches.
You are beautiful. As you ascend to the stage, your presence larger than any man can hope to command, you destroy me again and again.
Beauty’s Education
Life in the castle was an endless cycle of excitement and monotony. For days on end Beauty was locked up in his chambers with his tutor, a nubile young woman of brains who carried her children with her (or lead them around depending on their size) where ever she went. All of the children were daughters – it was well known in the kingdom that Beauty’s father, Grim, would only have members of the gentler sex in his household, with the exception of Beauty himself. Whenever a male child was born it was given away – an agreed-upon expectation of the women who were privileged to be in Grim’s servitude and allowed into his bedchamber.
Beauty was hidden away from the world, an eyesore to his father but the glory of the domestic help who cared for him, for they knew he was destined for greatness. (They would whisper among themselves that perhaps Beauty would be even greater than his father!)
And so the women of the grand estate had a vested interest in Beauty’s education and his upbringing. They urged him to be like his father, though he had not his father’s direct influence. Therefore the consensus was that Beauty should be as they wished his father to be.
While monotony reigned over Beauty’s days, he would take in the vision of his teacher’s breasts as she nursed her daughters, unable to avoid licking his lips at the sight of her wet nipples. By night he would be alone, a slave to his dreams. Even as he grew into the age of double digits the scenery remained unchanged. Excitement had finally come when he gained the age at which he was allowed visitors; girls in training from other castles who would become his father’s servants. Only then was he allowed to touch. Only then did his education begin in earnest.
Beauty’s Beginning
Beauty
Beauty was born without a mother. That is to say his mother died in childbirth, leaving him in the peculiar care of his father and his father’s servants. Since Beauty’s father was a soldier, he was often absent from the family estate. Beauty, therefore, spent all of his waking and sleeping moments with the women who cleaned, cooked, and cared for the castle in which he lived.
So uninterested was Beauty’s father in him that he even went as far as to allow the housemaid-turned-nursemaid (she gave birth to a daughter at the same time Beauty was born and was able to nurse him at her breast) to name the poor boy. Having used what she thought was the best name available on her own daughter (some said she was the spawn of the gentleman for whom the woman worked), and she couldn’t very well call the boy Adrianna two (or too, the woman knew not the distinction) she simply called him what he was.
From the time Beauty was a babe he learned the ways of women. They taught him to clean and to cook and to care for them when they were tired at the end of the day. Time and time again his father would return home from battle only to find his son rubbing the feet of a char woman. The more it happened the less his father expected of him.
And so Beauty went without the benefit of a role model. His father was the only man Beauty knew of, for his father surrounded himself only with women unless he was off to war. From his father Beauty learned only that if he was ignored, there would surely be a woman to take care of him.
Beauty my Beauty
Beauty tore down all the sheets that hung around the room. It was Beauty’s darling Step-mother who requested they be hung in the first place. Beauty didn’t think anything of it at the time, the sheets needed to dry. But five years later, when they had begun to fade in the sun, Beauty knew it was time for them to be taken down. Flowery sheets weren’t Beauty’s idea of beauty. He liked plain white ones.
“Oh Beauty!” It was Step-mother calling. She waltzed into his room as though she belonged there.
“Step-mother, I told you before that I don’t like you coming into my room without knocking first,” Beauty whined.
“Oh nonsense!” Step-mother cried. “Now where are the sheets I asked you to hang up?”
“That was so long ago, I took them down,” Beauty confessed.
“Alright then, get on your knees. Where is the whip?”
“Step-mother,” Beauty sighed. “I’m four and twenty years old. Aren’t we a little past this?”
“Well who else am I going to beat now that your father is gone?” Step-mother exclaimed.
“Alright then,” Beauty conceded. “But just this once.”
Beauty took the barbed whip from the wardrobe and handed it to Step-mother. He fell to his knees before her, his long brown hair hiding his face as he removed his shirt. Step-mother hissed when she saw the scars on his back.
“Who did this to you?” Step-mother questioned.
“You did, Step-mother. Last week. And the week before. And every week for the last five years,” Beauty counted.
“Liar!” Step-mother screeched and the whip came down upon Beauty’s back.
Beauty felt the sting of the whip cutting into his flesh, removing the few scabs from the last time. Within three lashes the blood was flowing freely.
“Oh!” Step-mother gasped. She stepped back and Beauty looked up at her, a grin on his face.
“What happened?” Step-mother asked.
“Nothing at all Step-mother,” Beauty chided.
“Then hang up the sheets!” Step-mother demanded, dropping the whip and leaving the room.
“Right away Step-mother,” Beauty submitted.
As soon as the door to Beauty’s bedroom closed he lay upon his white sheets and graced them with roses and adonis.
Linda G. Hill 