Real Men

Jonathan Walton- Here's the link.

I'm sorry Anna Nicole

- Jonathon Walton

Poetry, it’s my release
My shield from my own grief
The refuge to which I retreat
When this world is too much for me 
Phrases on pages
Language my mind speaks 
Metaphors and similes
Poetic elements 
I just breath.

This poem is entitled I’m sorry
Anna Nicole

I step up to a magazine stand
And it’s like stepping up to an auction block
Because sex is for sale
As I see the bodies of females
On display 
For my ‘trying not to look like I’m viewing pleasure’
And I think to myself
“Which one is worse?
The burqa or Bulimia?"

“Ladies, free yourself so we can buy you
Don’t worry about your value 
We will define you
Because happenings minus the fact 
Equals news for us
And news equals the truth for us
So Anna Nicole must have died from an overdose”

But I know there is a thin line 
Between tight and too small
So pornography is just prostitution with taxes
And the fact is
Anna Nicole lost her power of self definition
And it killed her
She become a commodity
A novelty
It really starts to bother me
How brothers under covers
Went to the gutter and had her
For 2.99
Or less

So this is my apology
Because I am one of them
A letter asking for forgiveness from the hearts
Of all women
See dear Anna Nicole, Jenna Jamison 
And those Vivid Video Vixens
Those Playmates and Penthouse
And those pictures on the Internet that have no names
Just descriptions

I wish that I could write you a cheque
And give you back what I took
Give you a DVD or a magazine
To upload your self worth
Download your dignity 
Or just see what you are really worth
Because I witness images I didn’t have a right to
And I can’t erase my memory 
So I have to write you and apologise 
For taking something that I paid for a price
But no matter how high
Should have never been mine

I realised something
Standing on the corner of Broadway and 116th
As I saw 57 magazines
And women covered the covers
Of 53
These weren’t just bodies
They were sisters, daughters and mothers
And it was my call to be the best 
Husband, son and brother

See now, with a changed heart
I am trying to change
My mind
And my desire
See Anna Nicole makes me worry
But the unnamed make me cry
Because how many girls have died 
Or been hospitalised from not eating 
Trying to be the ‘right size’
How many pills have been popped
How many drips of blood have been dropped
Onto bathroom floors
Behind dorm room doors
Or those other doors that lock on the opposite sides 
Of cell blocks

See, when will we wake up?
And realise we are raising a generation of ‘prosti-tots’
Kids that know how to suck
Before they know how to love
Know multiple positions 
Before they know long division
And the minority becomes those 
Who are not sexual assault victims

See this is for Denise
Laying down in front of a web cam 
And following directions
The wife 
Who just found her husband’s private pleasure collection
The girl at the bus stop 
Who has just been molested 
The Lady
Walking the street followed by cat-calls and craned necks

I’m sorry

And that’s all that I can say

But when I have a son 
I will raise him to respect you
And if my poems are bricks
I’ll build word walls to protect you
From males not worthy to hold the title 
Of “man”

Sisters and Mothers
I’m sorry

Husbands, Sons and Brothers please
Pick up your bats 
Because the women of this world 
Are waiting for us 
To step up