The Hollow Women

I

We are the Hollow women
We are the strong women
Forming together
Heads full of thought. Alas!
Our stuffed voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet but powerful
As rain pounding on the ground
Covering the earth
With our dampness.

Shapely with so much form, so many colors,
Fierce movement, gestures with so much motion;

It fills up our system.
Those who have crossed
Us without explanation
Formed the movements
To taking a leap
Into the unknown.
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Emotional souls, but only
As the hollow women
The strong women.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In a world where people scrutinize
I do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Glossy magazine covers
Broken
And voices are
In the wind’s howling
More distant and more unrealistic
Than a fading (movie) star.

Let me be no nearer
To perfect
In societies glaring eyes
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Tight dresses, high heels, painted faces
In a place
Behaving as the wind behaves
Conflicted—

Not that final deliberation
In the mirror

III

This is a fake land
This is a cutthroat land
Here the photoshopped images
Are raised, here they receive
The appeal of a dead woman’s hand
Under the twinkle of the spotlight.

Is it like
This in other places
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with low self-esteem
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to a broken system.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley in-between worlds
In this hollow valley
This broken system of our lost strength

In this last of meeting places
We gather together
And avoid argument
Gathered on this ground of plain dirt

Insightful, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual obsession
To be thin and pretty
Triumphs the need to be intelligent
Reflecting the permanent mind-set
Seen by men alike
The hope only
Of empty women.

V

World perspectives falling down
Falling down
Falling down
World perspectives falling down
My fair lady.

Between the conception
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act of
Personal appreciation
Falls the conquest
And the Conqueror
Between the desire
And the doubt
Between the emotion
And the realization
Between the remorse
And the hesitation
Falls the feeling
And the Conqueror
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
Ring around the rosies ring around the rosies
A pocket full of posies a pocket full of posies
Not with a shout but a whisper.