Do you fear me cause I wear
          a purple friendship bracelet?
Do you fear having me as a friend?
Are you afraid to introduce me
          to your grandparents?
The only perfect thing about me
          is my perfect lack of confidence.
Does that freak you out?
I’m fat.
How does that sit with you?
I wear political pins.
Does that bother you?
I’m a bookworm.
Does that depress you?
Are you terrified
          cause I’ve been bas mitzvahed?
Are you scared
          cause I think spiders are sacred?
I’m left handed.  ooooooooooooo  No comment.
Do you worry about me cause I’m a virgin
Cause I’m loud and sometimes embarrassing,
          are you wary of spending time with me?
I know where the feminist bookstores are
          in a whole bunch of states.
Does that make you tremble?
People think I’m younger
          and older than I am.
Does that reflect badly on you somehow?
I don’t always comb my hair.
Can you hear it coming?
Is it my ugliness or beauty that
          frightens you the most?
Are you afraid of me cause I’m human?

TAGS: Ellyn Maybe, poets

ELLYN MAYBE has performed her poetry in a variety of venues all over the country, including Bumbershoot, the Poetry Project, the New School, Taos Poetry Circus, South by Southwest, Lollapalooza, Albuquerque Poetry Festival and Seattle Poetry Festival. She has also read in Europe at the Bristol Poetry Festival, on the BBC, and in poetry slams and readings in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart. She opened the MTV Spoken Wurd Tour in Los Angeles. In addition, she has also read at USC, UCLA, CSUN and Cal State Fullerton, among other colleges. Writer’s Digest named her one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium. Her work has been included in many anthologies, including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, Poetry Slam, Another City: Writing From Los Angeles, Poetry Nation, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and American Poetry: The Next Generation. She was on the 1998 and 1999 Venice Beach Slam teams. She is portrayed reading her work in Michael Radford’s (Il Postino) film, Dancing at the Blue Iguana.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 2:31 am and is filed under Poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.