You're the misogynist, not me

You see gentleness, and think it's weak.
You see creativity, and think I'm soft. 
You see tenderness and think I'm green.
You see vulnerability, and think its fear,
You see sensuality, call me gay,
You see empathy and think it's need.
You see expressiveness and think it's vain.
You see bravado, and call it fake.
You see introversion, and think I hide,
You see passion and condemn my rage.
You see sincerity, and think it's trite.

You see my tears and call me spoilt.
You see me experiment, and think I've failed.
You see me dance, and think I'm mad.
You see my intimacy, and call it camp.
You see my quietude, and call it slack
You see me passive and think I'm stuck.
You see me stumble and call me blind.
You hear my anger and you call it a huff.
You see me choose peace, and call me coward,
You see my compassion, and think I'm a soft touch.

When I am insecure, you think I'm a wimp.
When I open up, you call me a child.
When I show you my wounds, you think I'm to blame,
When I cannot perform, you think it's a slight,
When I cannot be naked, you think I'm too proud.
When I question myself, you call me a flake,
When I'm nervous around you, you call me a joke,
You see my sexuality and you call it cheap
When I make a move, you brand me a threat,
When I write you a poem, you think that I beg.

When you see my femininity, you react with disgust.
What does that say about you? Misogynist much?

I was baptised young in the faery's fire

You missed a trick, you missed a beat
You see right through my cliche dreams.
You paint a picture, broad and thick
Your landscape's big, but incomplete.
Some will bow, and some will tire
Some are poor, and guns for hire.
But I've got blades that cut to quick,
I was baptised young in the faery's fire.

I'll make it sing, and keep it simple.
Screw it up, I'll disappoint,
I can hold it fast and never crumble,
Spite my face with broken joints.
Husband silence, quieten choirs,
Poker-faced among the liars.
Fall in failure, rough and tumble,
I was baptised young in the faery's fires.

The willow's witch, she speaks to me
Cools the blood that burns my veins.
Across my spine her spirits reach,
As withered leaves ride the rains.
In pain and panic, try to flee her,
Chase distractions, charged with fears.
Her wordless tongues have much to teach
Those baptised young in the faery's fires.

By candle-light, and nightly songs
I nurse my nerves on drunken bones.
Stories, struggle, the rights and wrongs,
By whisky parched, to dream alone.
By turmoiled seas, and railway wires
The country splits, the outlook dire
But the roebuck's glen's where we belong,
We were baptised young in the faery's fire.

The armies of love

Each beat of each human heart
Is an act of rebellion.
An act of resistance.
Don't believe me? Ask a Buddhist.
Each pulse in each branching vein,
Convulses with non-acceptance.
Each cell, swells and swims
In defiance. Your life
Is an act of attrition,
Against chance, meaninglessness,
And infinite accident.
Each breath fills your bones and muscles
With grass roots troops,
Militants,
Life's politics of rage in their pocket-books.
The valleys of your breast
Are lined with the armies of love.
Their enemy: inevitability.