Wanda Swim Strunk - American Geisha

Have you ever been a piece of ass?
Eyes, hands, tongues wanting to experience your house of flesh
Pushing so hard on the outside
That it bruised your soul inside?
Did it teach you to make thicker walls?
People called you fat.

I am asking, have you?

Have you ever been so starving poor
Working 4 jobs just to hang to the side of the lifeboat
Caught the eye of a rich man
With pockets full of possessions but vacant everywhere else
Offering you his world of stipulations
Have you ever turned that down?
People called you a fool.

I am asking, have you?

Have you had a man give up loving you
Not because he didn’t love you but because he didn’t know how?
In that moment did you find yourself or lose yourself?
What didn’t kill you did it make you stronger?
Resent it because strength wasn’t what you needed
You needed what had been killed.
People called you unreasonable to expect more.

I am asking, have you?

Have your painted lips ever held their tongue
Have you smiled when your heartbreaker said hello
Looked down from the high road to those on their high horse
Thinking American girls have their form of Geisha too.
We smile pretty into lusting eyes and rusty desires
While listening to a broken record of what is required
For people to call you a cultivated lady of strength.

I am asking because I have.

Wanda Swim Strunk

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/american-geisha/