I'mmoral: Poems for Unrepentant Sinners and Free Thinkers

By R.K. Belford

What would the war cry of a mostly introverted, mentally ill, autistic, genderqueer, physically disabled, feminist, atheist, polyamorous woman sound like? A lot like this. Using a combination of essay and free-form poetry, R.K. confronts the status quo and dissects it, inspecting its parts and discarding the bad bits. In spite of tackling some obviously serious and controversial topics, such as abortion and the anti-vaccination movement, she approaches her subjects with humour and then slaughters them with equal parts derision and kindness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329593961

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I'mmoral: Poems for Unrepentant Sinners and Free Thinkers

I’mmoral: Poems for Unrepentant Sinners and Free Thinkers

R.K. BELFORD

cuckoomycuckoo press

2015

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by R.K. Belford / cuckoomycuckoo press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-329-59396-1

cuckoomycuckoo press

Ottawa, Canada

Dedication

To my husband,

who always reassures me that it’s them, not me.

Even when it is totally me

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank my husband Michael, as always, for being a huge support both emotionally and financially (because being a writer is hard and being a disabled writer can feel insurmountable at times). I may have been a writer before I met him, but it wasn’t until he showed up on the scene that I had the courage to start publishing. He is my best sounding board for ideas (even if I don’t always have them at the most convenient of times), and I am very grateful for our lively debates about all the things that matter (which is just about everything).

Many thanks to my mother and son, who have provided the greatest insight into my past and present: Being a single mother to my son has taught me to appreciate what my mother had to deal with in parenting me as a single mom, and I owe her so much for her time, patience and support. I don’t think it has always been easy to parent me (even now), but she has done it anyway and well.

Thanks as well to Eric at My ByWard Office, a gorgeous shared creative space where I was able to put my nose to the grindstone and finish this book (and hopefully many more creative projects).

Preface

I’Mmoral: Poems for Unrepentant Sinners and Free Thinkers is a collection of poems and essays written over the last two years. My previous book of poetry (I Am Not These Things, 2013) explored aspects of my individual identity, but really only skimmed the surface. I wanted a weightier challenge and to not only explore complex personal issues of sexuality and gender, but to also touch on other aspects of my character and the subjects that interest me; including disability and mental illness, faith, and the complex issue of parenting while trying to deal with all of those issues.

It turns out that what preoccupies me the most (and what constitutes a large part of my make-up) is counter-culture, and how the above issues fit under that umbrella. I am at heart a skeptic (but not a cynic) and the idea that we should do things in a certain fashion because they’ve always been done that way, or that we should accept things without question, has never sat well with me.

I tend to be driven simultaneously by a need to understand the world, while challenging and rejecting social mores at the same time. It’s not that I want to rock the boat just for the sake of sinking it – it’s that I question whether we should have taken the boat in the first place. I strongly believe that there isn’t a single right answer to any question, and I think it’s important to challenge authority (not because authority is inherently corrupt, but because it shouldn’t get a free pass, any more than anyone or anything else). It’s only by asking questions and exploring our differences that we make forward progress as a society.

The poems and essays that follow have been edited and re-worked and come from a few sources, and as such have previously appeared elsewhere online on various blogs and virtual publications; including my personal blog (cuckoomycuckoo.me) and personal Tumblr (cuckoomycuckoo.com), as well as having been selected for publication in Human Parts on medium.com. One of these essays (All My Best Friends Are Virtual) was selected by Medium editors as an Editor’s Pick in 2014. Another essay (The Girl Who Wasn’t There), in addition to appearing in Human Parts, was also selected for the Lindy West-curated blog I Believe You | It’s Not Your Fault (ibelieveyouitsnotyourfault.tumblr.com), a celebrated anthology of personal accounts of abuse. This essay will also appear in my next book, a memoir.

R.K. Belford

October 2015

Half-Life

Barren page

Pristine

Fresh

Apprehension and

Uncertainty

Ghosts of words

Shadows of ideas

Half alive

Stalled in breech birth

Fearful of disturbing the perfect stillness

Of that great expanse of white

And rendering irreversible

And permanent

The great shame of error

The Guilty Mother’s Lament

Dearest children of good mothers:  One day, your otherwise loving and attentive mother will almost kill you.

I am not speaking of overt neglect or abuse, or even intentional harm. But somewhere in the process of parenting you, your darling mother will make a poor decision or be distracted for a split second and you will be irreparably harmed.

Or at least that is how you will tell the tale, and in spite of her attempts to play down your retelling of the course of events, your mother will secretly and guiltily agree with you.

For instance, I’m sure my son will share the story of when, at the age of two, he stepped off the dock we were standing on at our cottage and plunged underwater while I stared at him FOR A FULL THREE SECONDS trying to figure out if I could retrieve him by reaching my arm out rather than getting fully soaked. I did ultimately jump in after him and yank him to the surface, but I am sure for those