What is a woman
that a man is not?
What is a man
that a woman is not?

Is it merely the differences
nestled
between their legs?
Is it that she got a
Barbie for her birthday
and he got a BB gun?
Is it that he is
built to penetrate
and she is built
to envelop?

Why are there no headlines
of women gang-rapeing
some guy in a city alley?
Why has there been no
accusatory uproar from
young-boy-victims of rape
by a female middle-school teacher
or molestation by
Sister-Nurse Maria Ellena
in the children’s ward
at Saint Mary’s hospital?

Is it that this
has never happened,
or if it did.
would we hear of it
only by eaves-dropping
on a school yard bully’s
bull-shit session?

(“Miss O’Malley said I could
do the nasty with her!”
“Really!?”
“Yeah!”
“Cool, dude!! Did you do it?”)

Has any of this happened, ever?

Never?

So,
are all men bastards
and some, just bigger bastards
than the rest?

I do not want a sex-change.
I do want change.

For
I am ashamed to be
a member of my gender.

Not because of some
self-righteous indignation,
but out of self recognition.

I know myself.

I see myself
in my past and
in todays headlines,
as in a mirror
held up to my soul
and down to my balls.

I have sinned.

And I still feel the
guilt-pain and sadness
though I have asked for
and received
and hold tight to
forgivness

from women

I have hurt

and from the God
who created me,
“… male and female,
created me…”

And still I ask,

what is a woman
that a man is not?
What is a man
that a woman is not?

And if I could know
what those answers are,
could I change?

How do I change?

I am dying to know.

And I know that I

can’t

not

try.