I Was a Cow Once; and Ripe

[AllisonRebeccah]

I was a cow once,
And I ate grass,
And it would stick to the snot in my nostrils--
And float there like a pubic hair on a
shower wall after sex.

I was a cow once but I know about sex.
Because there was hair on the shower
walls--
Semen in the sheets--
Blood on your fingers and in your mouth
Back when I didn't keep track of my cycle
And exploded on your tongue.

I was a cow once, and you grabbed a hold
And punched cavities into my mouth and ear
and tagged me as yours.
Punched cavities into my virginity--
Kicked a birth control pill into it.

Now I am a chunk of filmy meat.
Opaque in the sunlight--
Pink like petal lips.
Soft like vagina lips.

But if a cow's owner has no other intent
Than to skin you down to raw muscle
And spray you for those pesky pests
And protect those hormones from
dripping out of your pores--
So that
you
stay
RIPE.

Then coat me in that blade and fork,
Give me your toothy hug.

[The Prodical Son]

That was incredible, I read the poem at first and picked up on most things you were saying, but after reading you synopsis I was blown away. It's cool how with poetry you can be very subliminal and use a lot of metaphors, I mean you can do that when your rhyming, but then people don't take the time to think about what your saying when they have a beat to nod their head to, so I try to get right to the point when I'm rhyming. This poem was amazing, if you have links to some more of your work send them my way.

[Mama Doom]

That totally makes sense.. I was not sure what you originally meant about the punching holes in the ear.. but now I can more fully enjoy your work. Thank you for taking the time to further illuminate us!

[AllisonRebeccah]

well i mean of course there are layers to this piece...i just meant ultimately that's what it's about, and if you take that in mind you might be able to sort out the other layers. the cow is a metaphor, basically, taking that old saying to the next level, "i'm not a piece of meat." literally, this piece is about a girl giving up her virginity--a loss of innocence, basically--but it could loosely also mean a girl giving in to a man in general.

the cow metaphor, like i touched on a second ago, doubles not only as as a "piece of meat," but also, as innocence. a cow is a niave and ignorant farm animal--the image in the beginning with the piece of grass can be used to symbolize a kind of childish, playful, old farm town feeling. in the second stanza, the substance is no longer grass but blood and semen, two things that can characterize the loss of virginity, and the idea (this gets graphic) of a girl's cycle going without observation (and then later, as signified by the past tense, kept track of) is a girl's ovulation that she begins to pay attention to after she begins intercourse. when it explods in "his" mouth is during oral sex.

to sum it up, in the third stanza i use the metahpor of punching holes into the ear as putting a tag in a sale-barn cow's ear as in ownership, and then again punching holes into virginity to literally mean the tearing of the hymen, metaphorically to mean the tearing of her heart. to fill those holes with birth control is another symbolism into womanhood. fourth stanza is simply a symbol of a chunk of meat, to highlight the ongoing overall metaphor, that also happens to incorporate the idea of a woman ("flower petals, vagina lips").

the fifth and sixth stanzas are my favorites in that the fifth one is when it takes the meat metaphor and goes the extra mile with it. it portrays a cow to be nothing more than fooled by her owner into thinking that she is being taken care of, when ultimately, this care is for the owner's own selfish needs; just like a girl can fool herself into thinking a man is taking care of her, when really he is only forming her into a sex object. it is with this realization that the sixth and final stanza is born, when the narrator, if you will, of the poem comes to terms with this and she has a terrible epiphany. here, she realizes, if this is reality, then so fucking be it--bring it all, because in the end she'll do it better. if that makes sense at all?

i rarely give full synopses of my poetry (i not only feel like a pretentious bitch but i also feel like the work is flawed if it cannot stand alone--but i couldn't resist doing it this once), but there you go :) hope i clarified a few things.

[Mama Doom]

Yeah.. th is pretty much what I thought.. just the cow thing.. it seemed like there was a little bit more.. bah.. I am a strange girl o I always think I should be reading betwen the lines.

[AllisonRebeccah]

hmm...probably because the actual message is quite simple. a girl gives into a man and gets her shit wrecked. simple as that :)

[Mama Doom]

Yeah I am not too sure .. it seemes to me that there were multiple layers of underlying messages.. kinda back and forth.. kinda random.. but I like random..

[Casino Price]

different from anythin ive read to date..
tho i might not understand the under lying
message, i will say that it was a good read .. sino

[Mama Doom]

Wow.. you are my type of broad.