I want to write something beautiful

but I write about patriarchy

I want to write about something beautiful

but I write about patriarchy.

How to create something beautiful out of something ugly?
How to paint a beautiful picture when the paint is old, dry, cheap and cracking?

How to swirl swishy wet magentas when women have been kept from their own water colors?

"Paint!" they say. "Be lovely!" "Create something pretty!" "Aren't you so thankful you get to paint?"

Sitting in front of my canvas and hundred-year-old dollar store paints,
I close my eyes.

I picture the elephants- 
calfs splashing around in cerulean puddles 
while the matriarchs gather together
backdropped in a fuchsia sunset.

I picture the bonobos-
enjoying the most peaceful of primate societies;
the only ape species led by females.

I picture the Kraho tribe in Brazil-
a matrilineal society where 
the word for mother
is used for all women
since they all raise the babies together.

I picture the Bayaka people in the Republic of Congo-
where each baby has 15 to 20 different caregivers
each day to feed and clean and hold them.

I picture the Blackfoot tribe-
when Abraham Maslow visited, he
discovered astounding levels of cooperation,
no word for poverty,
a quality of self-esteem he'd never seen in the Western world.

I try to conjure an image
beyond the Potemkin villages we live in-
those false smiling facades saying "I'm fine! How are you?!"
behind which you hide your not-fine-ness
confiding only in someone you pay
and medication.

I try to capture a vision in my mind
where those faux facades were never erected,
where the ladders we climb
were never set against buildings of
wealth and self-actualization
but piled together towards community-actualization.

I open my eyes and stare at the page.

I want to write something beautiful,
but ugly things have happened
and ugly things are happening.

I want to write something beautiful,
but I am lonely and tired
of trying so hard to create loveliness for my children
that I have little energy left for the creativity required 
to paint beautiful pictures with old cracked paint.

I want to write something beautiful,
but instead
I'll write something honest

and hope that those craving beauty,
looking down tiredly at their own easels
will not feel so alone.