My Found Poem is originally from the lyrics of ‘Quiet’ by MILCK, in which the starting of the poem are commands to a woman, which seems to be from a man or another woman of power (in my opinion). Connie Lim a.k.a “MILCK”, who co-wrote “Quiet”, said that this song was her personal-therapy song to help her cope with her past of going through domestic violence, depression and anorexia as a teenager. This song reached millions of people after MILCK and a choir performed it at the Women’s March on Washington on January 21, 2017.“Put on your face, know your place, shut up and smile, don’t spread your legs” were the original lyrics of verse 1. Connie had an interview with Allure to explain and break down what each lyric from the first verse means. “Put on your face”, when people say something sexually obtrusive, just laugh it off, don’t let them know that it hurts. “Know your place”, growing up Chinese-American, she was always taught men are superior and that men desire women with smaller mouths and bigger eyes because they talk less and observe more. “Shut up and Smile”, refers to the times when she felt uncomfortable in a situation and she couldn’t cry, all she could do was shut up and smile. “Don’t spread your legs”, when she was younger, she was a tomboy and her mum always told her ‘close your legs’, ‘you have to protect it’, she states that the quest to not spread your legs is so charged because it makes us feel vulnerable.
Creating this poem with the words from the song, gave me a deeper meaning and endearment for the song. The middle of my poem speaks of a monster, where it asks, “Would I be that monster”, at put at the top what it means to become that monster, “If I let them hear what I have to say”, just by saying something that goes against society, or maybe even your own family’s norms, then you are considered a monster. Towards the side of that, I have ‘Dry Blue Pill’, where MILCK explains that Dry Blue Pill means ‘taking something that numbs who we truly are’ and it signifies ‘allowing ourselves to consume information or opinions that harm us and ultimately kill our spirit’, no one wants to take a dry blue pill, yet somehow it seems like we all unconsciously do. I ended off my poem with ‘say something, I can’t keep quiet, I won’t keep quiet’, letting people know, share your stories, don’t let anything or anyone keep you back, don’t numb who you truly are, and continue being who you want to be.
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I really liked your poem for multiple reasons. I mainly liked this because I feel this goes really big with society today. There are a lot of controversial topics that women want to speak up about but feel they cannot because they will be attacked. For instance, I know a few big companies for national women’s Month used trans women as the face. There are a lot of women who want to fight this but the moment they speak up they are being attacked. I feel that goes strong because the sentence from your poem “I can’t keep quite” was strong because it shows how no matter what if the topic affects you then you will want to speak up.