Oh woman, you have lain down and taken the weight of the palest sickest men, through blood your offspring weaken, down your vine, climb the children you dont have time for, the ones you must leave behind to earn for, the ones you must neglect to love the ones mothered by armless devices, into a silence reaching deep to the back of the childs brain stunting imagination altering the dna of destiny making marvel couch potatoes of true heroes. Oh woman not every water tank you entertain that straddles and floods you, loves you. The length of love has diminished, no longer inborn, not handed to children from parents who know love... Instead the gift is pain, purposefully packaged, designed to fit the status quo... trauma dressed in bloodstained underwear left for dead in an attic of the mind, where a lattice of worms work flesh from bone a brain mole boring the marrow you need to teach your child. The mainstream used to begin at the spring, trickle spirals of eureka through the veins God made to pool earth blood together... cutting rocks with centuries saws plunging from the front, purging the wildly forested land wild with food and feeling. Now, the inheritor of city zinc, oftentimes never goes beyond half way tree, never has time to sit and watch a movie unless its in the gangs hideout, where he truly spend more time watching the darkness to see if it will grow arms and legs and guns his lungs never known pure air the exhaled pine forests of the blue mountain range, the elfin woodlands, but his ghetto life has taken him to the peak of his shortest breath. shortcut maps blueprint his brain thru Ms Mattie yaad roun di lane, under di zinc hole into di gully, down di gully to di bridge, cross the gully and out pon di mainstream the dry asphalted once upon a time riverbed they now call Hope Road. thats where he ran a marathon as fast as a sprinter, lungs burning thin like an ember glowing red in his dry throat like hot coal stuck under his collarbone barefoot, feet slapping a collage of gravel and concrete, hemmed in neatly by feng shui corners, lipped by unsleeping policemen, booby trapped by the flat sardine tin the rusty metal bottle cap, at his speed, the teeth of tetanus biting the heel of the hungry, fleeing with a breadfruit bag from the J.P's tallest tree... the whole police force careening up to stop the bussfoot boy from reaching the river. Lady Musgrave caught him, intersecting with the House of the King, the pitch and yaw of ratty would fling him, toe pinched by the rolling vans body halted abruptly, slapped headfirst into a hot spring of his own blood. everyone in his family have a special relationship with the river that runs in their flesh, its the only one theyve ever dipped in. Oh woman I know you are alone performing culinary miracles with a few grains of rice and a few leftover vegetables, I know you are tired of being manipulated by a child who knows you better than you know yourself. I know the man who walked out took his importance with him, and with it, the importance of all male creatures. i know the man who stayed enslaved you, called you queen till he fucked you into submission, choked your aorta for fun... To the next Stacey Ann I know you are lesbian until proven innocent. I do not hold this fact against you because i know penises were held against you rubbed between your baby legs while he told you to suck his grown man nipple i know the woman you are is but a ripple from a stone flung with adult strength at a child, a stone that exploded on her stomach him whistling like he had been a kettle boiling.... 3rd degree burn scars on keloid skin creeping from the bikini line of the heart, she became a hermit crab, hiding in empty fortresses, making her way through this world, gated complex by gated complex, cloaking garment to sleeping bag, she lived a shroud, she was a fog, to some a beautiful mist. At times you know your longing to be kissed can not be your highest hope for existence you strive for more, you look for mentors, you realize they think you are a whore on the mend, who has retired but will service them as a friend, every law seems breakable across your buxom your body caused the earthquake that opened underground plates lifted lava from the bellows of a groaning monster hurled a volcanic black hole of ash through the bedroom you both defiled, a hole that ate him and you alive... When you get home, you always sigh, because the place you can hide from the world is the place where your fears reside, your deep down inside is a rathole where u cower in darkness behind black curtains convincing yourself that at midday, this is better than the sun. Oh woman, let me tell you of my fellow man, how his mind corruptly seeks your flesh to fuck he has blinkers that ignore your innocence your struggle to discover that you were born someone, and there is nothing you can do to be any more than you already are. Oh woman blame not your self blame not the man who is a boy blame not the mother of the man who is a girl and blame not her lover she met while serving drinks as a promo girl in yesteryear he was a drunkard, she ignored that tilll his fingers became whips his eyes became echoes of hell and his whisper more abohorrent than a stinkbugs smell Oh woman, your shame is not yours alone to bear it hangs high as the flag of the world the colorless air that flaps every cloth is itself a flag that flaps anxiety in you and out... Oh woman. let me apologize, that should have come first, these days, apologies are wind and blow past the unloved... trust is a curse word for the betrayed love is an annoyance for those living in grave dilemmas of mind 6 feet deep mud crawlers dragging their slag onto relationships messing up everything with grieving fingers every ritual is funeral every sound is the choir that sings the last word every lyric hung on like gospel. Oh Woman Centuries have excluded you from title and position for too long man has ignored you and hated you Greeks sent you to the isles of Lesbos while the alpha males loved the beta boys... It was a war of the sexes to this day waged on from anciency till modern Babylon Oh woman, Your place was designed by creation. you are the mother of nations the rebirth of plants the charge in electricity seeds spark when you plant lightning in the ground without a sound. you are the revolutionary seasoned in blood. ready to fight for the ones that you love. with you as our victor we shall overcome with eyes to the blind hearts to the empty and speech to the dumb.