Paradigm Shift

He stands
wider than anyone else on the stage.
Takes the
chosen time to regal us
with tired words of
women-hate.
Crazy hurled around like an
electric shock
keeping me in place.
He attacks their clothes,
looks to their bodies as signs of
own-ability and flirts
to get his way – in.

I want to shove his face
back out of place
because this is not the space
he belongs in.
He will never belong in.
It is our space,
and he has, disgraced
himself here with his own
presence.

I imagine him stripped,
stuck beneath the gaze of
biological treason
value declared and taken,
never having heard the word consent
or its implication.
Hailed for their strength
and protected by their penetration-
what would he say then?
Born from generations of men who
scoff at women –
laugh at their rages and
belittle their pains
as if they were not
the ones who
put them there in
the first place?
I want to come
on his face
make him smell
the years of abase-ment
when she was locked
in a base-ment
because her Daddy said
she was too dirty
to be seen.

But we’ve not all been raped.

Some of us have asked
for what we got,
just like she asked
for your laughter as she invited you
in, barbed screens of
resiliency
coming to a pace
that you   could never   win.
Just like she asked
for your judgmental and, demeaning
silence as she dared
to bare her
un-naired legs,
revealing a coat
of thick, beautiful
hair.
Just like she asked
you to pin her on the street,
undress her and point to the
forbidden place to say
here.
Here –
is where you are different.
Here-
is what you lack.
Then pile generations of
cancer-causing cosmetics, scented tampons and razors
strong enough for a man, but made for a woman,
to clean her body and make it ready
for you
to come
back.

It has been years.
Years. since
we first raised up, reclaimed our
own bodies, our silenced voices, our
disregarded choices and
screamed
Get Out!
We don’t need you and your
sadistic doctor’s machines.
We have un-sewn
the holes you left for us to clean,
shoved our fists back
in your disbelieving face,
and helped each other define
our own space.

So as you stand here,
privileged with this time
and place
to read –
I am churning.

You have silenced your own right
to be seen.