As I savor the feel

Of the radiating warmth

From the the flow of 

Electricity that I often

Take for granted

 

I think of the 

Women of Palestine

As they arise in the cold to

labor each day

As a rock in the river 

Of genocide that sweeps away 

Their children 

Lovers, husbands, sons, nephews

Sisters

Ribbonning through their hunger and thirst,

With jagged fishooks of generational trauma 

Are the currents of unstoppable fear-

The Male blood-red lust for control

And anger at a world that 

Will never give that…

 

Then the women of Sudan

Who bear the blackened waves of the

Men’s impotency turned 

To pain-giving thrusts of hatred 

Toward an earth who 

They feel

Never gave them 

A path forward, 

Churning and churning toward

Death and their 

Existential fear of it

through the violent 

Terror and torture of the 

sisters mothers aunties

Who birthed them, who held them

Who raised them

 

And the women of Afghanistan

Painfully close to the sound of freedom, 

Now hearing the demanding roars from men

To silence feminine voices that

Carry the power of the Goddess

That long abandoned the men

after the multitude of 

Rapes and attacks, 

That inconceivable lack of compassion leaves 

Bereft the women in blue enclosures

even as they 

Carry within them, the males of the next generation

Of oppression, fear and loss.

 

This perpetual mysterious self hatred of men,

Projected ever outward 

Despite the only love beyond love

They have experienced being in

The arms of the women who tunneled their

Pathway to the planet—

They seem to always turn in fury

On the women trying to survive

The refusal of the masculine

To reflect on its cyclic shadow

Of pain and agony

 

I feel paralyzed and unable to  

Attempt any sort of understanding

Of how we have become so unbalanced 

And my body so denied of its agency 

As to leave the sisters of our 

Collective body 

Dying of the perennial testosterone-fused cancer

fear

Encrusting every cell of creativity

Peace and joy

That could be

That can be

A beautiful human destiny

My sisters I pray for us

My brothers, I tentatively wait for your wisdom

To grow

In time for our survival.