AP Lang & Comp, Mod 4/5
March 7, 2013
To Provoke
Houston, we have a problem,
That we’ve detected traveling back into the atmosphere,
A growing poisonous virus,
That apparently the people here call an idea.
Inside the nighttime alley, it whispers, rearing its ugly head
But in the hues of the dawn, the people are mislead,
So they remain silent, and rebuke those who manage to speak, saying:
“Each minute you spend talking of feminism is a minute you waste”
But how can something be wasted when it’s needed desperately,
To erase the incorrect thoughts of immoral thousands,
Who somehow manage to believe:
“She was asking for it”
As if one asks for this, as if provocation is more than merely a slur to hide your shame behind.
In a perfect world, there is no man
But a simply executed plan,
That allows me to fix the broken bones of a society,
That bleeds a blueness no man can understand,
on the dark side of the street where the sun has never shone.
It is a place of justice.
Where the law will excuse me, for whomever I might execute,
To silence the abuse of misogyny,
To extinguish the burning flame of hate within you eyes,
To quiet the provocative words you use,
Don’t tell me they don’t metastasize for they do.
She was 5 years old, when she learned the true length of a day,
As her stepfather looked for her outside where she used to play,
But now she stays indoors, for the place where the sun shines is worse,
There she has to rehearse standing still as a statue,
Least any movement from her is a cue to come find her.
Her life is constant fear and dread, the monsters that live in her head,
And the words that she has heard, play.
Making her believe it is merely the price she must pay.
Do not tell me of another way, to fix these frays within the rope,
I refuse to hope that anything else could work:
Like teaching the young that power is not something meant to be usurped, but shared, or...