art from google
art from google
She walks alone,
barefoot in paddies of rice,
enduring backbreaking work for some precious grains,
in blazing heat, in soaking rains.
She walks alone,
in Johannesburg, with a bruised body, and a black eye,
battered by his fists the previous painful night, while the children cowered, for all the young ones could do was cry.
She walks alone,
along the streets of neon hazed diseased Manila, on sale, on display,
her human rights torn and thrown away,
she walks past the decaying hedges of rotten London, her hidden pain invisible to the eye, ground down at the altar of profit, slogging incessantly till the day she will die,
she treads the crowded pavements of brutal New Delhi, where men in perverted wolf-packs roam, her family in fear if she will ever reach home,
she is there, across the vast pampas, the savannah, the plains, on continents the world around, in villages and small towns, where merciless misogyny abounds,
she sweeps the winding back-ways of the grimy favelas, the first to be killed by that stray bullet of lead, while the politicians and so-called leaders do crocodile tears, unashamedly shed,
she is alive drowning in the glitter of ostentatious Jeddah, where she is regarded as but a servant from across the seas, where she must know her place is to be always on her knees,
she lives along the false boulevards of that ugly Los Angeles town, where movie moguls and stars of the silver screen, assume she is a rag doll, abused even today as she has always been,
she waits at check-points in occupied Gaza, her dignity trampled underfoot, her life teetering on the edge of the blade, as F-16s prey and prowl overhead,
she is abused as a sex-slave in pious countries across the world today, covered in garb that is pitch black, while she is expected to spread her legs while lying on her back,
she survives across borders where her young body is mutilated in the name of tradition, under the cloak of culture, that allows the man to always be a vulture,
she is viciously raped in places far too many to mention, bound and gagged and left for dead, while a complicit society barely turns its shameful head,
she is molested by those in power, abused by the very relatives she feels comfortable with when she is only 10 years old or five, by the predators living amongst us, smiling as in plain sight they thrive.
She walks alone,
bearing the burdens of a mother and a daughter,
of a cook and a servant,
of a wife and a lover,
even as she is called a whore, a bitch, a slut and a slag,
always a minute away from being the males’ punching-bag.
She walks alone,
through your streets and mine,
standing up as she is struck down,
loving her children as the bruises on her face turn purple,
staying afloat while inhumanity jabs and prods and yanks at her to drown.
She feeds the little ones with morsels of cooked beans and rice,
never getting from this patriarchal greed-infested world, her fair slice.
She walks alone,
in factories and in mills and in buses,
in schools and in brothels and in horrific places in-between,
where the silence of us all renders her invisible, and cruelly unseen.
She walks alone,
staying alive on the alms of the so-called charitable,
violated by those who from the pulpit preach,
spewing pompous sermons while off her they continue to leech.
She walks alone,
my sister and yours,
my mother and yours,
my lover and your beloved.
She walks alone,
a slave to norms, culture, religion and caste,
jailed by society in its sickening cage,
the first to be skewered by disgusting, acceptable, despicable male rage.
She walks alone,
but she is the conscience of me and of you,
fighting the world in hunger and often in despair,
a world that has long abrogated its responsibility to care.
She walks alone,
and though helpless to you callous men she may seem,
be warned that she is not alone,
she will not allow herself to be ground to stone,
for she is awake,
and that alone should make us men in our shoes quake,
and though she may seem powerless as she at times weeps,
she is breaking down the complacency of the slumber as mankind sleeps,
she is rising and in rising she will slay,
the beasts that in mens’ hearts lay,
she will demand her rightful place,
for every mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover,
every woman has a human face,
so be forewarned, as she is stands up tall to be counted
as an equal, of this our common human race.
art from google
Scribbled Verse 
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