Thursday, May 10, 2018

Bodies They Inhabit

Bodies They Inhabit
© Surazeus
2018 05 10

After wearing the thick corrective lenses
every day forty years since he was five,
Michael yanks pair of glasses off his face
and throws them in the gutter by the street.

Having always seen everything so clearly,
he now gropes forward in fog of blurred shapes,
stepping hesitantly through swirling colors,
more acutely aware of random sounds.

All the people with sharply defined faces
that express complex emotional cues
vanish into fuzzy meaningless signals
whose eyes disappear in the long silence.

Donning his Batman costume with long cape,
Michael walks past the office where he works
and follows men up and down streets all day
while yelling at them that they are vile rapists.

Leaping up onto the park bench at noon
near the busiest intersection in town,
he shouts to everyone walking to lunch
so some stop and record him with smart phones.

"Women claim that rape is all about power
because the rapist overpowers her body
and refuses to obey her free will
when she insists that he stop raping her."

"For rapists the rape is all about sex
because he wants to have sex with her now
and make her bear the baby of his seed,
forcing her to raise his child without help."

"Therefore, men, you must acknowledge the truth
that rape is about power over her body,
forcing her to bear child she does not want,
so you deny her choice of her free will."

"We claim the value we respect the most
in our greatest land of America
is free will of every person to choose
how to live their life, free from all control."

"Yet men try to control women every day,
sanctioned by the laws of ancient religions
that insist men control how women live,
since Abraham claimed God chose him as the father."

"Men of America, the time as come
to dismantle the ancient patriarchy
and allow women their freedom to choose
what happens to the bodies they inhabit."

Police arrive and arrest the strange man
dressed in a Batman suit with long black cape
who rants that women should have equal rights,
and take him handcuffed to the county jail.

After sleeping all night in the jail cell,
Michael is released wearing normal clothes,
so he walks silently through busy town,
staring at the eyeless blur of blank faces.

Arriving at the cemetery gate,
Michael walks rolling hills past white tombstones,
then kneels weeping at the grave of his daughter
who was raped and killed by an unknown man.

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