Category: domestic violence

The Rabbit

Image courtesy of Unsplash

https://amanpan.com/2021/06/10/eugis-weekly-prompt-nature-june-10-2021

When trying to respond to Eugenia’s prompt this week, this poem, which I posted a couple of years ago kept coming into my head, and no matter how I tried, it would not go away. In this reposting, it is my hope that it serves some purpose. Perhaps, someone will gather something from it.

 

A rabbit stilled,

Motionless, as if frozen

In the summer grass

 

Only her nose twitched, flared

The scent of wrongness–

A touch upon the air,

 

And she knew

Only flight carried safety

Flight, the right choice to make—

If she could only still move.

 

But she could stand only statue still

And standing so, the trap sprung

Steel teeth clamping down,

Slicing through skin,

Chewing through chunks of muscle

As she struggled,

Daring not to scream

As screams would bring the predators.

This she knew too well.

 

The trap now biting into bone,

Her struggles stopped.

Her panting calmed.

Her head rested upon the grass.

One eye looked to a cloudless sky.

She prayed for strength to chew

Through bone.

 

Chains of Fears

Image courtesy of Tumbler
https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/weekend-writing-prompt-179-lucid/

Lucidity picks at the chains wrapped round a soul

Anchored to the ground of fears bought whole

In the marketplace while traipsing through dreams

Resplendent with beauty and flights of fanciful imaginings

That harsh noisy words and bruising blows etched,

Tattooed lucid fears.

Rope

Image courtesy of Etsy

Endless mantra of your obsessive need–

Recited daily, hourly, till a rope twined,

Weaving a noose around me.

https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/08/29/weekend-writing-prompt-172-endless/

Lilith’s Mantle

from Pinterest

We reject the second mother
you would give us,
reject subjugation
of ripped rib bone,
accept not the pain
from seeking knowledge.

We have borne brutality for the ages,
Silent always,
In churches,
In governments,
In streets,
And in our homes.
Our mouths learned silence,
keeping us, at least, alive.

Oh, we were worthy of protection
As long as we were your possessions:
Your mothers, your daughters,
Your sisters, your wives.
As long as you owned us
And we did as we were told,
We lived, perhaps, unbruised.

But the brave have shown us
Through the ages and now again
They show us another way.
We find our voice,
Too strident for your ears,
But even our whispers
Are too strident for you.

You will mock us,
Vilify us, this we know.
Proudly we wear the mantle
Of the first mother,
Lilith, the one you deemed
An enemy long ago and banished.
Her spirit moves us to speak
Against the men who take
Even our bodies from us.
You may beat us, kill us,
Force us into marriage and childbearing,
Rape us, place weapons into the hands
Of the children we bear,
Weld the chains of slavery upon us,
And laughingly say we asked for it
Should we complain.

Yet after all that and more,
Our submission you will not have.
We will rise like an ocean wave
Wakened by a great quake
Beneath the sea and drown you
With the devastation of your hate.

Soon some of Lilith’s daughters
Will march. Some will wait across
The Earth.

But Lilith’s mantle
Covers us all.
The quake is coming.
The wave will free us all.

A Dream of the Wolf

 A whipped dog,
 Head down,
 Eyes, lowered,
 Ears back,
 Haunches drawn
 Dreams the wolf--
 Sharp weapons of tooth and claw,
 Armor of hide and fur,
 Heart of a free, wild warrior.
  
 A dream of the lone wolf,
 Who may find comfort
 Here or there 
 For a season.
 Then moves onward alone
 Before what will come 
 As the whipped dog knows,
 Always, always does.

The Rabbit

A rabbit stilled,

Motionless, as if frozen

In the summer grass

 

Only her nose twitches, flares

The scent of wrongness,

Just a touch upon the air

 

And she knew

Only flight carried safety

Flight, the right choice to make

 

But she could stand only statue still

And standing so, the trap sprung

Steel teeth clamping down,

Slicing through skin,

Chewing through chunks of muscle

As she struggled,

Daring not to scream

As screams would bring the predators

This she knew too well.

 

The trap now biting into bone,

Her struggles stopped.

Her panting calmed.

Her head rested upon the grass.

One eye looked to a cloudless sky.

She prayed for strength to chew

Through bone.