Man in a Cage

The women gathered in Hurtle Square,

Or what had remained of it,

They’d coloured their lips and they’d curled their hair

They’d powdered themselves, most everywhere,

Stepped over the rubble that lay out there,

In clothes of the tightest fit.

 

The cars sat silent along the street,

The paint beginning to peel,

It had been so long since the world went wrong

Since the pumps had closed and the oil had gone,

The radio played a plaintive song

Of a love that ceased to be real.

 

The plague had ravaged the planet’s face,

Had taken a billion men,

And what was left was the barest trace

Of the masculine side of the human race,

Pollution took care of their D.N.A.’s

By gifting them Oestrogen!

 

There wasn’t a fertile man in town,

‘Til one had returned from space,

He’d come at the end of the autumn rains

To the empty wombs and the women’s pains,

So they seized him there and they bound in chains

The last hope of the race.

 

He sat in a cage in the Travellers Inn,

Enthroned like the chosen one,

While a hundred women paraded by

With a shimmy, a blink and a wink of the eye

From the love-lost there, an audible sigh

At the thought of bearing a son!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[cynthiabuhainbaello]

A morbid futuristic scene so vividly narrated and woven into a poetic story.
The introduction was intriguing, catching interest and curiosity with its mystery. Your story poems never fail to deliver the impact and a remarkable twist in the end. Excellent, David.

[Amila Jay]

Incredible write :))

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

The powerful hands that guide all things moral and right have been swelling for years, a very well written piece.

[Cristina Moldoveanu]

In an effeminate society the harsh rules of matriarchal power are useless. This is why the women became wiser in the end and caged their only hope, because they have already lost everything. It is a grim picture. I liked the way the last stanza is a complement for the last one.

[Beau-dee-loot]

Powerfully written, really like it, the register, its tone, some apocalypse of man, the demise of reality for a posture that we can either assume or scream at, fading into the distance