Remembering Wine Poetry

A plea for those shackled by religion, women especially, to break free

Honour thy father, thy mother;
honour him so that when he hurts her
firing degradation and humiliation from firearms of furious ijma --
male consensus on feminine inferiority --
it will be her fault:
Nefzawi's Satan makes vaginal juices flow
like tears
Her religion is not hers

O mothers and sisters who hide blue faces behind black veils
or display red lips and flowing hair
who flaunt and celebrate that innate femininity in full candor
and chant "oppressed is not me"
while supplicating the all-mighty being who blessed
the infallible charlatan of Arabia with intimate knowledge of intimacy
and revealed to him the truth of women's weakness:
femininity's spiritual fragility;

O mothers and sisters, awaken to realisation: you are not mothers and sisters
you are women; denotation unconfined to relation to masculinity
discard the veil of inferiority, thrown over to make shameful your objects of pride
discard discourse of empowerment through oppression
of fanciful notions of "rights" and "equality"
Verily, They have not created you equal
Dissect the lies that weak, fearful men feed you --
like Hind who, when the charlatan forbade murder,
spat in remembrance of the lives he'd taken

Such is the nature of the believing man:
self-serving hypocrisy sustaining womanly servitude
Discard plagiarised verses forged in pagan deserts
and once again take up those of Al-Ma'ari
and the poets who knew how to party
remember and enjoy what the charlatan's men would have you forget and forbid

Recall or experience the joy of poetry and wine
and pay no heed to bearded men who consider themselves wise
but are more akin to billy goats with no more knowledge of the divine