To My Cellmate

We live in a prison.

LOUD, I scream
From my lungs, filled
With fire.  We are
Living in the waste of

Bigotry
Oppression

And still, you choose to
Suffocate and burn

Your insides.

Your head is down
Your blindfold tight

And you won't fight,
Because you think this dirty room
Is all we've got,

That if you fought,
You'd be silenced

(More than you are now).

I'm a radical.
I'm a danger, yes,
Because I'm LOUD;

We can only be defeated
If we retreat, if we are
Quiet.

This war
Will go on
And on
And on,

But I will fight so that
Our daughters have a chance at freedom.
So that your daughters

Years from now

Are not like you.

So that the women of tomorrow
Are not civilian casualties and
So the women of tomorrow are not

Prisoners of War.

Author's Note

See "Citizen" for my tumblr and deviantART. As for copyright, you are 100% free to use this. These poems are your right as much as they are mine.

Reviews

[luciddreamer]

I totally agree, although I myself, am still whispering, that it is our job (women) to start shouting again.... so many of our voices are gone I worried that it would never happen...then I had daughters who wanted to be exactly opposite of me and boy do they ever scream and it made me look around and see a couple of generations now of many young women who are no longer going to go with the status quo...I see the change coming....I pray we never lose sight of the true purpose.....

[Kerry O'Connor]

I love the form and powerful voice of this poem. The rebellious spirit of womanhood has been given a crucial platform in your poetry.

[NoneOfYourBusiness akaK..]

you bleed it from the epic soul~ in silence we are dust~ for decades I've tried to breathe the sound back into woman lungs with my own screams against this wall of solid pain like a carapce around our original shells we've permitted the patriarchies of the world to encase us within~

[Crinkle°]

and this one is engaged... yes, very interesting....