Can you hear those feet – tramping the tarmacadam –
ripe on lipstick and stillettos?
Bare faced cheeks confronting
bare faced inequality
challenging the incongruous incongruity
with passion – for we are woman.
And behind our sororial skirts of metal are those
who fear our intuition
and with hammer nail our fingers and venom tongued
they cleave our souls; obsessed by spite
and our oppression
using their aggression
to stultify our goals. But we are woman
and passion thrives
innate
within our hearts
despite the cost we’ve paid in years
despite the scars of sufferance weeping centuries of tears –
that bleed the cracks and drown in floods
our misinterpretation – for we are woman
and as women
we will not disappear.
And we will not let them beat us
nor weave words of cavilling within our undisputed minds
or strip away the power
of which they think our eyes are wiccan blind
as we are proud
and stand together
and proclaim of all we are
with our one voice above all other
and with one voice we’ve travelled far
from all the dark days of repression
our silenced mouths
the chains that wound and bound our feet
and forced us to succumb
to the brick and stick of the city of glass
the bullet to tether the drum.
And so we rise as women
our spirits undeterred
for we are the women rising
and as women
we’re finally being heard.
SM©2014
SALLY MORTEMORE 