“Still and Yet”
Marie Mason
January 2011
Still, the mid-wife’s jar
sits in a corner of a solemn room
ready with the herbs, ancient and almost reliable,
for cleaning house, a tug within
that leaves & black hole, gaping,
hungry
for the time when we will have our freedom
freedom not pulled out
bloody on the hook of a hanger
illegal instrument high jacked
for a purpose larger than life
Or children slapped away,
Mothers catatonic and despondently cruel at the dead-end
Of the spectrum, parent and child alike robbed of nurture, famished,
Babies thrown in garbage dumps and children,
Sight unseen, snatched away by grasping, greedy
hands, the wealthy parasitic class came to claim the prize
or fainting, standing at the health factory, daunted by throbbing hordes of vigilantes,
Or inside waiting to be counseled into dropping
$300 bucks and a fetus
Into the corporate bucket
Of commodities and dreams
Or hand out ready, shaking a bowl
At the government
Aims to terminate a life
With no other script than conscription
Clutching Uncle Sam’s knees
Perpetual multitudes born already
ploughing, eyes cast down
Living small in the belly of the beast
Belly broadening, a serf to Greed Incarnate
I am sick to death
Of men forcing women
To have babies
Denying gender gifts
And raping their own issue,
Be family these enforced new lives
And I am sick to death
Of men forcing women
To lose babies
Emotional blackmail of abandonment
In convenient and slippery denial
Is this progressive?
And once again the woman bears
Or bears responsibility and risk alone
Until it is no more
A question of financial obligation/devastation
Or external pseudo moral pressing down demand submission
We do not have our freedom
Until it is an unencumbered choice
To live one’s life without entanglements
Accomplishing the hearts desire
We do not have our freedom
Until the balance zeros
For every woman, every time
The fact of imminent potential issue
Must be faced
We do not have our freedom
Until we complete the circle of community
Where all ways of living joyfully and harmless
Can be practiced in the light
Without impediment to any path
We do not have our freedom
And we do not have our freedom yet
