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A Poem's Memoir

Poems 

are women.

Widely liked

at times, loved

seldom listened to

rarely understood

and

frequently silenced.


Poems

are women

who survived 

the feticide of audacious ideas

and infanticide of 

unsatisfactory drafts.


Poems

are women 

with lowered eyes

bejeweled by alliteration 

veiled by metaphors

palms henna-ed to mask blisters of truth.


Poems

are women

never looked at

but for aesthetic pleasure

and never

attempted to be understood.


Poems 

are women

deified

so long as it suits

the facades of [those in] power

admired

so long as they 

transgress no "modesty"


Poems

are women

object of a hundred opinions

never safe from [the critic's] "gaze"

and entitled

to no non-conforming opinion

that shall not result in being silenced.


Poems 

are women

quiet rebellion

is the most they can do

sadly, in the jungle

where Aunt Jennifer's Tigers roar.


Poems

are women

birthed from pain

into a world of pain

doomed to live 

as reminders of "endurance" 

of pain.


Poems

are women

it is always their fault.

always their fault,

never that of the husband

or father

or brother

or bloody son of a --

Ch@tGPT prompt.


Poems

are women.

Profound,

but powerless.




The Tranquill Poet 🤍


P.S.

1. inspired by "Kavi Ka Confidential Gussa", Sriti Jha; and a piece narrated by Ratna Pathak Shah at a recent Kommune spoken fest, whose original author I am not sure of.

2. 'Aunt Jennifer's Tigers' is a reference to Adrienne Rich's poem of the same name.


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