The Outsider

I hate writing and reading out poems for the dead

What is the recruitment process for being an ancestor?

Is it how long you have lived and suffered?

A restriction barring still-borns after life

Rejected them,

What about rapists and child murderers?

What caused them to be raped and murdered

The answer I am given in irritation,

It is not rape and child murders that sparks public outrage

But who is raped,

And whose children are found floating in dams.

To be spared commit these acts to the outsider

The outsider is those without official documents,

To be here

Often times it is anyone your mother did not bear,

Your father whom your never met

But absent fathers are often forgiven,

Without having to ask for it

But Theresa did not ask for it but was not spared,

Regardless of how she wept and begged

The outsider is the womb of a woman in religious texts.

It is the womb we have waged war against,

God has waged war against

Period pains for Eden,

No anesthesia for labour pains

Men outside the legislature protesting against contraceptives,

When will psychologists declare Oedipus complex rape?

A sentence mothers bear for birthing us

If I give birth to civilizations between my legs,

What is then the role of the Creator?

The answer has been femicide throughout history.