To Be a Woman

What’s it like to be a woman?
To know the joys of Motherhood
To serve as if it was your duty
A man, a family, a community

Not getting paid for it
What’s it like to feel a woman?
To feel a vacancy between the legs
Under the skirt, a summer breeze

And eyes on me, like the feast of gulls?
What’s it like to be a woman?
To have closer social bonds
To never truly be alone, how

Does that feel? To have protective
Fathers, and possessive boyfriends?
What’s it like to be a woman?
I will never know, to feel the dresses

Caress you, as you blithely change
From mauve, to peach, to blue.
How does it feel to have skin
Like olive oil, and wear perfume

What’s it like to seduce a man
With just a pouty look, what’s it like
To have to earn your place twice
As hard, in the boardroom?

What’s it like to be a woman?
To be stoned to death for being human.

AFTER EARTH APOCALYPSE

Dead hands of foam lead me to
The stasis that is extinction of human life
Black sweet blood mouthfuls
Of the Cities we built, machines we taught

Like many species we
Drove evolution into oblivion
Becoming Gods of profit
For feeble hours, substanceless blue

Aware of short-term projects
Suicidal, reckless, individualistic
Ritualistically aggressive
Men sought to exploit other men

Women sought to breed and secure genes
It wasn’t the kind of civilization
That I imagined could survive indefinitely
We were the lowest common
Denominator of greed, fit for brief empires

Dead hands of foam lead me to the
Cloning stations, where I will get
A new body, because I’m of the elite
Last in a hierarchy of mortals.

A Woman of Quality

A woman of quality teaches you Mandarin
She takes refuge in you like
A forsaken valley, she builds there, serves there
To create a good family
She brings fortune, like heartlands that
Side with Heaven’s authority
The world will not turn against her
For her virtues insure success
She has endurance, and a heart of lamp-flames
She sheds light on any situation
A woman of quality teaches children
The ways of the compassionate world
Beyond beauty and rivalry, she empathizes
With the high mountains, the clear spring water
Her tears reach golden lowlands
Like a forsaken widow, or divorced lady
Her smile is the last saving grace
She knows the rumor of pearls, of working hard
She picks flowers and covers berries
In the sleeves of bamboo monuments
And makes a legend out of your life
Hers is the myth that will never die.