If I had my druthers
      (wonderful word, druthers . . could rhyme with brothers)
I’d want to release ribbons of color,
streamers flowing out from my fingertips,
promise bouncing off at the tap of a touch
tangling the world with my keyboard  sagacity
      (sagacity, rhymes with capacity)
Rainbows of wonder . . .

But it seems I can’t tap, tap, tap nothing,
      (which really ought to be anything)
except something of which I know nothing about
      of the face of a woman I would not know,
      save, but from portraits obscurely hung
      on  flat screen placations. . . .
     
Reporting the rainbow extinction of the Congo
of deep rivers, the Congo,
mangrove and mahogany, 
and rare white rhinos.

And features of women with no expressions left for grief
whose quiet revelations, words of demure demonstrations,
    slam into my ears,
    bam into my ears,
    tap, tap, tapping at my indignation
      (let us say nauseous sensation)
    into my ears,
the rape, the rapine, the profanation of women and their daughters,
mudcloth, indigo and wax print drapes,
wrapped in flora and fauna, mothers and daughters,
the dragging  of women and daughters into perdition (without petition)
     by hands totting weapons  libido, greed and power
     savage manipulations. . .

    The binding of husbands 
    who drop their souls deep in the ground,
    but who, mercy will not blind.
Of sons, cowed because they won’t spread the legs of their mother,
won’t give seed to their sisters.
Of sons,
shaped by machetes because they won’t spread the legs of their mother.

And
of babes
who disappear
under the canopies and into the roots of red mangrove trees.

I sit in a frenzy,
tap, tap, tapping a keyboard presentation
    of a human kind  . . . frothy spittle of the gutter,
    the boils and blisters,
    the pus of the Dearth of things I don’t know
outside my front door when thinking of
mothers and a phantom hip-hugging child of the Congo.

When thinking of mankind, sister and brothers,
of knowing the sensation, placing my hands palm to palm
seeding my petition, casting  it to the wind . . .
    I ask
    Do we have the capacity?
    Do we have the capacity?
    Do    we    have    the capacity    to heal?
Give me my druthers,
for I’d rather not write
of why women wail.

Ribbons of rainbows . . . .


jeanne rené   2/05