Policing Pharisee (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

At work today management emails threaten torture
if we dare put a foot out of doors - unless marching
against rape, yet society overflows in sexual imagery,
old people take pills to instil desire when hormone
levels sink, old ladies botoxed after plastic surgery

Young people are urged by socially orientated sexual
imagery; then secret libidinous cell-phone photo holier-
than-thou types blame ‘barbarians surrender' in raping
the vulnerable around them - but why whip up desire in
pictures and song, and then try to contain outbursts of
libido spinning into unrestrained aggression?

First take the beam out of your own eye, then ye shall see
better to take the splint out of the eye of the rapist,
you policing Pharisee…


11 February 2013