Rachel Bari

I have a room of my own, in fact many rooms,
What i need to find is...myself.
I lost it long ago,
when i became happy.
...

My thoughts are painful
They strain against the barriers of conditioning

My smile is mockery
...

Pour me into any container
I remain
The shape of the vessel.
Pour me out
...

The rock boulder standing
Firm on the shoreline
Is woman.
She erodes every day
...

Then.....when I penned
Your return to Earth
I was not a mother
Yet I wrote....for
...

Ears pierced with gold and silver
Dangling beauty,
Convenient to hurt, pull and pinch
Swathed in necklaces of diamond
...

Please...don't tell me
What not to read
Don't even tell me
What to read,
...

When I die, my son, remember
I leave nothing …not even my name
You carry your father’s.
I bear no grudge to patriarchy
...

With pain, flows poetry
As though the pain does not find a path
To flow, it does through words
Words which are denied, twisted, turned
...

THEY CALL IT BLASPHEMY
They call it a consecrated
place, pure and lofty,
Where the statue of You and I
...

Walls cannot smother nor purify
The hiss of the serpent...
It could not in Eden, in nature
It cannot now
...