Rachel Bari Poems

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
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Please...don't tell me
What not to read
Don't even tell me
What to read,
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When I die, my son, remember
I leave nothing …not even my name
You carry your father’s.
I bear no grudge to patriarchy
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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
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THEY CALL IT BLASPHEMY
They call it a consecrated
place, pure and lofty,
Where the statue of You and I
...