The Body of A Woman

I wish scribbling a poem, holding a candle, a march down the road,
Would fix her problems; it won't,
It won't fix her!
Tomorrow it'll be just another news, another rape,
Even as the world shrinks, the newspapers and the television reports,
There's is this deep, dark sadness that won't go away,
It churns in the gut, Oh, wait, she doesn't have one,
They took it all away; threw it off the bus.

I wonder, what does a heart without hope and a stomach sans intestines look?
Could this be God thinking when He gave Eve a hole?
It defies everything I have ever heard or known,
By fluke if these men were punished would they feel remorse?
Will their death satisfy this rage, this hurt that churns in her gut, in yours?

I wish, we lived in a world where there were truly Superhero's,
Who would fly to the end of the earth and tear these men apart,
Sadly, there are none,
I am a nobody and so are you,  
We are all powerless, greedy, inhabitants of a power-hungry nation with a big population,
No one can fight this ugliness, not even God.

We alone spread this plague of violence and hatred,
We fail to teach our children and the children on the streets,
No mother ever tells her child, 'appreciate you body and the body of a girl',
We shy away from sex, oh, not behind closed doors,
We just don't talk about it; the children cannot know,
Literate or illiterate, they learn what they can,
They take what they can,
Is it any surprise that they grow up to be rapists?
Out of all these perversions great tragedies are born,
We worry for our little girls, at the mercy of men with swollen pricks.

What is the solution?
I don't really know,
Maybe, we could start with teaching a child, 'Respect your own body and the body of a woman',
The contours, the love, the milk in her breasts, the compassion in her eyes,
See past her legs, thighs, past her clothes,
See that she has a bit of your mother, of your sister, of your daughter,
She has a bit of you; she hurts like you and cries like you,
Please don't hurt her; love her and protect her and never shame her the way some men do.

The Song Of The Sufi Masroof