The Killing Field

She walks with a limp because she's been violated --
She walks with a limp because she's been raped
She walks with a limp because she's been cut
She walks with a limp she was born that way
She walks with a limp because she fell

She was knocked down
she was pushed
she jumped

She walks with a limp
in silence seven-- after being raped by her step father
she walks with a limp because
those bags were so heavy, the shopping bags
carrying food from the hospital kitchen
leftovers hand-me-downs
new stuff old

She walks with a limp because she is sad
so sad she can't hardly pick herself up
she walks with a limp because she's in love
and hated by her parents
she's in love and can't tell anybody
she's in love and married and
wants to pump under the strong breast of her stallion husband and she's only thirteen.
from virgin to wife to church to funeral pyre in 3 days
Christ like figure or almost something
that doesn't resurrect but does sacrifice
like a scape goat

There are and were I will be
women as dumping spaces
some places to put feet and sperm and spit and hate
some place to slap the face of when things don't go right
the way they planned --

Every body needs a scapegoat
why not women, children little girls?
Why not daughters and wives and mothers and mistress and nanny?

Fathers hump their daughters
Brother's rape their sisters
Uncles slip in and out of places no one belongs

What is this killing field from which no girl is safe?
Even Mary would have been stoned without divine intervention.

Juanita walks with a limp because she was raped in
a lot almost home - almost home

Pecola was raped at home, Precious and Lucretia too

Mattie Lee was beat to death trying to leave home

Wilhelmina was cursed out at home

this killing field has no boundaries

where can I go to be safe?

Juliet chose the grave

Neet did too

Pecola chose insanity

Lynn and Tamar too

Lizzie and Margerit chose the pen

Lady Capulet chose denial

Nurse chose someone else's family

Neet another man's house

but there was a pledge on both houses

Does it take more courage to live or to die?

and what is the truth about living a lie?and why did they have to chose when all they wanted was love?

So they went -- some ran --

to their fathers -- to find help

They ran towards safety and found something else

they went arms open and the demand was , open your crouch too,

open up to something or someone

let a penis enter you and you'll be safe.

Some said ,"No!" and were forced

Some said yes and were used

some said nothing but all found its a killing field

to find help home

girl

woman caught in adultery

was there no one to protect? any way out at all? drawn and quartered, prepped for the fall.

These are just shadows of women that all did once live now they are only fragment to remember, side dishes to a meal.

I want to tell you a story that is difficult to comprehend but it is important that I tell it over and over again.

Within my voice their cries might be heard. Without their lives the ordeal's just obscured.

I am searching for an ear that the time it will take for me to tell the story neither truth neither fake. Some my call this a fable, some tragic, and ordeal but just because I get started I must emphasize that it is all real.

The details may not be exact. the time frames obscured. the order of events intentionally not blurred yet each and every women did truly existed in fiction, or the Bible, in Harlem, autobiography or mental glimpse.

I will sing you a song of blood and of pain

my primary goal make you remember at least one name

of a lady who died on the killing field.

a woman who died on the killing field,

the women who died on the killing field.

So look out and don't dare go back cause

where I come from am going

I have always been where

it is a well known fact,

they're killing woman .

Ask Maya, and Alice and Toni M. too,

ask Shakespeare and Jesus and

I'll even ask you if you know

I woman how dead who

died with the battle still raging in head

"I must I must how I must make it true

I have to be loved and I 'll fight against for it too

I must i must even if I must die

I must be loved it is why I'm alive

I must be loved

It may cost you your life

it did oh it did oh so many times.

these sister these queens they die

I'd tell you no lie dead slam in

the middle of the l killing field.