Write from My Heart

I write and rage,
fling open my heart:
molten heat, hot lava melts the hate,
melts away the boundaries,
melts the cast iron bars behind which we are caged
day to day
melts away the chains.

I write from my heart
stories sung whispered shouted
censored buried reclaimed shared
through the years
for years and years, voices
rising like lava spilling
in waves
melting away

misogyny that rages, shackles and cages,
makes me roar from the margins
both inside and outside of that cage,
makes me roar at the metaphor, the ultimate metaphor:
mainstream medical birthing practices~the shackling of women
in patriarchal society
stripped down, strapped down, hooked up and colonized.
I roar at the reality and the metaphor
of stolen birthing rights, burning midwives,
raping women with forceps.

I rage and I roar at the insidious deception:
from soy formula to artificial wetlands,
pro-life rhetoric to colonization,
women laboring in sweatshops to globalization,
corporate media, historical “hysteria,” psychotropic medication:
patriarchy putting women in strait-jackets
thrusting a gag into our mouths.
patriarchy’s power to disempower.
patriarchy’s violent dismemberment of humanity.

I rage and I roar and
I write
from my heart.

--Diana Tigerlily, 2004