Cherchez la Femme

I haven't written any poetry in a while and was looking at some of my abandoned works. I came across this one piece that a friend of mine told me I should post for womankind. This is for you, friend.

Cherchez la Femme

Hiding in the sinews of repressed emotions,
ducking from the pain they bring her,
she blends into the jungle, chameleon-like,
to protect herself from Lust’s bullets and
Ego’s derogatory arrows.

Under the guise of inflated machismo
is the only way she knows how to advance,
to surpass Life’s glass ceiling.
How else can she survive in a sex-crazed world
without numbing her mind to the
prostitution of her womanhood?
Pretending so long to be impassive,
apathetic to her own situation that is being
a woman,
like a pocketbook left on a bus seat,
she has forgotten her Femininity.

How can a woman, one of Creation’s most
complex and powerful beings,
disregard such an innate treasure?
Hmmm…

If man is defined as a human being and
woman simply as female, and whenever she
“behaves” as a human,
she is said to be emulating the male
(as writ by him),
then this male society that has made her
feel inferior from the first dawn has
caused the female to suppress aspects of her
Femininity in all its splendor, making her an
endangered species like the elephant
stripped of its tusks

Neither can survive.

©2005 Vicky Therese Davis