{"id":2405,"date":"2017-11-29T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/?p=2405"},"modified":"2017-11-17T17:51:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T22:51:18","slug":"refuser-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2017\/11\/refuser-poem.html","title":{"rendered":"REFUSER (Poem)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

NOVEMBER<\/p>\n

The month of elections and politics. Now\u2019s the time for all good women to run for office! Women in power. Women speaking truth to power. Wise women rule wisely!<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the Lebanese mountains
\nTo the Kenyan village of El Doret
\nWe are practicing self-defense
\nVersed in Karate, Tai Chi, Judo, and Kung Foo
\nWe are no longer surrendering to our fate.
\nNow, we are the ones who walk our girl friends home from school.
\nAnd we don’t do it with macho. We do it with cool.
\nOur mothers are the Pink Sari Gang
\nFighting off the drunken men
\nWith rose pointed fingers and sticks in
\nUttar Pradesh.
\nThe Peshmerga women
\nin the Kurdish mountains
\nwith barrettes in their hair
\nand AK47’s instead of pocket books.
\nWe are not waiting anymore to be taken and retaken.
\nWe are the Liberian women sitting
\nin the Africa sun blockading the exits
\ntil the men figure it out.
\nWe are the Nigerian women
\nbabies strapped to out backs
\noccupying the oil terminals of Chevron.
\nWe are the women of Kerala
\nwho refused to let Coca Cola
\nprivatize our water.
\nWe are Cindy Sheehan showing up in Crawford without a plan.
\nWe are all those who forfeited husbands boyfriends and dates
\nCause we were married to our mission.
\nWe know love comes from all directions and in many forms.
\nWe are Malalai who spoke back to the Afghan Loya Jurga
\nAnd told them they were “raping warlords” and
\nShe kept speaking even when they kept
\ntrying to blow up her house.
\nAnd we are Zoya whose radical mother was shot dead when Zoya was only a\u00a0child
\nso she was fed on revolution which was stronger than milk
\nAnd we are the ones who kept and loved our babies
\neven though they have the faces of our rapists.
\nWe are the girls who stopped cutting ourselves to release the pain
\nAnd we are the girls who refused to have our clitoris cut
\nAnd give up our pleasure.
\nWe are:
\nRachel Corrie who wouldn’t couldn’t move away from the Israeli tank.
\nAung San Suu Kyi who still smiles after years of not being able to leave her room.
\nAnne Frank who survives now cause she wrote down her story.
\nWe are Neda Soltani gunned down by a sniper in the streets of
\nTehran as she voiced a new freedom and way
\nAnd we are Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6th movement in Egypt
\nWho twittered an uprising.
\nWe are the women riding the high seas to offer
\nNeedy women abortions on ships.
\nWe are women documenting the atrocities
\nin stadiums with video cameras underneath our Burqas.
\nWe are seventeen and living for a year in a tree
\nAnd laying down in the forests to protect wild oaks.
\nWe are out at sea interrupting the whale murders.
\nWe are freegans, vegans, trannies
\nBut mainly we are refusers.
\nWe don’t accept your world
\nYour rules your wars.
\nWe don’t accept your cruelty and unkindness.
\nWe don’t believe some need to suffer for others to survive
\nOr that there isn’t enough to go around
\nOr that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement
\nAnd we don’t hate boys, okay?
\nThat’s another bullshit story.
\nWe are refusers.
\nBut we crave kissing.
\nWe don’t want to do anything before we’re ready
\nbut it could be sooner than you think
\nand we get to decide
\nand we are not afraid of what is pulsing through us.
\nIt makes us alive.
\nDon’t deny us, criticize us or infantilize us.
\nWe don’t accept checkpoints, blockades or air raids.
\nWe are obsessed with learning.
\nOn the barren Tsunamied beaches of Sri Lanka
\nIn the desolate and smelly remains
\nOf the lower ninth
\nWe want school.
\nWe want school.
\nWe want school.
\nWe know if you plan too long
\nNothing happens and things get worse and that
\nMost everything is found in the action
\nand instinctively we get that the scariest thing
\nisn’t dying, but not trying at all.
\nAnd when we finally have our voice
\nand come together
\nwhen we let ourselves gather the knowledge
\nwhen we stop turning on each other
\nbut direct our energy towards what matters
\nwhen we stop worrying about
\nour skinny ass stomachs or too frizzy hair
\nor fat thighs
\nwhen we stop caring about pleasing
\nand making everyone so incredibly happy \u2013
\nWe got the Power.
\nIf
\nJanis Joplin was nominated the ugliest man on her campus
\nAnd they sent Angela Davis to jail
\nIf Simone Weil had manly virtues
\nAnd Joan of Arc was hysterical
\nIf Bella Abzug was eminently obnoxious
\nAnd Ellen Sirleaf Johnson is considered scary
\nIf Arundhati Roy is totally intimidating
\nand Rigoberta Menchu is pathologically intense
\nAnd Julia Butterfly Hill is an extremist freak
\nCall us hysterical then
\nFanatical
\nEccentric
\nDelusional
\nIntimidating
\nEminently obnoxious
\nMilitant
\nBitch
\nFreak
\nTattoo me
\nWitch
\nGive us our broomsticks
\nAnd potions on the stove
\nWe are the girls
\nwho are aren’t afraid to cook.<\/p>\n