and we said
try with all your might
to hold yourself up in this world
should you fall, do so quietly, lest
you disturb this delicate status-quo
do not be loud, do not make a fuss
these are things only rude people do
like those who talk on phones loudly
in confined spaces
penguins with plastic attached to their beaks
yak yak yak they go
but nobody seems to tell them to
shut it
and the propriety of life
misses a stitch
a heart beat
a compassionate rinse
through the annals of time
thinking of how we have always
stifled valuable voices
in favor of noise
putting up with the yak and not
the desperate drum beat of a woman
unraveling
she has spun her loom
throughout the city and its artifices
with alacrity and the sweat of female
labor, she has borne her children and
created a field of poppies, that threaten
to dazzle the very sun
she has grown her hair long and matted, until
it is thick enough to reach the moon
where she sits
howling
at the ravages of life
permitted at last
to possess
a voice