Madame le Professeur

Sing oh goddess, of misery and pain,
In windowless rooms of no forgiveness
Bunkers of the lost in a losing war,
Bring forth her stories lost with urgent need
Power denied the able in the world
With words that are not and can never be
Her words, the maternal voice unconstrained
Abandoned hymns to her name undefiled
Behind the slave-name made by her father
Whose nature had to own the things he saw,
How she had to make a world of her own
Of feminine light and masculine shade,
She who would rather be a witch than wife
Who traded uncanny knowledge for gold
Who rose up to challenge facts and phrases
The brutal instruments of her abuse
A contest to control her mind and will
To trade her body and cripple her with
Fear, until there was nothing left to trade,
How she would prefer things be different
But can’t let heal the bloody scabs of wrongs
The injustice of her place outside time
An actor in another’s play, a plot
Concealed but drawn deliberately vast
Appearing, deceptively, as kindness
As respect, as worship, even as love
A trick to make her think she is happy;
Courtesy is a wall to keep her out,
The trap of romance designed to get her
To ignore a long list of cruelties
A horror penetrating her long dream
The irrefutable proof of her worst fears
Her womb bruised by crimes of the wombless.