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I have been wrestling with the wretched, wretched news reports and investigations coming out of the Sudan, DR Congo and othr countries about the mass rape of women, and/or their mass enslavement. Yes, sexual slavery is alive and well throughout the world, extending to the horrific abuse of children, not just girls but boys too. Sexual slavery is an embarrassing problem even in our country, and not nearly enough is being done to slow down, let alone halt, this global outrage at all. That has got to change, and equally so must rape be ended as a tool of war.The planet cannot heal and humanity cannot evolve until women regain their rightful place in the sun globally. To further that goal in some small way, I have written the following poem :
Surface Phenomena
by Mac McKinney
Tori in a Granny Dress;
How to Get your Sexiest Hair Ever;
1st Lady Spotted in Blue Croc!
Bullock's Racy Red Carpet Gesture;
random headlines on the net"
Thick mascara atop mascara,
conceals the unpalatable horror
of women's lives throughout the planet,
as locust armies rape wholesale,
as drone-fired missiles quarter their torsos,
and man-made droughts blanch countless bones.
"Starlet Tries to Look Chic,
But White Bra Makes Everything Look Tacky"
notes the wired-jaw mother of three,
reading from her high-tech Blackberry,
head propped high in a hospital bed,
recovering from her husband's beating,
all subtle irony lost to her mind
of guided missiles, misguided men.
While misnomered smart bombs eviscerate villages,
while cell phones coordinate Janaweed raids,
slavers dragging mothers, daughters off to markets
as captive whores to the end of their days,
when the creative power itself is mutilated,
what hope is there for the severed Yang?
The world collapses.
Why is Dunst's Hair Suddenly Blue?
Serena Looks Buff in Black.
Gwen Stefani Bleaches Her Son's Hair - Cool or Crazy?
Mugunga II Refugee Camp, Eastern Congo,
with 10,000 rape stories waiting to be told.
Not only the militias, but the Congolese Army,
so-called protectors, violate their bodies,
throughout KivuProvince, North and South.
Mugunga III, Bulengo, Buhumba
house thousands more women, broken and bleeding.
Sisterhood of pain.
In sunny Brazil, 500,000 child prostitutes
put out for pimps,
200,000 in Nepal, as many in America,
1.5 million or more in India,
often caged in squalid Bombay,
beatings the favored communication;
a dollar or two gets male pigs laid.
What Womens' Liberation Movement marches
in stone-cold, in-denial America
against this global, unspeakable trade?
More attention is paid
to the millions of Barbie Dolls
and how to adorn them,
than to funding a few midwives
in Goma or Bugu.
I am a doll baby, plastic and shallow.
Burn, Barbie, burn!
copyright by Mac McKinney
