Where is courage to be found?

::::::::

Desperado
(for Henry David Thoreau)

It is moral courage
makes the woman
or man.
Conversely,
physical courage
is quite common.

While he has never had
the moral courage
to take a stand against
"might makes right" itself,
the same man,
raised never to restrain himself
from resorting to force
as a first, and only, option,
still finds himself
hailed a hero
in an inversion
of moral law.

And the woman
with the courage
to live outside the confines
of the kitchen,
the bedroom
and
the nursery
still faces a lingering
label of perversion,
seen as usurping
man's rightful place
at the apex
of the pyramid
of oppression.

Woman or man,
to take a stand
outside the boundaries,
to color outside the lines
of the stick figure confines
of the rigid roles prescribed
for male and female inmates
of capitalist culture's
insane asylum
runs the risk of committing
cultural suicide.

Girly men.
FemiNazis.
Real men don't cry,
have hearts or any emotions,
while real women
have been defined
by only those
obvious displays
of devotion.

Lonely
is the individual
who dares to live as an outlaw
outside the ordinary
where character insists
consistently
on the courage
to be
contrary.

"It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare." - Mark Twain

Authors Bio:
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).