Endowed in perpetuity by the Glenna Luschei Fund for Excellence

Cursed be the ground

Sometimes I just don’t understand
That’s why I have no patience for God’s plans
Time, my eternal betrayer
The ever-ready subject of my daily prayer
Won’t slow down
Instead passes by without a sound
Meanwhile these loins steadily refuse imprisonment in my jeans
And I’m near bursting with every passing year it seems
So I’m riding my own profanities in vain
As the heat of my blood hurricanes through my veins

I’m a man without a womb
Searching for a womb
Whilst hurtling closer and closer
To a final resting tomb
And in that instance
In these lonely tear-stained sheets
In between hammering heartbeats
Or maybe in the middle of escapades in desolate streets
I heard a stampeding voice
Amidst the competing noise
Urging me to be still
And submit to His will

Sullenly
I entered into this unchartered territory
Hypnotized by uncertainty
Or the promise of possibility
And even though I didn’t understand
I weighed anchor on an unfortunate land
Of virginity-stealing pirates
Wife-beating tyrants
Dowdy whores and gold-digging bitches
And loose women who traded sex for riches

Despite this
Deep into the marrow
Perhaps besides the heart of multiplied sorrow
Hope still wanted to grow despite an uncertain tomorrow
Until I arrived neither to a place nor a space
But to a curious case
Of a lack of trust and loyalty
Of a specific womb carried by battered royalty
With never evaporating tears from her eyes
She doesn’t realize
Until too late
That it’s a Russian roulette world that she tries to rule
Too young to have left school
Or too broke to fight the fact that he’s just a tool
Hormone-driven she drowns in his pool of drool
Opens herself up to this eternal fool
And in the end her womb carries his poisoned seed
To become the legacy of an impetuous deed

It’s hard
’Cause she shares my blood
I know her fate was her fate
Her fate
The fate of so many women who realize too late
How closing the gate may have led to a better fate
I’m talking here about begets filled with lonely regrets
If only patience had made a home
And carried her safely home
Far away from where the predators roam
But now
She has been lost to history

As it was in the beginning
God’s child was tempted by the devil’s grinning
Life seemed to have given her permission
For her to start her unfortunate mission
Until reality came back
Sentenced her with no quarter
And now she’s lost more than one
Including a beautiful daughter
To resurrect her soul back to the sun

She is metaphor for a legacy
Beckoning with so much of an urgency
We delve into its deadly areas
By disrespecting the wombs that might come back to bury us
Acutely aware of unfortunate carriers
Across so many barriers
And with so many of them screaming marry us
It’s a full cycle that comes back to worry us
The sins of our brothers and fathers
Scar and scare us
Until we Oedipus back to our mothers

Life is carried in wombs
But tainted wombs feed these tombs
Truly cursed be the ground
Tainted all around
Down to the roots underground
So riddle me this
Are the good women really all taken
And is there any hope for one of the forsaken?