I.
I’m lookin’ for
my hard-headed woman, too, Cat.
The virtues strong, independent
not to be confused
infused with
stub.born or hard-nosed.
Known those, like your fancy dancers -
deal-break, faceslap breakup-dancers
miscarry misconceptions, electors for
both cake and fork,
insist no man walk beside.
Feminism without retrorockets.
That kind
of single-mother single-mind
in pockets; stones, slings
in those pretty pockets.
Irrefutably gruelling, choice or none
(I saw and grieved it in my sister) -
let. it. down.
Not just the hair.
II.
You are bold,
you are strong,
you are woman.
You might even be the phenomenal one; Maya’s
phenomenon.
An oral why-chromosome? tradition
handed down to ex-embryo
impressionable progeny.
Freedom from the shackles of Patriarchy;
modern mothers, crack-high on gender anarchy,
provide all -
including a knee in the nuts for
the would-be, desperately want-to-be
father, fucked by Family Courts
fraught and stung for visitation
or Parental Responsibility;
hung high by the testicles in vestibules
of the Goddess (She stirs! Be still).
✩
The overswing from centuries of sexist, double-standard, Patriarchal societal ethics and practices in the Western Hemisphere, since the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties/Seventies, has seen many swiftly (or pre-birth) estranged fathers having almost no rights at all regarding their own child, and are at the whim of the mother to decide if her kid needs a dad or not. Custody aside (not usually an issue with a small child), basic Visitation Rights are costly, time-consuming and emotionally traumatic to acquire, as is Parental Responsibility (PR). NOTE: I am speaking from the UK. (I gather the Law is not as biased in the US). Fathers-to-be are no longer stereotypically running a mile as soon as they get wind of the pregnancy; more often, I’ve witnessed headstrong young women actively severing the imminent family with a “We don’t need you” attitude. Yes, you do. That child has a right to a father, to spend time developing a relationship with him, to come to know that half of their bloodline (rather than find out about it later as a teen or adult, and need professional help dealing with psychological ramifications).
This is not an indictment of women generally, nor is it an endorsement, acceptance, or condonation of abusive or negligent men, fathers or otherwise. Like it or not, men are needed to keep the Human Race a going concern. Until a woman can play role of both mother and father in the life of a child, let alone evolve into self-fertilising androgyny, the male must retain role of father. Men have a duty. This is not to be invalidated in a man who is in earnest.
