A Tribute to Maya Angelou

by | Mar 17, 2015 | Poetry | 0 comments

No one act in life
can dictate how life
is destined to be;
a true woman holds all the strings
to her own destiny—
she can pull them all at once,
change whenever she wants,
dance around the clock
to celebrate her femininity—
far from to be or not to be,
to be who she has chosen
is her everlasting legacy.

To learn to stand and fight
not when all at her command,
but when all oppose every cell
in her that yearns to be free.
Then she tells her story out loud;
no shame to have her bound,
no chains to hold that human—
nothing can stop her standing out
amidst all that biased crowd
of men judging women
for not being men,
and men they would not let them be;
of mighty men judging men
for not being mighty—
too many gods on the land;
too many to worship,
yet too few to pray for.
Reincarnated every day
from the blood and ashes of people burned,
forever interred in a multi-masked slavery
trying to catch up with that one day old tyrant,
a new emerges with gnawing teeth—
the monster just finds excuses to eat;
the greed of man is forever hungry.

It should have taken a god to change
what a mere woman did—
not to show off what she did deserve,
but to tell every woman man and child,
if they rise, the roof is the sky
if they don’t, gravity will bury them
along with all those who were satisfied
with right being torn apart
just to live,
with love and women commercialized
just to live,
with wrong being dressed like a king
for none dared to challenge it head on
and knock it down in the ring
with everybody out there to watch—
with a true voice and a woman’s strength
she brought down the beast,
put his reign to an end;
not to show off did she do it,
but to tell what every woman could do;
to tell every man and the generations to come,
each can take the reins of a life given to no one else—
the journey to the stars is simple
if you just fix your eyes up there long enough.

March 17, 2015

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