DON’T TAME
ME
Don’t tame me
Don’t calm me down
Or seize my hand
To lead me down the middle ground.
You can’t tie up my tongue,
Domesticate me,
House break me,
Unagitate me.
I won’t make those ladlylike pursing of the lips.
Not when Syrian woman are screamin,
Not when Somalian children
Have legs the size of my thumb,
And not when soldiers return from war
With half a leg or half a brain
And families have no more heartbreak left.
Don’t try to stupefy me,
Google eye me buy me with your
Paris Hilton peep hole pumps,
Your age perfect hydrating serum,
Your faux fur stoles
And Dior perfumes.
Don’t tell me to shop til I drop
And “stifle it.”
Don’t talk to me about holy wars,
Not this old woman who has lived
Through all the wars to end all wars.
Count them Korea
Count them Vietnam
Count them Iraq
Count them Afghanistan
Count them the nuclear warheads,
The battleships the prisoners of war,
The widows weeping.
Count them the marches
And you told us to go home
And stop marching.
Count them the protests
And you told us to
Take home our overcharged and underpaid
Selves and give it a rest.
Well I won’t rest
And I won’t listen to your
Two-faced promises
Given in sound bytes
And I won’t quiet down
And I won’t go back to sleep.
--Ann Marie
Samson
Thank you, Rhea, for your kind thoughts. I do have another
poem inspired by “Speak White.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_White
That poem and its delivery brought up in me a whole lot of
feelings. I wrote this reponse all in one gush. Here it is.
How wonderful to have this support.
Ann Marie