Misogyny

What dread and madness
twist the hearts of men
that they should torture
their mothers, sisters, wives?

Helpless love
becomes vicious hatred,
Lust becomes
the urge to crush and kill....

O, you majesties,
you darlings,
you worthless cunts,
you whores....
-humiliation,
punishment,
death!

Over aeons and millennia
through cataclysms
and the death of empires
after every revolution
political
philosophical
scientific
still it is here
with us
within us

Amazonomachy
everywhere in Athens
on temples and vases and drinking bowls
the male warrior with sword raised
hauling a woman off her horse by the hair
stabbing and clubbing her to death
as her tunic slips
to expose a breast
and her short skirt rides up to reveal her thighs

Baby girls abandoned
on the rubbish dumps of classical Athens
to die of starvation
or be raised as prostitutes
while Aristotle sits writing
of women’s inferiority

O, Messalina
whoring herself in Juvenal’s mind
as he thrashes his horrified lust
into furious verses
and under the arches of the Coliseum
after the Games
while blood oozes from the gladiators’ bodies
prostitutes service the excited fans

Yahweh
smelling blood
broods on his next revenge
against the lawbreakers
the sinners

And in the Jewish ghettoes
the women are stripped naked
and driven through the streets
with riflebutts and jeers