I'd Change Rape

If I could change the hungry stares

The way they look at her

Like a bag of meat

Good enough to eat

Good enough to chew out and then

Good enough to throw out

I’d change that all in a heartbeat

 

If I could change the fate

Of a girl who goes walking out late

Who then never returns home

Because of some man’s lusty hate

You wouldn’t need to give me a due date

I’d change that fate

Justice

Served on a plate.

 

If I could walk alone at night

Myself, a girl of 5”1, go walking out at night

It’d be so sweet

So sweet to have that right

I wouldn’t have to worry

Wouldn’t have to fear a rapist’s smite

I’d be free

Equality

Taken to a new height

 

They say things like “Don’t provoke men

With your spaghetti straps and short shorts.”

What are men, then?

Animals we need to put in a pen?

I can get slut-shamed by society’s priest

But I can’t get protection from the real beast?

 

See a man can control himself

I'm not hating on men

But society likes to blame the victim

People are lazy

They say “She must have done something

to make him rape her -- she’s crazy!”

Because according to some

The line between yes and no is “hazy.”

 

“She’s a whore, she deserved it”

What the public doesn’t know is

That’s she was a virgin, she reserved it

For a special man

Not a sinful man

“She’s a slut, she deserved it”

 

What I would change

What I would stop

Is the way we treat girls.

You can’t buy them at a shop

They aren’t objects for you to buy.

You don’t look with a hand, you look with an eye.

 

I would stop rape

And give every girl who’s been through it and lived

A big, red, superhero cape

The angels sent down by cold-hearted preacher

An angel so lost you can’t even reach her

She deserves so much more

But we call her a whore

Tell her that in her future

There’s nothing in store.

 

I would take rape

             Make it so old, so done

             That it’d be a VHS tape

 I wish I didn’t have to live in fear

  Wonder if tomorrow I’ll still be here

If we didn’t live in the shadow of a man’s lust

That would be a world so true and just

 

If I could stop rape, this awful crime

I would change it on a dime

So that way I wouldn’t have to see these girls in their prime

Be brought down by the worst kind of slime

I’m not about to sit here and become a silent mime

Afraid to to tell, afraid to chime



We cover society’s victims with a drape

And they play along

Covering every scar and scrape

It’d seem like the victims have no escape

From their abusers and from their “so-called” protector

Both of which take the girl and slut-sham, yell, and lecture

When what we ought to do is learn to respect her

 

What we need to do is

Get rid of the ape

That thinks that it can just tape

Shattered emotions back together like a broken string

The ape that takes the shape of a heroic man in a cape

If I could change one thing

I’d change rape.





 

 



 

 

 

 

 

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