Women in the Web by Kari Barge

 

Things have changed

We may not be burned at the stake

But we are forced to fake…

Ourselves.

                                                                                                                                                Fear of life, fear of love, fear of death.

We are all a fucking mess.

My sweet sister died last March from a drug addiction.

Until you’ve experienced the heartache, the reality, the sickness

Its all just fiction.

 

Scholars bringing it into discourse

With their analytical frameworks

Quantifying the stories seems to dilute the remorse.

And then you are going to compact it all neatly into a course.

Did you cover your checklist for the academic jargon?

Face down, ass up that’s the dialect for those women who

May or may not want to get fucked.

 

Oh im sorry, do you want my language to be more discreet?

Please let me sensor myself for those who have never lived with life of the streets.

Systemized oppression, aggression, which is all about

Monopolizing fate for the privy to move with the succession.

 

What if there was someone that faced the experiences of the streets

But still fit the criteria your academic whirlpool

Of discourses likes to meet?

That’s me.

I’m finally free from the pain this colonial empire put me through

So here…let me unpack it for you.

 

When a girl is born into a world

Where with sexual molestation

She could be the one in four.

That’s just one form of abuse, theres so so much more.

What is at the core?

 The insidious mental abuse

That our systems bequeath to us

Through forms of juxtaposition

About what being female should mean to us

 

If you’re not sexy, you’re not an asset to this society

But if you wear that and bend over you’re sacrificing your dignity.

 

Try walking as a vulnerable woman that isn’t protected.

Why aren’t we protected?

Why are aboriginal women more likely to get molested?

 

You see, when you have no one to vouch

For your sanity, the social services treat you like a disease.

Maybe your family is all alcoholics

So they think they can get away with treating you like garbage.

No one to say hey that’s my daughter.

If no one else is treating her with respect than why should we?

Please remind me what is the meaning of being free?

 

I know because it’s been tried and tested

So maybe this poem is a little bit of a confession.

My anthropological research began when I was one,

When an RCMP Staff Sergeant wouldn’t let my dad see me and then raped my mom.

This organization that beholds safety for its citizens and yet they protect their own when they fail to withhold from the biggest of sins

You think they treat women of 2016 any better?

 Sorry to seem like an anarchist but this has been a reality for most of my forever.

 

Do you think women that are vulnerable can really trust the very systems that fail us?

We fall through the cracks whenever we don’t fit the mold they used to scale us.

I’m sorry to say but the doctors aren’t any better

Writing prescriptions for paychecks because they blame the person

It’s like spraying the garden with poison and then blaming the weather.

 

How about an emotional juxtaposition for you, I hope it sticks.

When women are raising in solidarity for feminist movements

But theyre using the methods of the man’s tricks.

When a woman is respected by spectrum of strength and aggression.

Because we are told if we listen to our emotions

We will all be labeled with depression.

Why wouldn’t we weep for our cultures decline?

The disconnection from nature and the divine.

It’s pretty serious, it just happened to rhyme.
Where was I?

Oh…an emotional juxtaposition women are forced to walk with.

We better pump you full of air but don’t you dare queff.

What does she mean by that, she’s talking street trash again.

OH well I didn’t come here to make friends.

I came here to tell you the issues you wanted to discuss

I’ve lived it all, just try and call my bluff.

I wont blush, because my whole life I’ve been hushed.

The air is the hatred, the violence, the makeshift acts of solutions that ain’t shit.

While the queff is the outpouring of needs that don’t stop piling up.

Are you keeping up with me or do I need to tell you another story?

A 14 year old girl is told to sit in this classroom and listen when

She just needs to cry but this stranger of a teacher

Just has to follow a scribe.

She’s only at school because she needs to hide

She stopped eating so maybe she can eat herself from the inside.

Then she starts to become a target for those on the outside.

Outside of those social parameters of people

Who are supposed to protect you.

But shes fallen through the cracks to the

Last people she would want to catch you.

 

Human trafficking doesn’t happen here right?

Why don’t you ask this woman in your clear sight?

Being sold as a virgin and then saved

by the same people that didn’t protect my mom when she was raped.

Now that’s the reality of juxtaposition ive had to face

Can you show me the places where the safety of women can truly fit in?

Hasn’t there always been a mission after a mission?

We have yet to cover spiritual juxtaposition.

When you are encouraged to follow your heart,

And yet taught

That your heart wants all the things that are store bought.

Then when you’re ready to sort out your life and find spiritual guidance,

You are preached to that it somehow lies outside of you.

 You need a middleman, someone that you have to rely on that’s credible.

Rather than trusting yourself, you have to trust the bible.

Or another scripture that promises the ultimate fixer.

Please mister

Can’t you see, that I was whole before I was 3?

But then it was this society that crumbled me to my knees.

So why cant you let me go back to that space, with grace

 Within myself so that I can heal from all that affected me?

Restitution of the self is being in the environment needed to heal from the inside out.

What women need is a place to just be. And be proud. Loud.

And not afraid to step outside of conformity

Sacred acts of contempt formulating a new creed.

Being against the grain, is the only way to be freed.

Because normal people within a sick society

Are sick people, indeed.

So what does that say for those that don’t fit in the mess?

I hope this poem can make you guess,

or second guess.

To see how you situate yourself, amongst the rest.