For you, sir, who thinks you have any sort of say over what my body does or does not want to do.

In the Womb
(For those with a penchant for ludicrous laws over my body)
Dubai,
16/01/2012

Hey you,
yes you, with that smirk on your lost face,
that beard you hide behind
those eyes of yours shrunk like whatever manhood remains
that manhood you think
can be inflated at my expense,
yes you, you
with the preaching
and your hemlock words
all that insidious pretentious posturing of wisdom you drape like a
sodden halo around your tired sense of self,
you think anything can stop my rampant galloping body?

Hey you,
yes you with the temper tantrum and the clenched fists,
you with the turgid failure that penetrates nothing but spaces of rape,
yes you, with your holy books
stained with putrid bigotry,
yes you,
you with your weeping failure of a mother,
and silent father, and your sons, faced glazed over with loss,
and daughters too pummeled to speak,
you with bank accounts as fraudulent security,
your nepotistic presidents as ammunition,
and guns as loudspeakers chanting faith,
and what you decree as heresy,
You,
you with your idolatry and persecution,
living on myths of what your ilk considered history,
consider this. Consider it at length, and with fear,
and finality.

My body can croon children to sleep,
to laughter,
to satisfied bellies of ecstasy,
can tumble through serene mountain slopes to rivers angry,
can jaunt across all the mental spheres you don’t notice
in your hurry, in your business suit, in
your pathetic finery,
can tell the world of love only glimpsed at in your stale heartbeat,
can tell time, and space and the angels to write poetry,
before banishing all that to
relegated abandoned memory,
can sing,
can dance like the moon never stopped rising,
like the water never dried,
like melody never had to stop pulsating,
like fruit hung off my tongue at every crossroad
of thighs, thrashing,
this body can thrust and yield,
can donate life and
can eradicate it,
can careen off the stars to land on your lips,
foolishly whimpering,
while I entwine the trees in my fingers,
my palms from heaven,
a rhapsody,
this body can conjugate verbs,
differentiate math equations and understand
biochemistry,
can bark orders at will, and embrace for eternity all disciples,
this body can run,
and swim,
and offer a thousand strokes of a smile,
healing medicine and witchery,
can laugh till all thunder dies down,
and can storm a lightening love wail to drown all our misery,
can reach across the table and hold the hand of a friend bereft,
can sew, and stitch all the places ravaged by lunacy,
can dream up constellations and sink to ocean depths of
harmony,
can revise all your sciences to a single snapshot of
the face of
mothers baking cookies,
and can inscribe political slogans of anger you
dare not even formulate, no matter
the savagery, the battery, the tyranny.

Hey you,
YES
you clamping to your skin what you may think is the word
NO
To all my unrepentant sluttery
sisterly
motherly
womanly bravery
all my effusive Arab prowess and seductive history,
you, you who may think
shackles become me,
or modesty,
or invisible self inflicted misogyny,
you who doubt that I can smear war paint
on my eyelids
at every bar in town,
slam dunk sentences of reprieving answers to
every cunning attempt,
every violating treachery,
you who think I cannot find my way home in the dark,
brandishing battle scars and
flourishing integrity,
yes you,
listen,
from your apathy,
snap open your slothful slumber and
barge a battering ram into your patriarchy,
fuck it,
send it slinked to a wormhole of contempt,
and our collective mockery.

This body,
my body,
was sculpted for months in a miracle in my
mother’s body,
was breathed out in a moment of sanctity,
was embraced for decades by her matriarchy,

how the fuck do you ever deign to suppose you can harness me.

Had you met my
mother, you
would bow your head in respect,
relinquish arms,
retreat,
sunken so called masculinity between useless limbs,
your terror arrested,
your decrees of lawful honor nothing more than
ancient tales
of useless
insane
banality.
Yes, you,
you
you aflush with that murderous lack of bravery.