Patriarchy
O Men! with your atrophied breasts
and treasured dangly bits,
still bitterly harbouring rage:
your arcane problem with Eve
that lives on, simmering, poisonous
full of Oedipal surliness with mothers, wives - all women-kind.
This, often disguised by patronage, your strutting plumes, crowing egos,
overbearing and violent arms.
Sometimes this is abetted by twisted matriarchal complicity,
compensating for their frustrations through spoilt brat sons
with the projected arrogance of filial supremacy;
wreaking gender-vengeance
for their macho racial fall
- and roots in women’s wombs.
Women became subservient:
derivative, appendage rib-clones,
enforced or of survival necessity
to safeguard their offspring, biding their time,
while knowing in the marrow of their bones
their primordial hegemony around the fire, in the cave or palace -
where they too abused their mandate:
their menfolk, reduced to sperm-bearers, eunuchs and guards
dispatched by knives in the back,
by scheming poisons and gossip
- she, downfalling from goddess to witch.
Now, Man also retains memory
of his own ancient humiliation, disempowered and used.
Eviction from the Garden.
The remnant urbane facade of manly honour and primacy,
his claimed alpha-male status is haunted and over-shadowed
by these ghostly echoes, plain to see today;
in the hang-overs, hang-ups and residues of gender disparity
evidentially worldwide.
As is evolving emergence of the androgynous new hominid.
Jan ‘23