This was written on the occasion of Martin Luther King's Birthday with respect to his historic speech in Washington.
There comes a time when women get tired
Yes, a woman does get tired
Tired like a Bengal tiger pacing back and forth at the zoo
Tired like the Mama Polar Bear swimming for hours trying to find a little piece of ice
Tired like the Gorilla running from explosions deep in the congo or the Queen Salmon swimmin' upstream to a dry bed.,
There comes a time when exhaustion is an improvement over her weary existence.
A time when sleep is yet another drudgery because her dreams have become nightmares
just a pause in the reality of daylight yet a fragmented imitation of the constant threat of violence and violation
A woman gets tired of the institutionalized degradation she faces simply because she has the physical form of the feminine.
Yes, she is tired. this is not only the struggle of an elderly neighbor, or the young girl studying in high school on our block,
but of a world wide epidemic that infects the very fabric of our woven existence.
It frays the careful stitching that provides the blanket of our lives.
A woman is tired of the unrelenting fist of poverty striking her pregnant belly.
A woman gets tired of being bought and sold, stolen from the life she deserves.
She is tired of being skewered and flayed at the rough hands of dangerous armies, she is tired of being thrown on the funeral pyre,
Stoned to death in the municipal stadium at halftime, yes, she is tired of being owned, possessed, enslaved by cruel husbands that shroud her in darkness even in the early morning light.
She holds a secret longing beneath of burqa that she will one day walk freely, dance in the street, sing out loud and adorn her silky flesh with satin and lace and declare
I am a Queen.
You will bow down for I am a Queen.
I am initiated as the maiden, go on to bare my children as the mother,
but before I am set before the hearth to cloak myself in memory.
I will claim sovereignty over me.
For I am a Queen.
The seasons have brought me to Brilliant Autumn of my life and I know that I have survived the lofty pain and sacrifice of childbirth.
Though much time has passed I will not be relegated to to your divorced, sexless, disease ridden, abyss.
Where I am called displaced,widowed, sentenced to an empty nest.
My nest is warm and feathered with the magnificient plumes of the Pheasant and even the down of the humble chicken
There are over 60 million women in America who are rowing in this same boat.
We are not priviledged by our color, or station, we remain subjective, objectified and judged by the carriage of our bosom beyond the quality of our mind or soul.
Yet together, We are the ones who will change the world.
We are ready to come together and outlaw the behavioral of Fraternities of a secret brotherhoods that would Rape a woman and then confine her in a shipping container and deny any wrongdoing
There will come a time when the WORD of all women will be heard even if they whisper from the highest mountain top.
Justice will strain her ears to listen and compensate for what cannot be compensated.
There will come a time, when a woman will no longer look over her shoulder in fear,
run for her life
hide her children
and she will rise to a stunning power
that is her birthright. For she is the Creator.
How do I know this?
because I am a queen.
I am a queen and I know that all women who have carried life in their wombs,
all women who have endured the loveless marriage,
all women who have raised children only to lose them to despair or the ravages of war,
all women who have suffered the loss of their own mother and father
who have separated from their husbands, who
have lost their jobs, or house, or a breast or her very womb.
have come to a time of life when they sit upon the thrown of experience,
of passion, of grief, of knowledge, understanding, forgiveness, of patience, of beauty beyond the recipe dispensed on the magazine racks of America.
Some may think this time is a Renassaince for women to excel in the marketplace, the opportunities our mothers would never dream of.
Yes, there is something within our reach though
It is not the happy meal of the corporation that we will feast upon,
but the poetry of our existence, the force of our very nature,
the sustenance of our organic harvest,
the laughter distilled of our tragedies and passionate pleasures that roll down our thighs like a mighty river after the damn has broken.
I am a Queen and I know that one day All Women will eat the true fruits of our labor leaving a taste fragrant and sweet
delighting our bitter tongues.
We will sit upon our thrones and bathe in respect and glory and be sanctified in the power That God almighty has granted us to give birth to a new day.
I am a Queen.
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