To the men who think,
Who think they are capable of thinking,
To them, I ask,
Do you see yourselves?
To have eyes and not to see,
To have a brain and not to think,
To have a voice and not to speak,
What a strange life it must be!
To the men who think,
Who think they are capable of thinking,
To them, I ask,
Do you see them?
The ones who created you?
Do you see their gift, their power?
Their patience, their bravery?
Their courage, their resilience?
You wander around in life,
Seeking the truth,
But when you speak it,
It is far from it,
For when you call it the truth,
You define them as relative to you.
You are but a pack of sheep,
Dressed in wolf’s clothing,
But if Aristotle said,
You are the norm,
And they are the departure,
Then it must be so.
For centuries and millennia,
You hunted while they gathered,
You tilled the soil while they raised you,
So today,
When you see the remains of a warrior,
You know it must be you,
For it could never be them.
You shaped the world after yourselves,
The ACs are too cold for them,
The shelves are too high for them,
The cars are too unsafe for them,
But if you are the only ones going out,
Then it does not matter.
You are thoughtful creatures,
Are you not?
So, when making those decisions,
Stamping those papers,
If nine out of ten are you,
And if you are the only ones going out,
Then it does not matter.
You are fair and just,
Are you not?
So you give them what is due,
By feasting on their bodies,
And fetishizing their voices,
For if they are the only ones to have them,
Then that is all that matters.
You are products of the Renaissance,
Are you not?
In the era of Enlightenment,
You let art blossom with your intellectual prowess,
While denying them their earnings,
Barring them from professions,
For if they were there to support you,
That is all that mattered.
So they drew, they composed,
And they wrote,
But only so,
You could mark them with your name while they were alive,
And you could mark them with your name after they were gone.
For if they were there to support you,
That is all that mattered.
Today, you enjoy your screen time,
Your mentions in papers,
In the print, in the media.
You enjoy your superheroes,
Your bold faces on banknotes,
Your statues and your sculptures,
For you are the ones who matter.
From the lands of ancient Greece,
You enjoy the fruits of democracy,
And when she is there to serve you,
It is only fair,
That you revert to the lives of those ancients,
Where she may not speak,
For you are the ones who matter.
You love fun and games, don’t you?
You say,
A little bit of wordplay never hurt anyone.
So for that air of mystery,
For that hint of an enigma,
You use man and guy,
Sometimes to mean male,
At other times, to mean all.
I like the games you love to play.
When Murray won Wimbledon,
You lauded him for ending a 77-year wait,
Forgetting the 77,
When Virginia Wade won it for you,
For you like to laud,
When it is you who wins.
You say the Americans never won at soccer,
Forgetting the four times,
When they won the World Cup for you.
You revolted when Marvel reinvented Thor as she,
But never batted an eyelid,
When he was turned into a frog.
For you like to laud,
When you get to play the hero, but never them.
You cast Sonic the Hedgehog after you,
In glorious blue, not their petite pink,
So you could revel in the glory,
Playing as one that takes after you,
But never as one that takes after them.
For you like to laud,
When you see one of you.
You are the scientists who move the world,
Discovering that sex is determined by chromosomes,
That the sun is made of hydrogen,
That the DNA consists of two chains,
For you like to appropriate what they find,
When they are only there to serve you.
You are the historians who define the world,
A world that revolves around you –
The artists, the athletes, the scientists,
The writers, the filmmakers, the musicians –
Everyone that is you.
For when she is there to serve you,
You are what moves the world,
You are the entity that defines itself,
And that is the world that matters.
But today, I ask you to open your eyes,
To the stories you told yourselves,
So you can think.
To the ways you deceive yourselves,
So you can speak.
To the ways you can redeem yourselves,
So you can live,
As a human,
Before it is too late.
You are the stars of the digital age,
Are you not?
Yet, of your sons, you ask Google,
Are they falling behind in school?
And of your daughters, you ask,
Are they becoming overweight? You fool!
You are both arrogant and a fool,
And it would not be unwise to call you a tool,
Tell me, did you ever really attend school?
Oh, but pardon me, my dear sir,
I got carried away there, dangerously far.
It was probably just the rhyme,
Tell me,
Would you like some tequila with lime?
Please accept my apology,
For I know I must be wrong.
I know you graduated Ivy League,
To wake up one day, proud and strong.
Your unfulfilled dreams,
Of them now remain just a few,
So you throw her some change,
When she graduates next to you.
With your t-shirts and slippers,
You announce yourself at work,
As if you were Pompeii,
Who just won a war.
You know that,
To the victor belongs the spoils,
So you hate it when your plans,
Life comes to foil.
For life is bad and life is sad,
When its simple joys are lost to a fad.
And it pains me to see your plight,
Your hopes and dreams,
Taking a flight,
When,
Between sandwiches,
Going for the habitual leak,
You ogle her with your eyes,
But see no lipstick.
I am sorry,
Does that make you laugh?
Fine, let us put that aside.
Let us be,
What you like to call,
Real.
Do you know,
In your fabulous West,
Where you talk of merit,
Where you talk of education,
Where you talk of grades,
That they fare better than you
In your schools,
In your colleges,
In your universities,
Everywhere?
Perhaps you know this,
And that is why you want to clip their wings,
So they can stay at home,
To raise more of you.
Because you need power,
And that is what you are after.
The kind of power
That helps you
Drown your insecurities
By picturing them around you
With buckets of earrings and lipsticks.
And that is all that matters.
But that is all that matters,
To you.
Think and look, before it is too late,
Before the sun hasn’t set on the horizon!
For to have eyes and not to see,
To have a brain and not to think,
To have a voice and not to speak,
What a strange life it must be!
And yet,
Both of you lead that life –
Yours, a self-imposed exile,
For you can’t bear to think,
Lest it alters your reality.
Theirs, an exile imposed by you,
For you can’t bear to see them think,
Lest it alters your reality.
Lift that exile!
Stop snatching their reality from them!
For if not,
Then you are nothing but an empty band of cowards,
Too afraid to step outside your wolfskins.
For what is to say,
It could suggest,
Who you really are?
A pack of pseudo-intellectuals?
Let not your wrongful entitlement speak,
Let not your ego deceive you,
Let not your pride make you swell,
Over the eras of oppression,
Of appropriation and subjugation.
For remember,
They are the ones that brought you here,
They are the reason you can breathe,
They are the reason you can think,
And they are the reason you can speak.
So step down from your high horse,
And catch yourself some dignity,
For each time you use your voice to suppress them,
Each time you use your eyes to feast on them,
Each time you use your power to reduce them,
You strip them of their dignity,
Stripping yours down to less than that of a human,
Let alone a man.
Stop before it is too late,
Before you take whatever little is left with them,
Before you reduce yourselves to vultures that scavenge and prey on the dead,
For that surely shall be the death of all –
Of you, and of them.
Stop before it is too late,
Before you reduce yourselves to soulless dementors,
And etch yourselves in the annals of his-story,
As a blot on humanity,
With nobody left to see.
Stop before it is too late,
Before you take yourselves down,
And take them down with you.
Instead,
Learn to see them fly,
Learn to help if you see them restrained,
Learn to fly with them.
Dedicated to all the women who shine, despite the world casting a dark shadow on them.
Written on a whim 