A poem by Dorcas Agbogun


 

Dorcas Agbogun currently lives in Nigeria, her home country, she is a very recent graduate of Mass Communication at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. She is a writer across many forms and many of her work is themed on liberating women.

 


Our world continues to be governed by a macho system which presents itself as natural and therefore unquestionable and invariably a just process. It depends on the sustaining of this ideology as popular to thrive.

A dangerous woman is one who reneges on loyalty to the standards and expectations of the patriarchal society, becoming a threat and danger to its existing system.

 

DANGEROUS IS NOT SAFE

 

Be Safe; be weak

You’ll do just fine!

Be the fancy; the prim

Well, that’s mine!

Draw the curtains; lock the doors

Stay in!

 

But what am I?

Evil? No good?

What is to fear?

Myself?

 

A thousand pictures

Distorted images

Slivers off a shattered mirror

What you are? Or what you’re told to be?

 

An iron curtain

But around her mind

Chains

But inside her head

The Macho

He’s Mr. Jailer

He’s the Jury

The sentence

The gaolterm

He’s the charges made.

 

He said:

She’s evil

She’s no good

She’s to be feared

Even by herself.

 

Like a scolded child

Face to the wall

The curtains drawn

Door locked

Stayed-in

Now, she’s safe.

 

A voice calls

Someone’s at the door

I can’t open, it’s locked

– Of course you can; you locked it yourself

But I’m safe this way

– Who said you’re meant to be safe?

 

Back and forth

And back and forth

To heed the stranger?

Or hide from danger?

 

For the first time

She pulls open the door

The illusions defragment

Like pieces of a jigsaw.

 

Be safe? No.

Dangerous is who she truly is

Trojan to the Macho organism

Threat to its system

Untamed by its customs

Nor existing on its terms.

 

 

Featured image: Windows by Simon Matzinger on Flickr, used under CC-BY-2.0 license.