picture the perfect proletariat family

except it’s the twenty-first century

not the eighteenth or the twentieth

when mama goes to work

papa stays home

cos papa broke one

too many wrong bones

you raise a little girl like that

the mother doesn’t show up

the grandmother is dead

at least the men in the family

took care of that gap

so when the girl plays

it’s guns, bombs, Indiana Jones

fighting, just prone

to never being a girl

to be rescued, but one

to rescue the dumbs

from their ignorance

because this girl was no girl at all

she had a male-centric life

living within male-centric walls

she dressed like a man

talked like a man

walked like a man

hell the girl thought like a man

just she was smarter, went farther

than any regular man

maybe because nothing

tightened her pants

or maybe because if all girls

were told

they can do

as much as a man

as well as a man

just like a man

maybe then

the male-centric cubicle walls

trapping such girls would fall

and this wouldn’t be one girl

but all

or maybe,

maybe it is the girl’s fault

maybe the girl saw men

as the perpetrator

not as the one who’s catcalled

maybe, the girl thought, if she

looks like a man

smells like a man

acts like a man

she’s respected by them

then her nickname in class

won’t be bitch, puta, shermuta

but rather something cooler

she’d have no rulers

she’d make her own rules

she’d be ridding herself from her woes

no more getting the blues

hitting your queues

skipping the clues

cutting womanhood at its roots

fuck the prudes

that’s what a man would do

break through society’s morals

forget how it started

this is how it follows

and that just makes you wonder

why does this body matter

more than what we have under

because the truth so far yonder

was victim of slaughter, of plunder

no number could possibly amount

for the millions of boys and girls

in this world

who have lost their dignities

and their rightful opportunities

for the sake of policies

or theodicies, commodities

made by men.

because being tough

sounds better than being human.