The Women Lay

The women lay on the sheets, like strawberry pink polythene

Trembling on a pavement with dust, trembling on a puddle

Trembling on the gutter with a stench of sour rust and then

Flying away to another world of ceaseless, intense blight

To be picked up and thrust back into the circle of being

Plastic, dead, but strong beyond the grasp of putrefaction, elastic.

The women lay along the window sills, yellow sunflowers straining

Petals towards golden lights, away and further away from the brown core

That’s bound to spread its wings, a hawk roosting to devour life

And to savor it till its gluttony has oozed away in fatigued pleasure

Like copulating dogs panting delight in biting off the bitch’s flesh

To plant a pain that taints a body and paints a life in vain.

The women lay with their backs on the floor, their eyes on the ceiling

As clouds tempted their vision towards a paralysis of reality,

Magic and blues, their eyelids never closed like counterfeit Barbies

They never let a sound escape from between their chipped, faded pouts

The same well-curved smile they wore and dyed them anew

In scarlet, orange, maroon but mostly in some violet shade.

The women lay with silent stings, clutched the gash between

Tolerant banana thighs, all wings were clipped, their breath lost way

Among meandering sighs, and soundless blood that leaked

Hidden inside an unresolved bandage of rainbows, stars and polythene

As the women lay with vacant eyes, and prayed for bail from motherhood

All the same they understood, the wound is meant to be evergreen.