FANNING THE FLAMES
I was heavy
Weighed down
And buried by Judgment
Unintentional but hurtful just the same
Expectations of who I should be
As a daughter
As a Catholic
As a wife
As a colleague
By men
Fearful, yet domineering
Oh, the irony
That your insecurity has fueled my power
Fed the tiny coals that the women in my life
Have protected
Fanned them into flames
Fed the fire in my belly
Ignited my strength and resolve
Given birth to my voice
I am woman.
I liberate myself.
Hear me thunder!
And growl, and rage, and shout
I will no longer be judged, dismissed, hidden—
or silenced.
I am not responsible
for the ache that blooms in others
when I place my name
above their expectations.
I have spent lifetimes
softening my voice,
shrinking my needs,
turning myself into a bridge
everyone could cross
while I remained unseen.
No more.
I refuse to apologize
for setting boundaries
where I once offered blood.
I refuse to carry guilt
that was never mine to hold.
My choosing myself
is not cruelty—
it is survival.
It is the long-delayed breath
of a woman who learned
that love without self-respect
is only a slow disappearance.
If my growth unsettles you,
let it.
If my no feels heavy,
place it down—
it was never meant to live in my hands.
I am allowed
to protect my peace,
to bloom without permission,
to walk away from rooms
where my silence was preferred
over my truth.
I choose myself
not to wound the world,
but to finally heal
the woman I abandoned
for far too long.
And that—
that is not selfishness.
That is coming home.
He says –
“Your place is in the kitchen,”
I say –
“My place is wherever
my thoughts can reach.
No curtain will confine me,
no wall will surround me.
My words will become swords,
my steps will rewrite history.
I have learned –
to fight without fear,
to live without bowing down,
and to turn dreams into reality.
I am not just a woman,
I am a revolution –
that neither time can halt
nor society’s chains restrain.”
Anita Solanki
everyone thinks yours is just another Eve story
the first woman
punished for desiring knowledge
and for disobedience
but people forget you were created by the gods
as a gift of revenge for men,
all beauty and mischief–
no, not ‘and’
but ‘therefore’:
it’s boring to be bait:
after a minimal amount of effort and imagination
to maximize god-given qualities
(the male sexual response being far from complex,
this was far from challenging)
what is there?
it’s not easy to be satisfied with attracting men
as a raison d’être–
so that’s why.
__
As a punishment for the possession of fire, Zeus ordered that a beautiful woman be made and given to mankind–she was named Pandora, ‘the gift of all’. Each of the gods had given her some quality that would prove ruinous to man. In one version, these ‘gifts’ were her incredible beauty, her goodness, and her youthful, shy, demeanour, which alone destroyed man for their power to distract and delight. In another version, the gods put the ‘gifts’ in a box and forbid her to open it.
Chloey was a concubine
By the time that she was nine
Gents who should have saved her
Said only she was mighty fine.
Feminist
and LGBTQ
and DisAbility
and All Colors and PolyCultures Deeply Matter
EarthViews
engage neuro-systemic
sacred felt natural reflections
inviting spiritual polytheistic
celebrations
Indigenously remembered
as clearly not
Straight White Predative Male
monotheistic worship
Rather
Left liberating responses
resisting AnthroPrivileged
unecologically
monoculturally rabid
Lack of polytheistic
indigenous wisdom
nurturing
naturing
nutritioning
sacred EarthCommons
Curious
compassionate
contextually circling
recycling
repurposing
reconnecting intelligence.
When Heard dared to question her partner,
men suited up in outraged armour.
Battling patriarchy,
this ‘feminist’ malarkey,
makes women prey and men the archer.
We do not listen
or learn,
sing
or dance easily
when we do not feel safe
When we are not sure we can trust
the voices not speaking and listening
with us,
but speaking over us,
around us,
against us,
beyond us,
without apparently caring about us
Our Lose/Lose
through Win/Lose
neurosystemic imaginations
are triggered by toxic anxieties
Trauma anticipations
infilling vast lands
and oceans
of omnipresent win/win uncertainty,
win/lose insanity
Reinforced by capital investment
and patriarchal LeftBrain dominance
in our would-be deeply green
sacred GaiaFeminist
compassionate listening
learning dialogue
in-between cooperative thought
and compassionate feelings
Longing for healthier
safer
more resonant
and resilient
educational support systems
Engendering the robust trust
that builds
and maintains healthy democratic
nonviolent communication
for restoring EarthJustice
inside/outside classrooms.
By men’s dismissing laughter challenged,
It being sheer insanity ignoring the lips-twisting thing:
Round-table talks on it speedily arranged,
No more sexual meetings with any man, no fling!
By the suckling of her infant measurably scared,
Because of its disfigurement of upstanding breast.
So, why her at all lecture, preachy lips insensibly bared,
Seeing that vanished could be the trust rest.
Ceaselessly warming up for her entitled presidency,
Very hard for her first tenure, her first-rate jewelry:
Any silly story of her electoral defeat to be fought with urgency,
If the winner dares dine with her, lethal weapon their cutlery.
To-the –core feminist
Always is angry with Man…
The Nasty, Nosy Animist,
Who could never be her fan…
And never could her outsmart with a pen.
Even with Ingratiating luck not on her side,
As now as she was then:
The one veritably ingenious but choosing to hide…
In deed, literally does bound forward-A laureates:
There was one I’d been reading-A poetess.
Have you seen,
or even felt,
an historical coincidence
between monotheism
and patriarchal theism
and competitive ChosenPeople
monoculturing control issues?
Have you heard
resonant compassioned languages
polyculturing herstoric redevelopment,
ego/polytheistic
nondualistic integral multi-regenerational experience
in-between cooperative ecomatriarchal green theists
and competitive multicultural EarthTribe Circles
thrivalist Ecological Interdependent Spirals
co-empowering multigenerational ReCycles
within co-operative
ego/eco-empowering
Left/Right-Economic Winging
singing bicameral
enlightening secular/sacred bipartisan
co-governance
And Win/Win co-investment
in sublimely divinely competitive
yet playful teams
and tribes
and local community opportunities
to avoid win/lose survivalist
patristic devolutionary risks
By embracing win/win thrivalist
ecofeminist revolutionary opportunities
to polyculturally embrace compassion
when we are at high pandemic
rabid fear and anger frisk.
O' Woman !
You are not some Damsel in Distress ,
And Surely no less than an Empress .
Never Let Patriarchy Wither your Madness,
Isn't it Minute for all the Life and Gladness ?
The time has come to awaken the Inner Goddess in You,
For the Audacity often comes out of the Blue.
Now You are Stronger after Surviving that Storm,
Unleash Your Inner Beast for now is the time to Perform.
Words as offensive weapons
dwell on ugliness of bad-humored life.
Words as effective tools
dwell on beauty and truth
of good-humored health,
empowerment,
love.
Yet, swords become plowshares.
Plowshares are repurposed as unwieldy swords.
Regenerative intent becomes degenerative chaos.
Degenerative discontent becomes regenerate
tipping points
within silent complexity.
Can words become weapons
for active peace?
And still tools
quietly feeling unresolved
in silent external/internal wars?
Between curious ancient communioned minds
and courageous ego-independent bodies,
Between original health-tooled womb
memories
And today's wealth-weaponed tidal means,
unsustained strength
yet resiliently flowing ways,
transparent patriarchal dissonance
revoicing maternal confluence,
empowering vulnerability;
revolutionary stillness
actively listening
between quiet health-wombed rememories.
Wisely employed wellness tools
for feminist well-being weapons;
cooperatively-managed words
for hearing beatific Truths,
re-seeing Ways,
rekindling communicating Lives;
Revolutionary politics,
awesome economics,
wondrous revitalization,
compassionate communion.
(for Virginia Woolf)
She wanted to buy some flowers but drowned Herself instead,
drifting along the ebbing flow of time, with warm
water cracking Her slim figure and airless lungs.
‘will I freeze the river?’ She thought, wondering if the trees
would still rustle in the wind if She wasn’t alive to notice it,
thinking if Her man’s heart would still beat if She could
no longer shock its rhythmical thump-thud-stop with kisses.
the wood was chopped down around Her home. The
veranda from which She surveyed the world was but
deafened by cruel hacking chopping and sawing at the
hands of men whom took Her feminine beauty away.
She became the water as She died, became the weeds,
became the bark that broke her own back, the pen and the phallus.
‘this isn’t purgatory’ She realised, ‘this is revenge and reward’.
‘I am a sacrifice to literature. I am a sacrifice for the word’.
from writer to death to glory to ink
to the lies under rocks uncovered,
to god to me to the taking of Her own life,
She is the paper in our very hands.
I am a woman
Just like other women
That speaks with sagacity
And encompasses understanding
Not only for self alone
But to other women as well.
When speaks, words are wise, and gives instructions with kindness.
I am a woman
Like all women
We are given a gift
Of tender touch
A caring heart to
our child or children ,
Those whom
We treated as our
Children ,
And people
Who are
Around us.
I am a woman
A woman clothed with
dignity strong, valiant and fearless,
Not afraid of challenges
Along the way
Because we have the
Spirit of brevity .
I am a woman
Equal strength
Of mind and skill.
I am a woman ,
Not just a woman,
But a woman
That a universe need
that completes
HUMANITY .
When I was small
My favorite color was blue
It was my first day
Of kindergarten
Proud to announce it
Only to realize
That blue
Was a "boy color"
The girls told me that
Just like their mothers
Told them the genders
Corresponding with colors...
But this is not about colors
This is about how
Each unshaved hair on my leg
Or shaved hair on yours
Is your choice, not society's
This is about how
Women should be comfortable
In their own skin
This is about how
Each and every girl
Should be able to feel
Comfortable
In public
Without a mask of makeup
Hiding their natural skin
We are facing society
Head on
Wether it has open arms for us
Or not
No longer do we care
About what society thinks of us
We are the rejects of middle school
We have broken out
Of our boxes
And traveled beyond the shelves
And do you know what we found?
An entire nation
Of diverse
Intelligent
Women
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.