A Poem a Day (617): Woman paraded naked

 
Woman paraded naked
 
Stark headlines tilt sideways, rip ragged,
papers strewn waste in the sharpening rain.
Letters slide, seek a silenced escape,
a way out, an alternative way of being.
 
Dragged out, stripped, paraded naked,
tied to a telegraph pole and beaten to a bruise.
A mother. Red and blue. Red and blue. Red and blue.
Tears awash in our rain. We hurtle through.
 
The rescue party, we arrive too late by hours,
stand agape. A simmer of men eye the spectacle,
the debacle, the sex that causes such offence.
We are the few who disagree.
 
Her only son eloped before his wedding night,
so someone had to pay. Someone female. The mother.
She is the visible invisible, now safe, blanketed,
but trauma digs at the contours of her face.
.
It’s 4am. Someone blew the whistle.
A police officer who watched is suspended.
In the hospital, all is quiet. The walls bristle,
heavy with the weight of history. Female souls.
 
It permeates the corrugated roof. We watch it sag.
The rain sketches ever-increasing circles of light years.
The mother stares at the wall, seeks understanding,
but it stares back blankly. No words can explain.
 
All this water will never wash this foul shame away.
Her husband insisted they had not known,
their son had kept this other love a secret, hidden.
His lover flew her own gilded cage by night.
 
Outside, the men still loiter in the soiled street,
their uncorked outrage clouding the void.
The crowd will have scattered by mid-morning,
but history has already chalked them in.
 
This was an ‘inhuman act’, the authorities said,
gave the mother land, part of this country owned by man.
But this land had turned on her in her hour of need.
It had not forgiven her for being a woman.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 27, 2023

 
 
I read about this incident on the BBC News today. Here, I have pasted part of the article:
 
“Cases involving assault of women are always under-reported because of shame. Families don’t come forward because it’s a matter of honour and the system does not support the survivors or give them a safe space to report these crimes,” says lawyer and rights activist Sukriti Chauhan.
 
In the National Crime Records Bureau database, disrobing is recorded under a broad description called “assault with intent to outrage [a woman’s] modesty”, which clubs the crime with cases of street harassment, sexual gestures, voyeurism and stalking. Last year, 83,344 such cases were recorded, with 85,300 affected women.
 
Link to story: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-67769453

A Poem a Day (616): The walk

 
The walk 

A cutting wind blows us in two,
peels back the edge of a buttercup carpet.
 
Olive stalks sway, fan this sunbathed land.
We hold nature at arm’s length, picture it
 
through a cold lens, frame it, silence it
when it needs to yell out loud and be released.
 
Slide your bare feet through the warm mud,
churning rivers between your toes. Sienna drips,
 
seeps down this canvas; fuel for the soul,
a gathering, a grounding for the city type.
 
We flit between our own flimsy self-images,
echoes of our childhood shadowed mirror-play.
 
Gnarly branches seek to press our stiff backs forward
down leafy, ground-out trails and grown-over mazes
 
into damp, mossy nooks and crooks of watery pearl,
these crumbling granite walls so cool to our fingertips.
 
Crows lift in a circling cloud and in the far view a single tree
stands statue-still, sketched in hollow against the light.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023

Little brainstorms (2-minute poems)

If you fancy writing some fiction or poetry, or reading other people's, head over to JD Mader's website, 2minutesgo... 

Some little brainstorms... 

 
1 THE MESSENGER
 
In the gust
dust swells, panic caught,
misses a cue in the line.
 
A tumbleweed plays,
scrawls out your name
in the dirt,
 
leaves a memory
imprinted that neither one of us
wishes to recall.
 
I watch it skirt the road,
free, feeling it knows I’m right here,
just waiting for it to leave.
 
 

2 IN THE HOUR
 
Wait on pause,
take a trip,
think it out,
delay the plan,
relate the way,
time it completely wrong,
say it in song,
say it isn’t right.
 
You can choose the date
or pretend to lose.
 
We fathom the night
in the close of day.
These are the hands
that wound the clock,
and clocking out,
they forgot to pray.
 
 

3 FREEFALL
 
It’s a freefall,
endless. We are inclined
to be as we ever were,
without pretence,
No disguise.
No more than three words.
 
We are as the land wishes,
as the trees grieve,
as the ground breathes.
And nothing echoes aloud
except that which burned before,
ever here,
always now,
despite the years
flown
by.
 

 
4 MINDS
 
In the mind of the other
we are one. As we might be,
as we might see, and be here,
waiting, knowing, seeing,
as calm as a blackbird.

 
 
5 ELFIN FORESTS
 
Elfin forests,
crystal clear streams,
an endless dream of being,
where the twig-strewn ground breathes
in summer’s sway, where our feet tread,
sink into earth, just resting.
We are breath. We are here. We be.
 

 
6 THE CATCH
 
In the unsung song we hear
the passing of a thought, a treasured
heart, a memory. The thing that fell foul,
the betrayal, the slip, the echo
of the abject thing. The bird caught,
the tripwire; this endless rebegin.
And we are heard sliding.
Here, there is no catch word,
no rail, no mat.
We are falling. And we are free.
 
 

7 SINKING
 
In the morrow we will begin,
counting numbers,
drawing circles with our fingers.
This sand sinks, scuppers,
water fills. It’s a cue to bury it all,
seal it over, never
to be found.
 

 
8 THE ANCIENTS
 
The ancients stand tall,
stretch stone arms to the sky.
We are small. Astounded.
Can only stare up at the moon,
its sound rays crowning them,
the earth gathering dust.
 
 

9 SERENADE
 
A moonlight serenade
without harp or drum,
no voice, no harm, no motion.
Only quiet. And light. And devotion.
In this setting we are might,
we are ever, we are chosen.
Seated, the same. Just bones.
 

 
10 THE APPLECART
 
The applecart. Rocked. Smoked. Out.
The whodunnit. The mystery. 
Seeing all, he fans flames to the sky,
listens, draws a picture, imagines ruin.
It feeds it out, off the scale,
watches the burn.
 

 
11 LIKE BATS
 
Shadows mock the living,
line the roads for the forgotten,
the lost, the fragmented.
There once was water here.
Now there is an absence of it.
Where there was flow all is still.
In the moonlight, jagged bats flit,
avoid the cage drawing near.

 
12 REPEAT

Echoes.
In the walls.
Beneath sound.
Without a wakening.
They wander out,
forsaken.
They wander in
with a newfound thing.
Here is breath.
Without echo.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 10, 2023
 
 

A four-letter word

I first published this poem on here on March 31. It's an issue that should always be spoken about and never swept under the carpet. Men, women and children are raped or sexually assaulted every day - while you are reading this. Most people don't speak out. Most cases never get to a court room, and once they do, most do not end in a conviction. Around the world, the statistics are shocking (see below). Rape is also used as a weapon during war. It's all about taking a person's power away, and crushing and humiliating them, and depriving them of dignity. 

A four-letter word

RAPE.
A four-letter word.
A small word, easy to ignore,
easy to hide in the cracks in the system,
too easy to look away from, skim over.
 
The statistics tell us how it is:
one in four women,
one in six children,
one in eighteen men.
About 70,633 reports in 2022,
and that’s just in the UK.
 
We’re talking 736 million women around the world.
I repeat: 736 million sometime in their lifetime.
Can we visualise that number?
Can you see all their individual faces?
 
The number of charges show how many victims
are being failed. The sheer number tells us
something is wrong – they’re not being heard.
And these are the ones who spoke out,
who were brave enough to say ‘this happened’.
Their voices are being lost on paper.
 
Education is needed. Protection is needed.
People need to feel safer walking the streets,
going to sleep under their own roof,
just going about their daily lives.
Is that too much to ask?
I guess that’s too much to ask.
 
A victim reporting a rape needs support,
action and subsequent follow-up,
not to be turned away, given excuses.
A friend is still waiting, years later,
yet they said he might be a serial offender.
I wonder what he’s doing now.
 
We reported a flasher once, as girls.
Followed us home, darted out from the bushes,
he knew the direction we would take,
waited for us and started to masturbate
right outside the door we were meant to enter.
Did he expect us to clap? We reported it,
sat through an interview, and nothing.
We wondered if he did anything worse.
 
RAPE.
A four-letter word.
The most offensive four-letter word
in the English language – and you might
have thought I was gonna say c***.
 
More cases need to arrive in court,
more offenders should be brought to account,
or rape becomes a way of life for some,
a living prison for others. The perpetrators
go free, walk around, even do it again,
leaving the victims hurt and afraid.
 
Even the word victim is wrong:
it removes all power from the person,
places them in a position of weakness,
steals their confidence and identity away –
they’re the person the crime was done to
when the offender had no right to do it.
 
Survivor is the better word:
the person who was strong enough to go on,
who picked up all the scattered pieces
and tried to continue despite it all,
even knowing nothing was being done
in this now more dangerous world.
 
Some are too ashamed or scared to speak,
thinking they will be blamed or disbelieved,
better to be quiet, pretend it didn’t happen,
when it is the offender who should be ashamed.
 
It’s time men and women stood up and said no, 
there is no place for rape in society.
Survivors need to join hands around the world,
so their voices become the loudest argument heard.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, March 31, 2023

The statistics 

According to Rape Crisis, these are the statistics in the UK:
1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult;
1 in 6 children have been sexually abused;
1 in 18 men have been raped or sexually assaulted as an adult.

The highest number of rapes within a 12-month period was recorded by police in the year ending Sept 2022 as 70,633. Over that same period, only 2,616 rape cases went to court.

In 2021, only 1 in 100 rapes recorded by police resulted in a charge that same year.

This is a drop in the ocean compared with the figures globally. According to the United Nations, an estimated 736 million women (almost 1 in 3) have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence or both at least once in their life.

Rape is used as a weapon of war, power, control and subjugation. In a resolution adopted in 2008, the UN Security Council affirmed that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide.”

A Poem a Day (615): Trio

 
Trio
 
In flight.
A curve, like palms reaching,
plucking clouds from the skies.
 
In bloom.
Soft silk shivers, pollen stalks stiffen,
a red carpet spreads for the bees.
 
On stage.
The beaten side of moon tips,
leaks a silver-speckled wand’ring.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (614): Shimmer

 
Shimmer 

Stars echo, glitteration, speaking of night,
scant decorations of light, a distant pose.
 
All heaviness slinks, a sea breeze in curve,
cerulean salt pleasures seep into the abyss.
 
On the horizon an echo of being shimmers,
the ebb of a fresh page being turned.
 
A solitary yacht cuts this hazy line,
glides left to right, breaking waves,
 
imagines time on pause for a second,
lost on an island shore, sand grit shifted.
 
Within this move the endless is as it ever was,
the being of everything on rhythmic revolve.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (613): Shift

 
Shift
 
Beyond today, out of tomorrow,
kind ruminations, a pagent sings,
discrete buds of purple light reinvited,
here, where the crocodiles glide.
 
Shapes flit and shapes glit,
and the moon turns a-sideways
upon the rise and fall, a graduation
of silver, an envelope reopening.
 
Here, naked feet sink and slide,
in and out, deep into the travelling sand,
hiding and revealing in constant rhythm,
this even flow watched by the yawning dawn.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, December 2, 2023

A Poem a Day (612): Dust

 
Dust
 
We are one,
but we are not everything.
We are part, unwhole, redrawn,
eclipsed by night.
 
This is how we bear it,
restride and untie, this walk
back into soundless oblivion.
Turn out the light.
 
We can’t wear it.
Disheveled, the weight drags.
And dust-moted morning breathes
an eternity away.

Copyright September 29, 2023