My Battles


They have played music for me
And asked me to dance
But then they put me here
In iron pants

Given me feathered wings
And pushed me to fly
Then put me in a cage
They don’t tell me why

I was told to sing
The song of the birds
And glide
With the grace of the swans

It was demanded that I
Taste the lush berries
Every last drop
Of reddened juice

But then they placed me
In the desert
Parched by the heat
My feathers, they wilt

But then they placed me
In a valley
Told me to climb my way
To the mountaintops

Let no man judge me
No one knows of my struggles
Let no woman envy me
No one knows of my battles

Copyright © 2014 C. JoyBell C. All rights reserved.


The poem above is written as an ode to one of the very first poems that really left its mark with me, the poem by Earnest Hemingway:


The Age Demanded
BY ERNEST M. HEMINGWAY

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.