A Song About Ourselves. Poem by Festus Okwekwe

I know, to a man
A woman is so many things,
It's the so-many-things I need to know.

Yesterday, I was a woman
Today, I am a tyre
Tomorrow, I may be a dessert.

You ask me:
Woman, what sort of a poetess are you?
Why do your images clash?

I answer you,
Man, why do you want to make me
A spare tyre
Put on when one is outworn?

To be torn and worn out too
In dry season
When drought wears
Your earth and thirst tears
Your throat?

Have you fixed your spare heart?
Why not spare head first?
Or replace your brain with its spare
Since every spare has a part.

Yesterday, I was a maid
Today, I am an old wrapper
Tomorrow, I may choose a bird.

You ask,
What is the link?

I answer,
Common, think!

Who would tell a bird not to fly
Because a butterfly is in the sky?
Does everyone not know his limit?

Why!
Don't you know
My wings are made to touch the sky;
Not to be folded under a foul-smelling armpit?

Tell me what I am to you
Before you turn me to an old wrapper
Lowered to bearing your burden, thereafter,
Pegged to a line of over-used garbs.

Yesterday, I was a girl
Today, I am not a lady; I am coffee
Tomorrow, I may be wine or water,
Anything but being.

Don't ask me the tricks,
I don't want to be
The sugared coffee on your table,
Stirred and sipped to stimulate your brain.

Or the dessert taken
After main course to aid digestion.
I am my mother's daughter,
Precious in the sight of my father.

I will shut you out
If you want to bottle me up and shut my mouth
Only to quench your thirst
In the absence of rain
Till the sun scorches you out of brain.

I will leave you, friend
Till you swim the ocean, end to end,
If it will make you
Respect me a little.