Woman Worship Poem by Kojo Owusu

To relent to the importunities
Of woman - bending like overburdened reed in a tempestuous river -swaying
Assailed by current ominous and yielding to delicate acts
Of sheer coquetry misconstrued as an adventure
Or show of the power of woman, her image and personality
Epitome of the wild influence and the dominance
Of her passions - the greatest errors and mistakes recorded
In the affairs of humankind are the futile and deadly misadventures
Of great men who stoop to the whims and caprice
Of women - who succumbed to their entangling embrace
And desired to explore their impenetrable labyrinth.
But a woman will always remain a metaphor -
Of a shadow - follow her she flies - go she follows
Matriarchy was and patriarchy - women were heroes
And still are - no blind subjection borne out
Of the egoism of the men folk and an error in judgment
Glimpses and poisonous misconception of their nature
As weak, delicate, bendable and maneuverable
At worst playthings at the mercy
Of fierce demi gods - the tyranny
Of man is at a dead end and women like goddesses
Will not tolerate gross display of impiety
Sacrilege in their sacred threshold.

The idols of the world will like to be adored.
Like jealous gods of old the least to wreak vengeance
Theories of equality hung like an albatross on their necks
And the streets resound with their pleas to reclaim their image
Long fallen into desuetude, to proclaim and announce
To a dungeon earth their freedom - what they are capable of doing
Which is legitimate?

What unrelenting passion pursues the lover, the man?
To bend in awe in obeisance and deify the woman
Singing songs glorious to her charms - the object
Of his idolatry and in amorous ecstasy render her reverence
Worshiping her very aura.

Then the next moment he boils with flaring anger, biases and prejudices
Uncouth, seethes with demented veneer, with a captor's ire, chain in hand to enslave?
To suppress his most complex exemplification
Of his nature reflective - to demean, denigrate and vent his
Wanton lust? Women as fallen - at once angels and devils
The slaves
Of men's wild thoughts
Of grandeur and power - idolized and demonized
The riddle continues.