What Men WantBy Khakjaan Wessington
"My honest belief was that if I didn't do something they would continue to die."
-Scott Roeder
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60S4UB20100129
The ancient women, wise with feral ways,
Passed matrilineal traditions down
From ape to human—knowing men could slay,
With lust, their daughters. Deaths wore bridal gowns
Before connubial beds became their graves
So brewing remedies these mothers saved
All humankind. Resentful, men thought slaves
Were made of them. He mastered war and raved
Against his mother—burning her to ash.
Denounced as midwife: now we call her witch.
Their wives and daughters—mothers died—the clash
Of sexes won. Thus Woman, made a 'bitch,'
To breed and grieve perhaps before the next.
The men would prise the fruit, more sons, from wombs
That rarely lasted forty years. But text
Reflected changing norms. In time, this grooms
A kinder sort of man who seeks a peer—
If only theoretically. Rights,
If slowly, catch the rhetoric—so dear
To many—bringing new and awful blights.
I think I know this killer's thoughts, this guy
Who shot that Kansas doc. He felt betrayed
By fellow man: resolved to make him die
And eased his guilt with Bible quotes. Unswayed,
The jury found enough to lock him up.
A shame, because a woman now, receives
In joy or rage a life from carnal tup
That soon awaits abortionist's coarse sieves;
Because she knows she really wants what men
Desire. To lust and grow and kill and feel—
Not nothing—just flushing. She wants what men
Desire: to fuck and kill and never heal;
To harvest death for medicines and soups
Or trashed in plastic bags in cans on stoops.
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