AIN'T I A RAPIST?

Dare I not ask you the question if
A rapist you haven't been,
But when I recall my past, I doubt
If one have I not been--
By deeds of fact or fantasy,
Or excusing, or acquiescing;
If guilt is surely not my omitting
Or abetting?

'The Anthem' indicts me, 'The rapist is you.'
And humble do I oblige to the slur that's true;
In me resides the cannibalist pride,
But brazenly worship do I God inside!

Right from the cradle,

When I first heard the rape cries,
I panicked at their kind --
So different, so painful, and so ghastly 

That to ignorance I resign'd.
And heard have I those cries 

Echoing from thickets, and theaters, 

From motels, from malls;
In sadistic remakes and makes,
The sleaze big yet enthralls. 

Rapes never end and rapists never bend,
The bender being nowhere.
In the narcissistic confederate,
Every one is bizarre.
Behind the denouncing of 'predation',
I am a chauvinist,
And through the pimpish custom, I find
I've turn'd a masochist.

The moneyed throng the pleasure hubs,

in full glare,
That makes the other calm libidos

burst bare;
Hidden are we each in the disguise of a rebel --

A lethal sabotteur inside --

That we'll destroy others, ourselves as well.

Behind the glitter of the cronies,
There do grow the creatures in the swamps;

In the dungeon of the backwater
Are hiding the devils and vamps.
Buried are sisterhood, and humanity,
Social mores, and Divine Laws 

Under the savage lay;
And I am the rapist of the night and

The rapist of the day...
                                                        -- N P SAMAL