Rise up
my African Sisters
speak your truths
of intimacy and death
internal monopolizations of feeling desperately dark
suffocating
with hatred and fear and anger
about your man,
your brother
about your here and now lack of relationship.

Listen up
Islamic Sisters
to these Sisters of Perpetual Wisdom
of self-and-other emancipation:

Husband,
your intimacy and passions
fill me with emptiness and longing
rather than fertility and belonging.

Husband,
you treat your milk cows
and that lazy ass dog with all her pups
better than you treat me.

Brother,
your fascination with hatred
technologies of deadly anger,
your greed for Lose-Lose attention
and respect
replace your comprehension of dignity
and producing life-giving outcomes
to regenerate attention,
interest,
consciousness of positive values
within our ancient culture, spirit, religion,
passing forward to our children’s hope and faith
balancing life with death,
in cooperative favor and support
for this deep ecological love
of intimacy and respect
and mutual cooperative hospitality,
we call “Allah” together
co-messiahs
linked through time and space
of regenerating hope.

Sisters
speak your international
yet intimate truths
of good and evil
life and death
regeneration of abundantly warm feelings
and decompositional analysis
of where your young men go so astray
of what is Islamic-normative
to be fully human
to become a man
worthy of our Splendid Sisters.

Author’s note:

Perhaps it is just me, and, if so, then I am about to expose my embarrassingly remedial ignorance once again. But, ISIS and all the “Islamic” hatred and anger of which they have become iconic, feels like an overwhelmingly young to middle-aged male dominated late adolescent cultural gasp reacting against the comparative freedom and wisdom of  a cooperative and egalitarian society with emergent strong polycultural values, whether tribal, or nationally, or even religiously, labeled.

If so, then perhaps Islamic women will peacefully engage their own cooperative internal revolution, speaking honestly and bravely and truthfully to their brothers, even their husbands, but probably not their fathers. That could get a girl killed in some unfortunate places where Allah’s sense of inclusive faithfulness and solidarity as sacred Host feels climatically absent in this suffering time.