tithe Every cent is spent tearing foreign families apart by their limbs Playing with the world like a cat with a ball of yarn Every official is caught up in paper headlines, second clips on a feed Clips of Freudian slips that couldn’t possibly be real A tithe that we fought to be free of A man with a minor child The gun and bullets The weaponized crimes A world free of male fear The teenage girls, the new ads An Earth rampaged by men Their words affecting Something of the sort A girl scared of her father Every patriarchal take is a lifelong vendetta Dangling freedom, equality in the faces of children Every debate runs circles around the real issues Still, the soap opera they claim we become is running The white man, a hard drive Money and fancy lawyers The price, a plastic box The lock on virginity The protestors, the shame, silence The past, the court cases It’s international news A lighting strike, pause Another school shooting God forbid we ever care This isn’t real, the robots must’ve created it This is filled with tension Some ancestral rage is deep inside me And I grab on and embrace it This is some radical, “woke” take I am only delivering it This isn’t some publicist’ statement This is real, come on and face it A symbol, God, religion again Unattainable politics A kiss, a “no”, his response “I don’t care what you want” Violence and sharp nails, I’m the siren in your lungs The heavy air, discomfort God, won’t you face it? A girl, a boy, confusion Prejudice runs away from it Just lift me up Just keep in mind And I’ll show you what’s higher