Day 5: Shakespeare's High School Poetry About A Woman

All writers and poets have jotted down something they find many years later and think, “I can’t believe I actually wrote this crap” as they’re locked inside the bathroom burning the inferior work in the bathtub.

Shakespeare probably was the exception to this phenomenon, as he was unbelievably brilliant, but maybe he began with mediocre work when he was younger. It makes me think there just might be hope for some greatness in my future writing career.

So every week I’ll be exploring a different type of poetry by writing a poem in a different style to enrich my own work, which I can only hope somewhat resembles the kind of stuff Shakespeare would have written in high school.

I'll be starting off simple - with a haiku. This three-lined Japanese style of poetry is typically about simple, everyday events with themes that range from nature to feelings and experiences. This compact poem's first and third lines contain five syllables and the second line contains seven, and it doesn't rhyme.

This poem is about a man in my life who I never thought would, or even could, say the following four words to me in a degrading, sexist way during a conversation about gender roles in a relationship: "'cause you're a woman."

He said this to a woman who owned and proudly wore a T-shirt in high school which read "Yeah! I run like a girl, I punch like a girl, and I throw like a girl 'cause girls kick butt!" So after I heard those four words, I heard nothing else other than my own voice screaming something along the lines of "Wait, wait, wait and RE.WIND. What did you just say?" before defending my gender until my voice was hoarse. This was a fight I will always refuse to back down from.

So I could stew about this or I could take the phrase "'cause you're a woman" and flip it around to be a positive. Sure, I am a woman who could be wearing makeup from a compact or grease from an oil can. I could be donning a skimpy dress or oversized coveralls. And could be found either fixing dinner or fixing a leaky faucet.

I am a woman. And I am damn proud of it.


Hear Me Roar

Cook, clean, and do chores
Working at home after work
'Cause I'm a woman