Some messages are still to hard to swallow

I wrote a sort of manifesto poem when Peter offered the poetry class a prompt form a favorite poet of his (wouldn't you know, I saw his book yesterday and today forgot his name?). It was "I did/not follow the script". How could I resist? I didn't. The poem may not be a good one in poetic terms but it tells the story and ends with the lesson learned.  The story was discussed in class with recognition. No one actually remarked on the lesson -- I think they did not get it.  Truly revolutionary feminism is not in style, certainly not among our senior citizenry, which is the make up of the class, male and female.
But it seems to me the only way to end these horrible wars is for the women to be more active than those in Lysistrata -- to indeed kill the warrior when he returns victorious.

In parental exasperation my mother declared

“You’ll marry Kenny Craigmile

and be a farmer’s wife.”

In adolescent rage, I ran to my room --

I had learned not to make a scene --

I wrote in my diary, She understands

Nothing, Nothing! NOTHING!!!

Nor did I. I moved farther and farther away

From her and from Kenny Craigmile

But the script of gender, caste, education

Was strongly writ in the 1950s USA:

I succumbed, in my own way, to mating,

nesting, a little social climbing.

Educating myself beyond college courses

I discovered The Feminine Mystique,

Then wrote my first important script,

The End of the Teflon-Coated Life.

I struggled to write strong scripts –

to learn to make scenes; but I could not

Write scenes like men did. For them scenes

Came naturally loud, violent, profame

Or clever, contrived, intellectualized.

My heroine became Clytemnestra who,

Unlike patient, prevaricating Penelope,

Worked with her lover to ruled Mycenae

Well. She killed filicide Agamemnon

When he returned victorious from Troy.

She has been reviled these many millennia.

Men wrote the scripts about war and women.