Selfometer Poems

Mothers-in-law

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Oldfield, Brenda M

Can a woman
Be made mute and, naïve?
By some un-sisterly pest
That barks to deceive

Blind, to the infliction,
Of grief and, bitter cries
Doomed to deflect,
The damned sinister lies,

Back to a mind, drooling
With some rancid sore
Its odour once ignored,
But now no more

For who can bear,
The belittling of their pain
Feelings denied
For personal gain

By a web woven,
To entrap and infuriate
A machine wheeling grief
Just to humiliate

Who are they?
To make us weep?
Have nightmares bleak,
So little sleep

Faces scored by tears,
Deviously drawn
By a witch’s dumb craft
Brewing spittle to scorn,

Whilst heaving hearts,
Objects to demean
Kindness forsaken,
Forgotten, so obscene,

Except dim keenness
For insular selves,
Hunting with snouts,
Like greedy she-wolves

Sucking veins dry
Of kinship, to then reign
With pure acidic claws,
Buried deep, within the brain

Just for being married
To someone’s son!
A condition of bondage
Deaf fiends have spun!