Patriarchy

One time, I was 15 and I was at the grocery store It was the summer before I was to become a sophomore I had heard some lore About the eyes of lust, sure But I had never actually experienced them before I went to the store Because I was bored And honestly I just wanted to add to my essential oil hoard So anyway It was laundry day And the only outfit that was clean Was a spaghetti strap shirt And some short summer shorts I mean, come on It was a Texas summer, what did you expect? Back to the story I walked into the store And there was this old man I want to say he was 40 or 50 Or maybe even more And he looked at me with those lustful eyes The ones that say "I want you as my prize" He looked me up Down And around And he licked his lips While he was staring right at me He looked me in the eye I felt like a deer in the headlights So vulnerable So afraid I wanted to scream and cry My mind drifted to my heart And my heart drifted To the boy that I was apart from That summer Who I'll admit I had feelings for He could have given that man A protective glare on my behalf A moment the two of us could look back on And laugh He could have sent that man Running for the hills Looking for windmills To use To meticulously chop himself up with But who am I kidding? For I am defenseless alone And this patriarchal society Is sadly my home One could say I was asking for it But was I really? That was the exact moment When it hit me Everything I do or say Can And will be Held against me And I hate to admit it But in this society I need a mate To protect me For the only way to fight the fire of lust Is with that same exact fire One could say that I'm wrong That I'm strong But they'd just be a liar For there is no way To inspire The primitive Masculine mind To change its ways For those ways Have been set Since the beginning of time Patriarchy Patriarchy All hail man For his way of ruling Is through his primitive desire for sex And through the desire of his hands To roam into your pants He'll go to great ends To justify his means And often times he won't disguise himself He doesn't care if he comes off As anything but clean But I mean Us women are merely cogs In the patriarchal machine We only exist To give men a higher esteem Apparently we only exist To cook And to clean And to gleam Like a sunset at all hours of the day Honest to God Who the fuck would want to live that way? Not that anybody cares My body was only created To be adorned In immodest clothing And big, Shiny Sparkly things But, here's the thing Nobody will listen to me I'll just be accused Of being a "Feminazi" But whatever I do In this fucked up society I will never be allowed To just be Who I was meant to be Without some jackass staring at me Dreaming of things Horrible things None of which are clean Don't act Like I don't know What it means The way his eyes gleamed Something awful The things he wanted to do to me Unlawful My question is Why can't I live my life full Without some asshole Thinking of me as an object An object he can command at his own will Something he can torment and it'll still be fine And still be pure Something he can buy at a store Oh wait That's where we were before