UNTIL THE SMIRKS ARE WIPED FROM MEN’S FACES                                    

On social media, a video
showing nervous teenage Indian girls,
disembarking from a bus to take part
in a demonstration condemning rape,
speedily surrounded by teenage boys,
smirking, every last one of them smirking,
keen to tease with irrelevant debate. 

“Do you think it’s all right,” bellows their spokesman,
“for a girl to go to a cinema
with a boy not of her own family?”
Chorus of approval from his buddies,
still smirking, pressing ever closer.

“Is it right,” counters one girl, defiantly,
“for rape to occur in any circumstance,
even at the hands of a relative?”

“It doesn’t happen like that,” bawl the boys,
widening those smirks, shoving nearer yet,
not admitting that it DOES happen,
as they won’t, neither here in India,
or in countless societies worldwide
where the masculine sex is conditioned
to act according to…