Afghan Women

Is knowledge heresy or blasphemy?
Is education a crime?
Classroom text books do not need to be changed
Into a dying doctrine where progress disappears
in a puff of smoke.

An entire generation is in bondage,
sentenced to sacrifice, tied to
old visions, imprisoned in mental chains
as time winds backwards.

Must they worship in a religious cemetery
where dreams have died? Where a post-mortem
Is held on their future, where the years
pass unlived?

Walking through the ruins of their lives
a sound can be heard of careers crumbling
into a featureless future
they cannot own.

They are obsolete women,
out of date, out of time.
They carry their hopes
packed into a suitcase
so they are ready to live a full life again.

Somewhere else.

Alan Ford has been writing poetry for about a year and is interested in unusual subjects rather than traditional ones. His work has been published by literary magazines Down in the Dirt, Ariel Chart. Conclave, Blue Lake Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind and Scarlet Leaf Review, and Dissident Voice. His fiction books are The Himmler Contract, The Hitler Affair, The War Criminal, The St George Murders and the satires Nelson Mandela's Ghost and Elvis Presley's Ghost and Princess Diana's Ghost. Read other articles by Alan.