Rahab's Sisters - Poetry by Guy Graybill...

Rahab's Sisters

The Biblical accounts tell us that Rahab, a harlot of Jericho, hid and protected two Israelite spies in order to save her family from the coming destruction of the town. The names of the two spies went unrecorded; but, after about 3,300 years, Rahab's name lingers. Rahab is, then, one of the world's oldest, named prostitutes. Today, more than three millennia later, prostitution thrives. It remains a money-driven, exploitative, disease-spreading form of degradation and servitude, catering ever to lust; never to love.






Used by Permission from
Whimsy and Wry

Guy Graybill

I

Oh, dusky, Semite harlot,

Now dead three thousand years,

Too bad there are no ledgers,

That list your nameless peers.

II

But, Rahab, you're immortal,

Your name we'll always know.

You plied your trade by serving

The johns of Jericho

III

You saved two spies from capture,

Their names are long forgot.

But, you, Rahab, a strumpet

Have gained a heroine's slot.

IV

Was yours the first profession;

The oldest ever known?

Did it, with all its evils,

Spring from the earth, full blown?

V

While blowhards love to chortle,

They are but thoughtless 'simps'.

I say you were preceded

By 'mongers and by pimps!

VI

From tribes to modern nations,

In laws we put our trust;

Still, no decree yet written

Has moderated lust.

VII

Not all men paid for harlots.

Some priests of ancient lands,

Put whoring in the temples

To serve their own demands.

VIII

Old Sampson's head, thought Franklin,

Contained a mental gap;

Or else he'd not have laid it.

Upon a harlot's lap.

IX

How rare to see a harlot

Escape her life, obscene.

Remember Theodora?

From Courtesan to Queen.

X

When children joined a Crusade,

They reached a 'friendly' port.

The merchants there enslaved them,

To 'crusade' for men's sport.

XI

T'was England's second Charles

Kept two sluts to adore,

The one a comely Catholic,

Plus Nell, the "other whore!"

XII

Tho' Gladstone turned some strumpets

From your infernal trade,

It was as catching snowflakes;

The impact that he made.

XIII

Men, heartless and barbaric

Would comb the coastal ports;

Kidnapping doe-eyed daughters

Unhampered by the courts.

XIV

Mere youngsters joined the market

Their welfare was a sham.

Men sold them by the thousands,

To dens of old Siam.

XVI

Your maidenhead was shattered!

Your fate was understood.

You're damned to play the harlot

'Though years from womanhood.

XVII

We've harlots of the body

And harlots of the mind.

Should those who sell their genius

Condemn the other kind?

XVIII

The whoring found in movies

Is nothing but veneer.

Films love to highlight glamour;

While hiding filth and fear.

XIX

How can you face the mirror?

Your life is all charade;

As gaudy paint and pretense

Identify your trade.

XX

You offer, as a bonus,

While men are in your arms,

Some very crippling microbes

To those who buy your charms.

XXI

The conference halls were busy

With men who fought the trade;

But, busier the brothels

Where fortunes could be made.

XXII

Your sister in Chicago

Betrayed her trusting mate.

Her outfit? Gaudy crimson.

An ambush sealed his fate.

XXIII

How many of your sisters

Found poverty the trail

That led to their becoming

As objects stripped for sale?

XXIV

Someone within your circle

Can claim Hell's legacy.

Who was the whore or whoreson

Who caught the first V.D.?

XXV

Is not the old contagion ~

Alone with others, new ~

A risk with each new client;

For him, as well for you?

XXVI
Your body may be linking
A ghastly daisy chain.
From ancients it may carry
That first venereal strain

XXVII
Old fears were surely reasoned.
T'was hell for all unspared.
Those damned syph'litic horrors,
Your sisters got and shared.

XXVIII
You spread the vile infection,
As pebbles in the pond.
The microbes traveled quickly.
Your illness had no bond.

XXIX
Great freighters left the harbors
With goods for distant shores;
The crewmen harb'ring microbes
Obtained from dock-side whores.

XXX
The laws regarding strumpets
Reflected all we've feared.
For all the laws enacted,
Great forests disappeared.

XXXI
When macho men, with swagger,
Went hankerin' after whores,
You'd see upon each visage
The chancres and the sores.

XXXII
Of whoredom's dread diseases,
Don't ever claim you're free,
Since any new encounter
Must void the guarantee!

XXXIII
I've never had a chancre
Or ever had a sore;
And since I never want one,
I'd never hug a whore.

XXXIV
Do clients ever offer
A word of sympathy?
Is homage ever offered,
Beyond the strumpet's fee?

XXXV
Now, here's a valid statement;
A fact you can't ignore.
No matter what the statute,
A whore... is still a whore.

XXXVI
You are a walking leper,
Disease in you is rife.
T'will pass again, sans warning,
To some pathetic wife.

XXXVII
Do you suppress your sorrow,
While playing the coquette;
Yet, curse events that lured you
And fill you with regret?

XXXVIII
Disdain's concealed by smiling.
Your laughter maske contempt.
Dismiss him, oh, so quickly.
Another you must tempt.

XXXIX
Was ever there a trollop
Who welcomed each embrace?
I'd guess that every harlot,
Has suffered great disgrace?

XL
Your work inflames the lecher,
By daylight or by night.
In alley or in palace
You represent a blight!

XLI
'Tho many names you carry,
There's none suggesting praise,
You're 'trollop', 'slut' or 'strumpet'
Unto your final days.

XLII
I've seen a dozen versions
And then a dozen more.
But, none with favored meaning.
They all mean, simply 'whore'.

XLIII
They place you in a penthouse,
With 'call girl' as your name.
Your role remains unaltered.
You're whoring just the same.

XLIV
Yours is a heartless world,
Made meaner as you age.
You've never earned your value,
No matter what your wage.

XLV
Were you first hired for teasing;
But soon compelled to bed?
Were you once thought alluring;
But, now you're shunned, instead?

XLVI
One day you'll be abandoned.
You see this as the truth:
The pimp demands full service,
But only in your youth.

XLVII
Are you serenely happy
Attired in sultry mesh,
And serving nameless mongers
From Maine to Marakesh

XLVIII
Or do you join the chorus ~
The largest in the world ~
Though each one rendered voiceless;
In fear and hunger curled?

XLIX
Were you a camp-side hooker,
With Hay Street for your base?
Or did you work New Orleans

With syncopated grace?

L
Those men who lack compassion ~
Whose 'humor' is a hoax ~
Will relish making harlots
The victims of sick jokes.

LI
Your job is not to linger.
Each touch demands a price;
So take your fee and hustle.
Dismiss him in a trice.

LII
Do strumpets, with their talents, 
The stable marriage mar?
Do wives who harbor wisdom
Compete in home's boudoir?

LIII
Your dignity's abandoned
As you perform your chores;
But, none are so pathetic
As some old playboy's whores.

LIV
While I've no love for harlots,
The sisterhood of shame;
I also curse your clients,
Who fuel this heartless game.

LV
Regarding pimps and panders,
There's this that we must say;
Each one is ever sleasy,
Unto the present day!

LVI
For men who dislike women,
Bordellos are the place
To humble and demean them
To bully and debase.

LVII
Whores learn, through brutal treatment,
To yield and to obey.
All slaves aren't bound in shackles;
Some wear the negligee.

LVIII
How numberless your sisters,
Who shuddered and who cried!
How many were the helpless,
Who protested and died?

LIX
Sick men, who abhor women,
Will sell lost women to
Sick men who abhor women.
Immoral revenue!

LX
They number in the millions
These girls, whose lives are lost.
Through abject degradation;
Dead souls compound the cost.

LXI
The slaughtering of harlots
Gets very little time.
We rarely give it notice.
It's such a common crime.

LXII
You know that all who visit 
Don't seek the self-same thrill.
While some seek warm caresses,
A few are there to kill.

LXIII
The evidence of slaughter?
Their bodies or their bones,
On hills and farms and woodlands,
And bloody cobblestones.

LXIV
Sick lechers go on cruises,
Across the Asian sea,
To find defenseless children
Who are denied a plea.

LXV

Misogyny's abhorrent
It crafts an earthly hell,
Which goes beyond the brothel,
The home can serve as well.

LXVI
All pregnancy's unwelcome
In this most loveless sport.
We need to off the offspring.
Intrusions we'll abort.

LXVII
Which 'Johns' professed to love you?
Which claimed to hold you dear?
How much were you enamored
By Vincent's severed ear?

LXVIII
If I seem both condemning 
Yet saddened by your fate,
Please know your life's two sided,
So, I equivocate.

LXIX
Don't hope to tame the sadist
With wiles, or smiles you've worn,
Too many of your sisters
Will never see the morn!

LXX
One needs to damn the madam
Who hawks her sisters' skills.
Inspired by lust and money,
Enriched by callous thrills.

LXXI
How man fallen females ~
Whose work destroys all pride ~
Have tried in desperation,
Escape by suicide.

LXXII
Regard for ev'ry human;
A concept early taught.
How then can sex be sexy,
Coerced, or forced, or bought?

LXXIII
Just who and what protects you
From brutalizing wrath?
The next who pays your keeper
May be the psychopath!

LXXIV
In some lands, laws permit it,
The sale of human goods;
But, laws don't end the stigma
Of suffering sisterhoods.

LXXV
I cringe before the millions
Whose cries we won't admit;
Pulled, sobbing, from their childhood;
Hurled into whoredom's pit!

LXXVI
The British relished dunking
For witches, scolds, and whores;
Yet men who trade in trollops,
The universe ignores.

LXXVII
Although, for some I'm sorry;
For most I feel contempt.
I've never felt attraction.
From that, I've been exempt.

LXXVIII
Now think of all your sisters
Who hate the trade they ply.
Yet no one tries to free them
Or hear their muffled cry.

LXXIX
Their's is a silent chorus ~
The largest in the world ~
Since each is rendered voiceless,
In fear and hunger curled?

LXXX
The world's awash with females,
Whose lot they can't defy;
Whose cries are left, unheeded;
Whose tears will never dry.

LXXXI
With whores by gate or temple.
Or international mart,
The purity of races
Was blemished from the start.

LXXXII
Three crimes of wicked mankind
Stay ever in the fore:
The curse of wretched slavery,
Plus harlotry and war.

LXXXIII
Free women need a union ~
Of women tough as stones ~
To squeeze the tender scrotums
Of legislative drones!

http://www.cwfa.org/about/issues/sexual-exploitation/?

utm_source=google&utm_medium=grant&utm_campaign=exploitation

LXXXIV
When Nipponese went warring,
With bayonets and guns,
They kidnapped girls and women
To serve the empire's sons!

LXXXV
The records ever censored,
Of kidnapped females doomed
To brutal degradation,
In cheerless rooms entombed.

LXXXVI
"Were they confined to brothels,
Thus doubly damned by war?"
Not brothels, Ma'am; but rap'ries,
From Seoul to Singapore!

LXXXVII
All whoring brings depression;
It burns my tongue to say:
It's one more deathless hydra
That none will ever slay.

LXXXVIII
Throughout this wretched planet,
Great mobs should show their rage;
But, none hear muted harlots.
We've lesser wars to wage.

~~~

When I first read Whimsy and Wry as part of the whole book, it made an impression, but not a reference I wanted to emphasize as part of my review... But this is a topic that cannot be ignored and so I asked the author to allow me to use the entire poem with 88 stanzas!

I have purposely used pictures from the beginning time of Rahab up to the present... At my age, I have watched the evolution increase at least 100% from the type of childhood experience I had...and yes, there was a sexual component to it...

To me, Guy Graybill experienced the type of duality that all humans do when considering sexuality. There is both a light and dark side that exists... While it is clear that the author seeks an end to this, I am not so sure about his emphasis on the female as opposed to the men involved.

Take for instance, Bathsheba who was wanted by David...She had no choice, and of course, her husband was killed... As with David, the man who lusts very rarely has been openly ridiculed, jailed, or even acknowledged by name. The worst name is a "john"? What does that tell you as opposed to "whore?"

A john...is a john... has no such stigma as A whore...is a whore...

As a woman I have never accepted that it was the women who were "whores." As if we were the one who existed only to excite boys and men... Most of us who were abused early in life know for a fact that we did nothing to solicit such feelings or actions. We were exposed to something that was meant to be kept our own secrets until we chose to unveil them ourselves... 

Now there are women who look to the past and see how it has always been and they use their bodies for money. Can you really blame the female even now? For surely, another job would be preferred if they could make an equitable living as a man? Or is it just women now feel that what has been good for the goose is also good for the gander...? A sad commentary for everybody involved...

The extreme has been reached in today's world...Sex Trafficking is rampant!

I believe Graybill's "Rahab's Sisters" painfully and meticulously reveals the dichotomy that has faced the world since man and woman first saw each other. Had it been love and love only, then the world would have been a much different place... Or would it? I don't think any of us really now know the answer to what we see as a world which once used sex to express love and now is so obviously the expression for exploitation...

I thought it was ironic as I was looking for a closure to this long article to have a book trailer seem to speak for what I was thinking...May it bring some small amount of closure to you as well... Because there isn't...really...one...

Guy Graybill is the author of five published books: KEYSTONE, BRAVO!, PROHIBITION'S PRINCE, PRINCE AND THE PAUPERS and FROST!

Guy attended rural Pennsylvania schools and graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in History.

Guy Graybill worked in a Pennsylvania state capital mail room, in a brick plant, in the Geisinger Medical Center (Danville, PA) and in schools in Aguilar, Colorado (one year) and Loganton, Pennsylvania (two years). His career position was three decades in Middleburg, PA as a secondary History teacher. After retiring from Middleburg, he was elected to a four-year term as chairman of the board of commissioners of Snyder County.

Guy married his high-school sweetheart, Nancy Yerger. They have now been married for many decades and are the parents of four grown children.

Guy Graybill is proud of the support he has received from individuals who wrote the forewords to his books. They include a man who is now Budget Secretary to the governor of Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia opera singer, and a former speechwriter to five U.S. presidents.

Other than writing, Guy Graybill's hobbies include travel, amateur archaeology and photography. Guy has traveled in more than 40 of the U.S. states, as well as Japan, Okinawa, Canada and Guatemala. He conducted one local archaelogy project for the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial observance and his photographs have appeared on greetings, postal cards, and more than 100 covers of small magazines.

Current writing projects include two developing books that are growing within the computer. A book of poetry/commentary [WHIMSY AND WRY] is currently on the publisher's desk. That book includes many poems and bits of commentary.