Do You See My Cage?

You stand before me with laughter in your eyes,

You are standing on the outside, and you don’t even realize.

You think I want to be here, you think it’s fun and games,

But this isn’t fun for me, I am forced to man this cage.

The red lights all around me, a window I stand in,

This tradition started years ago, but it wasn’t so honest then.

The men they ship away, to fight the foreign war,

They left women and children all alone, hungry and poor.

The women were lonely, they were very scared,

Disease and suffering were things they had to bear.

The area was easy for boats to come ashore,

As others had been doing to sell their goods and score.

The men were very lonely and had been living on the sea,

For many many months, and were again about to flee.

The lights once carried meaning, in this little channel land,

The white lights were for women selling goods with honest hands.

With red light you couldn’t truly see me,

It was to mask my poverty.

The red light shining on me was only my disguise,

Poverty is what I know, no makeup could I buy.

Malnourished and impoverished, the water that I drink,

Came from dirty infested canals, the “waste” is what you think.

Do you see my cage?

The story is quite still the same,

The district of red lights, an infamous name.

People travel from all the land to see me standing there,

Naked and enticing, enter with me if you dare.

You laugh and gather around as if it were a sight to see,
My family, I abandoned,

My name, no longer mine.

My identity and freedom,

Is something I cannot buy.

I dance for I am beaten,

I dance for I can’t hide.

They force me to this country,

I die if I don’t try.

You come and watch me, thinking it is fine,

You’d rather see me as a girl with nothing more to hide.

You gather all around me, flying in from distant shores,

But when you hear I’m from Hungary,

My story you ignore.

You’d rather not ask,

The things that you need to know.

For would you come and visit me,

If you knew I was 15 years old?

Would you feel more manly knowing I was tricked to come?

Enticing me with promises of dreams that are now undone.

Do you see my cage?

The red lights all around me, always shining strong,

Selling sex and using women is a battle old and long.

The criminals are winning, this is their territory,

For when they try to close it down,

They take the sex trade underground.

https://livingmygloballife.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/do-you-see-my-cage/