Mino

Mino          
         
My skin midnight in pitch to echo my panther's           
Hair tufted and coarse flows like the savannah           
For the Gods greet me with morning whispers           
Service and duty to my king is nestled in my womb          
The only seed I have ever known           
It is sacred          
Cherished            
Life affirming           
         
Men would take of me if they could           
But my eyes were never trained to succumb to their weaknesses           
Their vengeance is met with fury and turned to vexatious screams          
Their foolish appetites fed with their own blood and that of their brothers           
Their stubborn will reduced to a rotting carcass not fit for a jackal's pup          
They are defeated          
Beaten          
Sold           
         
My love is as delicate as any willow          
It's only protection the sinewy roots that beg at the Earth          
Taking from her blackened essence speckled with our ancestors' adulation           
and cowering remnants of fallen enemies          
These veins embedded in Mother are my sisters of the Mino          
We are warriors          
Conquerors          
Feared          
         
Our king gives us light and direction with each cockcrow          
Sun, when others only see the unknown          
Warmth, when others are trapped in the gelidness          
We attack even when we retreat           
He is our Emperor          
Father          
Kingdom          
         
I          
is          
We          
         
We          
are          
Mino          
       
     
Postscript: I bumped this because the female warriors of the upcoming film "The Black Panther" were based on these women.    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAxc4Dk7Vzg
   
(from http://www.badassoftheweek.com/dahomey.html  )    
     
The Dahomey or Mino Amazons    
     
"If soldiers go to war they should conquer or die."    
     
- Motto of the Dahomey Amazons    
     
The Dahomey (Mino) Amazons are the only documented all-female official front-line combat arms military unit in modern history. Tough, uber-intense asskicking women single-mindedly devoted to hardening themselves into ruthless instruments of battlefield destruction, these machete-wielding, musket-slinging lady terminators were rightly-feared throughout Western Africa for over 250 years, not only for their fanatical devotion to battle, but for their utter refusal to back down or retreat from any fight unless expressly ordered to do so by their king.    
   
If you were some poor conscript douchebag militia soldier hanging out around your barracks and you saw these scary-as-fuck kill-chicks suddenly start charging out of the woods in your direction, screaming their war chants with their muskets barking fire and their signature double-edged two-foot-long machetes brandished threateningly over their heads, you had one fleeting moment to overcome your crippling panic and defend yourself.    
   
Because if you failed to kill them – and I mean if you failed to kill every single last fucking one of them, some murderous woman was going to club you unconscious with a musket butt, drag you back to her capital, chop off your head with one swing of her machete, boil the skin off of your decapitated face, and then use your skull to decorate the royal palace.    
     
         
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons