You
someone else’s rapist
lean back in client chair
shadows of survivors indented behind
it is difficult
not to want to hurl you from that sacred place
screaming; You do not have the right! Haven’t you possessed enough flesh and soul?
I place one hand over the other, as if I am
wearing plastic gloves and submerging them in
hot dish-water, doing some kind of
domestic yoga move
instead of drinking or cursing or rising up with sword.
You are physically attractive, it might make people ask
why do you need to rape? Just like they ask; Why would he rape her?
Why did she wear that short skirt? All sorts of wrong-headed pronouncements
cluttering our throats with ire.
I have seen how women write, to prisoners like you
fascinated by the ‘bad boy,’ even marrying you
you, who would chop them into little red
pieces and eat them, if they only
could find a decent frying pan.
Maybe it is like having a tiger behind a cage
his heaving, ancient, lustrous fur, intoxicating sanity.
I do not pretend to understand
although I know we are strange, muddled creatures
the mechanisms of desire, who is to judge?
The one who wishes to be urinated on, beaten
savagely, tied up and left for dead, or
marry Ted Bundy on a Tuesday?
There are surely, limits, I think, as you
boldly express your hyperbole repentance
and I silently disbelieve your every word.
I am thinking; It’s therapy like this rotten apple, looking shiny on the outside,
that is dismal and false, chewing out the center of our profession
where sociopaths play with
good intentioned rules like
greedy children with plastic building blocks.
I have no doubt, if you were truly
alone with me and not
an emergency button away
hanging loosely from my slender neck
you’d bite me until my skin became
a map of welts and hurt, leaving a necklace of rose blooms, then
drive yourself through me like an
arrow, I will never forget the piercing of
and whilst you feel your pleasure in lies
I am disgusted that I have to bear witness
to your play acting, as surely no woman living
should have to hear anything you have to say
ever again.
There are times, being who I am
isn’t what I want and
I’d rather peal off this weary ‘caring’ suit
wear red tights with a monacle and no bra
drink peach schnapes at mid-day with one olive
my legs flung over afghan sofa
fingers pushing lovers between my legs.
But we become who we are, and I am
the psychotherapist who must at ten am see
rapists
as they abuse the system the way they
butchered women’s bodies
tasting the scars like livid memories
on their ugly thin lips of denial and delight.
I don’t ask you why you did it
I know as well as you, and do not want
to hear your false apologies, you are no more
repentant than the lion, who having eaten his
fill, will sit in the sun sated, licking his thick fur
clean.
I want to apologize to the women
I shall see later on
who inherit this contaminated ghost-world chair
though I clean it after you have left
your stink remains in my mind
as your poisonous choices infiltrate this supposed sanctuary
and I feel your hands on me like glue, as if you were not
slouching in front of me, but pealing
your clothes off and rushing your terror
in my face.
We are after all, only
a thin surface of respectability in a
hidden gleaming jungle of pretense,
if the lights were to dim
if the others forgot I was working late
one day, you’d quietly like a lynx, lock my door
and cut me to pieces with the
hatred in your emptied eyes.
I know, you see, what it feels like to have
a dagger thrust through your body, filled with damage
a mind of repulsion, set on repeat
the disgust creatures like you, leave women like me
to deal with, deep in our Kintsugi psyches.
This is why I sit here, knowing if I
turn you down, I lose my job , yet aware you will not
from me, receive favor or even, compassion
I do not have any.
I would, if I could
turn violence against you
damn you to torment yourself
but, I suspect that will happen one day
when you drop your soap, in the cinder-block showers.
if that makes me Old Testament
I’m okay with that
you see, I never signed up for victimhood
I carry a knife in my loose sleeve
longer than your worst horrors
you are deficient in your belief
you are still a menace, we have
already begun the war, you have already fallen
to our rebuke
if I’m judged for this, I will remind people
choices leave scars, as hunters do
and we who survive
will turn our scars outward
never again
let ourselves be lost
to the predator who thinks
he can outwit the deer
Gandhi said; An eye for an eye leaves
the whole world blind,
I have learned, I can see
in the dark.
Although there were so many great poems in SMITTEN to choose from, “Please like girls” by Clementine, took me back to the early years of discovering my sexuality. Each time I met girls who got my attention, there was this feeling of mystery surrounding our interactions, and it was hard to talk openly about desires.
