Violentia

Smattercrash, the glass left your hand,
projectile at the cooker – and, turning round, your twisted
grin, that ‘see’, that resignation of the slim corners
of the mouth, that marrying look, that moving
speckled slant of light
---
And again, I didn’t see it coming, as just talking, a kind of talking,
my wrists resting over the rim of the stillness of the steering wheel,
trying to float on smooth psycho-
sea, the knuckles in the face, left-hand smash; it’s
not the nerve pain, at glasses driven
into nose bridge, bone ridge, that will stay,
it’s
the shattering of space, presence, sane assumption
---
That other time, the blows landed like mortar shocks
on back of cranium, head-back, and my asking ‘why?’, ‘why?’
‘why do it?’ in dull repetition & irregularity matching the strikes,
and the smile that walked itself away and
turned with gleam prospect of one more strike-chill
in the ringing dome, abstaining,
as the innocent watch, bare-faced,
as ashenfoot tombs
---
That time, each time,
stringing back, driven down, hammered down, from
openness and presence of
mind
---
when
I open the door to me and look in, I see,
I see myself in self-reflection back in shards,
dancer crowded in with shin splints.
You can only make sense of a button as you refrain,
rebrain, as head down, acquiescent
to your noose of pain-strain, feeling
on another – another sea.
No scope for beauty ... now, not now. Just staccato
and inner garbling, silent beat of drum,
and waiting till the gentle man visits in your sleep and you have the dream,
the dream to leave, the dream
to be gone.

I pass no blame, I simply surface
as I survive; I know that anger, delivered, is the spirit’s haphazard cry and only
the abused abuse; evil
is not a word I use; eve’l is bad etymology; all
abuse is psycho … logical. It’s hard, if not impossible,
to do this … well. Though, it must be done,
for me, however hard the glisten and strike, the fight-
back may be ...