I think, just to liven things up a bit, I'll show a recent poem. It's
about the self and such-like crap.
The Angel
In that city, the police
are magically proactive
in the matter of domestic abuse. So that when
a suspect abandons
his and his alleged victim's
yelling to answer the door, and sets
his sweating face in the put-upon
virtue or haplessness
that served in the past, he finds only
observant sternness
above the entering uniforms.
Who do they think they are?
They are of the same social class
as I, he thinks (if they are), or,
if he is higher, expects
respect. But behind the policemen come
impassive, hilarious, censorious neighbors.
If the scene is underclass,
the suspect half-expects them;
if a mansion or Mcmansion,
the cops will have brought an improvised
community. The procedure
is drawn from some underclass countries,
shame-cultures indifferent to privacy. Now
the cops approach the victim
who depending on status sobs
and tries to hide her bruises or,
half-rising from bloody rubbish, flaunts them
and screams, "Take that fucker away!"
In either case the gentle address
is the same: "It's only going to get worse, ma'am …
we're taking him away."
If, however, the perp
in custody wasn't a beater,
or even a very effective
stalker, or drawn by specific jealousy
to defy with threats and pounding
the restraining order
but only by the belief
that he can't live without her
(or them) - that her leaving
will literally kill him - he
sits on a steel chair
beyond a steel table
till his breathing slows
and the room registers.
And the affect of the detective
who enters is neither
bad cop nor good cop,
shrink, priest, or father;
rather grey, disarming,
yet new and alarming.
If the perp must still discharge
obscenity, bluster,
claims of incomprehension,
or nonsense about a lawyer,
the cop waits it out
and only then speaks:
"Whether or not you can live
without her isn't the question.
What can't be forgiven
(and why you must do time)
is that you never signed
a bond with your death
to underwrite affection.
No heart secure
in that contract is easily broken."
The voice, so at one
with the hum of the precinct, seems
barely to have spoken
yet the accused impossibly seeks a self to adopt;
where now is manliness
without apathy, anger,
or even meekness?
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