Whispering Wall

We don’t leave because we’d rather be alive than dead, and we know if we run, you’ll come after us. You’ll come after us and kill our babies, too. Violence ought not to be so mundane as to be labelled domestic. Domesticity ought not to breed needless deaths. We have the vote now, we have our own bank accounts, and the right to a divorce, but we still walk home the long way, where there’s more light, keys ever-ready between white-knuckled fingers, no headphones in so we can hear you coming, texting our girlfriends as soon as we get inside and lock the doors…home safe…home safe…home safe…then we double-triple-check all the locks, the doors, the windows, the garage, the garden gate, set the morning alarm and keep an ear out for intruders. Is this agency? Watching what we wear, what we say, how we walk, how we talk, too loud…too quiet…laughing too much or just enough…pandering to prevent being noticed for all the wrong reasons…if our head as much as peeks above the parapet it will be wrenched away as a warning to others…always on trial, everywhere we are. Work, home, public, private, outside, inside…no reprieve from the potential for violence. Watching each other’s backs. Waiting for the call. Waiting for the next one of us to be hurt. Never knowing whether to stay or to run. Escaping just invites a new kind of hell. Surveillance. Stalking. Somehow they always find us, so we don’t leave. We don’t leave because you kill us when we do. You kill us. And you kill our babies, too.

Forensic Medical

Forced to wait eight hours because my blood alcohol level was too high

Eight hours without a shower

Eight hours without being touched

Lest we disturb any evidence

Then the backless gown

And the cold table

And the cop with a smirk

Gathering pieces of me in plastic bags

Each abrasion

Each bruise

Each angle

Photographed and logged for

A profile of what they call bad luck

And the questions

Again with the questions

What were you wearing?

What were you thinking?

Did you consider how much you were drinking?

While the doctor swabbed and sighed, I retorted

Why does that matter?

Who do they think they are?

How come they shaved my pubic hair?

Three hours of examination of my flesh

And for what?

A collection of samples, shelved

Along with my case

Nothing more than a holding pen for dust and absent justice

Victim Blaming

Meant to be dead but I woke up instead

Raped, transformed, livid

Rage drove me to the nearest police station

No shoes, no phone, no wallet

Just the change I scrounged together at the scene of the crime

And all they could say to me was that

I must have thought it was a good idea at the time

Should I Report or Nah?

Look, it’s up to you babe

Hopefully the police have changed their tune in the last decade, because when I reported, they made

Me out to be the villain

Saying that I had just had a bad night on the piss

Now I don’t know about you, but for me, a bad night on the piss

Doesn’t include a trip to a backwater cop shop

It’s more like waking up and finding the scent of vomit and hash in your hair

Or a headache

A bad night on the piss doesn’t ordinarily mean a rash all over my arms

A busted spine

Or bruises

Or crapping like a crackhead on a comedown

And checking my veins for needle marks, but

Look, it’s up to you babe

Hopefully the police have changed their tune in the last decade, because when I reported, they made

Me out to be the villain

Saying that I must have just had a bad night on the piss

verbosity kindles

brain-based scintillation delivers sweet sensation 

strumming in my lumbar spine: this man's got a mind 

sees through the outer bitch, awakens the inner fever pitch 

'til i forget about libation

...

this is punk rock dissertation

my kind of dirty (haiku x3)

filthy compassion

articulated in tune

with the fork in my 

 

tongue, taking turns to

shuffle, we share weekday blues

and choose magnetic

 

proximity, his 

fingers un-bundle curls of

smouldering humour

burgundy five hundred

kissing you

is salty-sweet

anticipatory not-yet-ness

it's a fingernail breaching

the nexus between plastic and

heavy, glossy vinyl

it's the freeze-frame electric

stillness before the stacks buzz

with sonic ecstasy

it's the breath in the ribcage

neither inhalation nor

exhalation, but both

kissing you

is popping candy

chased with an old fashioned