Deserving of Justice

I am no big fan of the death penalty. I think poor people get executed and rich people get away with it. DNA testing has proved we were about to execute some people innocent of the crime they were set to die for. I am appalled that we could be so wrong.

If we have the death penalty and are going to use it, we need to have some rules for who, when and in what cases we use it. If the rule is that we don't impose the death penalty for any crime where someone was not killed, then so be it. I think that is a reasonable way of thinking.

Our Supreme Court has overruled the use of the death penalty for perpetrators of child rape. They are concerned that we should not use capital punishment for anything other than when a victim is killed.

Oh, except for treason and terrorism and ....

Talk to a 5 year old who has been ripped open by a man whose penis is as big as her forearm. That, Big Nine, is treasonous and terroristic.

I have no problem with putting down the kind of animal who would do that. I can't imagine why anyone else would.

My Whole Life

How I Prepared for a Poetry Reading
Domestic Violence Awareness Month, 2007

Crying in bed
Was just practice
for the tears they shed.

Dodging bullets was a drill
for weaving through a crowd
to stand before the one woman
I know wants to say something
but may not have the feet to walk.

I ate too much then for comfort.
I can work the room to dispense some,
skipping the cheese and crackers.

Worrying that he would kill us this time
prepared me to take into consideration
the fragile soul who is here somewhere.
I look around the room as I speak
and I spot her.

She is why I am here,
why after the journaling and the therapy
and the hunting for a peaceful spot
to live out the life I have created that
I came out three times this month
to speak before a crowd,
not my favorite Saturday pastime.

She does not write poetry
or hides it at home if she does.
People think she is ok.
She is a great employee.
She brings cake to the sick.
She laughs like anyone else,
but inside there is a crime scene
where soul murder has taken place.

See right there, the fast swallowing,
her eyebrows flicker when I talk about his hands.
She won’t fidget, but I see.
I know the signs from the inside out.

She is why I am here.
My whole life has prepared me
to speak to her.
Despite it all, I made it here,
loud mouth intact, still laughing,
thriving in my chosen spot,
never afraid to lay my head.
It was almost worth it.
Today, here, safe and whole
I can see there is more healing to do
and it is not mine this time.

The Woman in the Parking Lot
After Poetry Therapy

I can’t say
the things you say,
but they are true for me.

I had an un…
The words catch in her throat.

I had an uncle, too.
I don’t know how you do it.
Don’t stop, we need you.

And bright tears spill
out of her
onto the asphalt.

Can I hug you?

Always ask if they don’t.
Always ask.
Because they were tampered with,
bothered, touched, hurt,
all the euphemisms for soul murder,
so ask first.

And I do hug her and she
smells like hope and fear,
feels like promise and despair.

She will be skittish now.
She has said what she has not
to anyone else alive.
(three of us in this secret now)
I will be her first.

Don’t stop. We need you.

I do it for me and for you,
you know.
Once I couldn’t speak

but I wrote poems, lots of poems.
You keep writing, too.

Bad Daddy, Big Daddy

They say you were a wonderful man.
Dead at 53,
leaving a wife and
children.

Do they count the 5-year-old
you were flying to meet?
So sweet of you
to bring her a doll,
to teach her maybe,
the ways of a baby explorer,
since you have "done it plenty."

"always gentle and loving;
not to worry;
no damage ever;
no rough stuff ever;
I only like it soft and nice"

Pillar of the community,
Coach,
Assitant U S Attorney,
lover of children,
I commend you into the hands of GOD,
who also loves children.

**************

"A federal prosecutor charged with traveling from Florida to Michigan to have sex with a 5-year-old girl committed suicide on Friday in prison, his lawyer said.

At the time of his arrest, the authorities said, Mr. Atchison, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., was carrying a Dora the Explorer doll, hoop earrings and petroleum jelly." NY Times

The NY Times Article

North West Florida Daily News

The Criminal Complaint

The Indictment

Why I am a Better Victim's Advocate Than You are a Mother

What did you think when I told you
that he pushed aside my child's size 4 underwear
in order to plunge his man's size 9 hand into me?

Were you humming to yourself,
distracted by the ingredients to
some cake you were about to bake?

How long did you study on the facts
before you pushed them to the back
of your mind,
"I wish I didn't know that."

Did you think I would relent some day
and allow you to talk of him in chipper voice
as my daughter and I sat at your table
eating bowls of ice cream?

And when she had grown to a woman
and you did speak of him in pretty tones,
did you know she would shake her head
and hold me as I cried,
apologizing to me as though
she were the mommy?

How many miles have you traveled with him
in the same car on trips to see relatives
whose own little girls were in danger of his
special kind of love?

What in the hell were you thinking?

Did the years you spent letting Daddy
rain terror down on our heads
inure you to the pain in my guts
as I told you your brother is a child molester?

Because for the life of me,
for the very sanity of me,
I cannot imagine doing the same.

I want to be your little girl,
but you make it difficult
to shell peas on your porch
or make coffee in your kitchen
knowing you may one day go too far
and, against my one rule,
bring him face to face with me.

I have tummy aches at holidays
knowing you will let slip bits of information
about him
like other mothers drop hints
about presents.

So instead of the safety of your arms
I seek the voice of those who have
their own Uncle Mike
or have struggled under a gag
as a stranger has laid them bare
because when I listen, it goes like this...

First, I say I am sorry that this has happened.

Then I tell her that she didn't deserve it,
no matter what,
no matter where,
no matter who.

And I smile a little,
because it is not funny,
but no one deserves to see a frowning face
when they tell you about their rape.

I hold out my hand sometimes
for the ones who aren't about to jump
out of their skins.
Sometimes they take it.

I listen. I murmur soft words to them.

I don't bawl my eyes out,
because it is not about me,
but I don't try to hide the tears
that gather in the corners of my eyes.

I tell them the process is slow
or fast.
That she will heal and be fine
or have lingering fear.

I make no promises I am not ready to keep.

I play by her rules.
It gives her back
the control
some bastard
snatched.

When I am the advocate for a victim,
she need never wonder if I will wait
until she is distracted
to offer her a second helping of pain
instead of a tissue.

Daughterfuckers

Some men are just mean
daughterfuckers
pleased as punch to gouge out holes
where there should be none,
at least not yet.

And yet, for some reason,
Little Princess is expected
to burp politely, behind her hand,
never let the gas escape, (Cry Rape!)
“Oh, excuse me, so sorry!”

Do not become, my dear,
so destroyed in your soul
that you will spread your legs
and point, to that spot, (Crotch Rot!)
“Ouch, it hurts me.”

Young Ladies must cross their legs
at the ankles and tuck them, (Fuck Them!)
ever-so-politely to the side
better so to hide
the oozing pain that threatens to
puddle in plain sight.

Him, if you care to convict,
we will feed and water
and send to school
and give recreation, (Abomination!)
and release, fouler than any fart,
to fuck her again by proxy.

Just because he used the same parts
that make love to your darling,
and grow children for your garden,
does not make his act sex.
Talking about what he did is not
like ending prayers with “Shit”
instead of AMEN.

Oh
Hell
No!

The sacrilege has been done
by that dirty daughterfucker,
gentle nights sacrificed
on the altar of his prick.

So do not tell me I may not,
in polite company,
speak of rape
and incest
and pornography
and the thousand horrors visited
upon a thousand little girls (and
boys, them too,
scionfuckers making this
an equal opportunity tragedy)
don’t you dare.

I am not shutting up!

And upon the tiny vaginas
ripped open way too soon,
by the blood smeared sheets,
baptized with the tears of a thousand nights,
knife in hand if necessary,
to cut out the tongue
of anyone who dares
to silence her and her and all the hers (and
hims, I don’t forget)
I do solemnly swear
I will listen to the quiet words,
whispered into my ear,
as she faces the other way,
because she has been told
good girls don’t say those things (and
big boys don’t cry, now, Son)

So suck it up!

Dead Daddy

Hello, I am your daughter, Jim.
James, I have your hair.
My brain could match you
thought for think.
My liver match you
draught for drink.

Good morning, Junior, it is me.
Jimmy, you’re my dad.
Down in Sheol I bet
you need me.
Hinnom’s offering,
you’d feed me.

Good afternoon, Dead Daddy, you.
Papa of the Grave.
Seems for you there’s no
Nirvana.
No cool drop from
Goddess Ana.

Sleep tight, Old Man, I won’t be back.
You’re no Abba to me.
This grown up girl has
had her say.
My message is, “There’s
Hell to pay.”

Elegy for a Reprobate

Father, you grieve me so as you go into the dark unknown afterlife.
Left me here, Sister and Mother but never your Daughter, though.

Elegiac couplet, you and I, meant for a prescribed path to walk these fields of cotton,
my five to your six.
How did we become instead the proscribed outlaw couple?
These high cotton fibers make into such strong thread,
mercerized, woven into ties that bind.
In us, they came unwound.
Strong lye, watered down with lies, leaves me with no affinity for lovely dyes.
Pallid, ashen, you and I, and the cotton.

I hid in the cotton, high cotton, soft cotton,
alone with my cohort of mentors.
Six hundred cicadae droning in fatherly resonance
to the beat of my heart pumping your blood, our blood.
There is power in the blood, but not your blood, our blood.
Weak scarlet flow, that pulses to no fatherly cadence.
Instead I heed the call of the six hundred.
Their tattoo paces the syncope of my canticle for you.

Rest you, now, as they play antiphon Funeral Dirge for the Reprobate.
Fatherless, I will lie here with a drummer I cotton to.

Inheritance

Just for the record, I did not send the flowers.
So I did not need thanking,
not that I was thanked.

I was, instead, served
default judgment—
­in my judgment­—
I judge­—
I find him guilty—
his fault.

All his fault
from my crooked teeth with the gaping cavities that
caused such exquisite pain and kept me awake
to my crooked psyche with the yawning chasm
hungry for love.

All the unfilled spaces
found their fill in questionable places.

My friend Gordon says I am suspicious.
And true, that, because it was my inheritance.
I came for a hug and was lifted by my head,
feet dangling, ears burning.
I was taken for a ride and left in the car
to cower from the sight of the drunks that
cruised the parking lot.
Once, at a Sunday School swim party
(my only one, I never learned how as a child)
he came to get me early.
Still damp, shaking and chilled,
clutching a hastily-assembled hamburger taken too-soon from the grill,
he drove me drunk.
Bobby trying to reason—
stay for a while she just got here you've been drinking have a hamburger you don’t want to run off the road and hurt her.

Hurt her?
He killed her a thousand times, one insult hardly distinguishable from the rest.
A four-year-old made to sit on his lap on the return trip from the beer joint.
(I hear you gasp.)
And from my perch and the safety of Daddy's embrace he made me,
(Hold your breath.)
he made me, he made me
steer the car.
(Oh, you thought he did other things, those things.)
No, father didn't diddle the little girl who was me.
He never spent enough moments strung together caring
or noticing me one way or the other to think of me that way.
But his lack of care put me in that other house
where that other relative was happy to oblige.
So, in a way, he did fuck me, right good.

My friend, Gordon, says I am blunt.
You got that right!
Secrets have never been family friendly.
Half-truths are deadly.
I learned early to read a face or a gesture.
What was never uttered was always the loudest sound.
Miss a cue and find yourself banished by your grandmother,
and by extension, from the joy that is Granddaddy.
Ask the wrong question and find yourself sleeping in your own bed
right beside your sister, who is no help when you try to talk about
the screaming in the living room and the screaming in your head.

My friend, Gordon, says I am competitive.
I learned racing at an early age.
Run, girl­
bullets popping, lightning cracking.
rain-soaked, mud sucking at my feet.
Run, girl­
hide out in the church building.
climb high in the big oak tree.
crouch down between the cotton rows.
attic, crawl-space, gullies, any place.
Win the race to disappear.

My friend, Gordon, says I am rough around the edges.
Not so. Ragged more like it.
Run ragged,
hand-me down ragged,
food left over from another family's supper ragged,
tired, I just want a safe place to cry ragged.

Holes worn into my soul,
tears in fabric of my childhood.

This is my inheritance from Daddy.
Not sixteen thousand dollars and an old Ford truck that I didn't want
and didn't ask for
and was defaulted from me by
the woman who thought I sent the flowers
and used the excuse of a thank you to get my address
from my mother, (who did send the flowers and signed my name without my knowledge)
and had me served with papers.

Those things were never my inheritance.
I already have possession of all
he left me.


16-20 Sep 2003 Dedicated to those with unfilled spaces.

It is time

For some time, you have heard some of the poetry I write that is flavored by the life I knew with my daddy. I have written poems you will never read, because I have burned them or torn them up or gotten past them. Frankly there are whole sections of my poetic life that I don't remember. I know I was writing. I remember doing it. I just don't know what. Then there were times when I couldn't write and I just jotted phrases. There were whole years that I journalled about recovery, because that was what I had to do to stay alive. I didn't write poems then. I just dreamed and wrote down the terrors I saw. There are worse things in my life than the things I lived through with my father, if you can believe that.

I have been writing poetry since I was eight. My sister, Julie, could draw very well and I wanted to draw some peace roses. I wasn't satisfied with the drawing and knew I liked words, so I wrote a poem. Here it is. It is my only poem I know by heart.

The Peace Rose

It's standing there like any other

so delicate and perfect yet the symbol of life.

The whole world should look upon it

see no hate, no sign of strife.

Ironically, I was standing in my grandparent's house when I wrote that. It was my house when I was a tiny girl, the first I remember, the one I ran from many times. Not such a peaceful place. I remember writing the poem as clearly as anything. I remember how I did it; quickly, without much ado. I remember how I felt when it was done. I said, "I am a poet." I was. I am.

Poetry has been cathartic and curative for me. It has become, of late, a joy to me. I love to write sassy, witty, sexy, funny stuff. I never did until recently and I am making up for lost time. But I can never turn my back on the recovery poetry. It is often dark and hateful and some of my friends don't like it much. Those poems are my babies. They were gestated from a dark conception and birthed with a lot of pain. They are mine and of me. I invite you to comment as you will.