Craig always wished he could write verse or poetry but possessed little talent. He described his efforts for simulating human emotions as taking most of his left brain, and that I now well believe. At that, he did not do a very good job.
While I was reviewing my poetry I found multiple poems Craig 'inspired.' It still gives me the creeps to think about having ever allowed him to touch me. But as I review my body of work I was struck with how therapeutic they had really been. Every time I wrote one it was like I was excising some part of his ugliness.
Therefore, I think they belong up here. Morgan's will go on her own site. They really were perfect for each other.
4. Fear and Pain that Still Detain
(Dedicated with complete sincerity to Allen Craig Franklin, my husband and abuser)
Battered hopes and shattered truth
Begun with trust removed with lies
This the wretchedness of my youth
Distorts my life, unmakes, denies
Abused, a word that understates
The harshness of the world it makes
Abused in mind, in body bashed
reproved by love that kills- but lasts
He came with smiles, seduced with faith
designed the ugliness of fear
An interdiction for all belief
that shackled self when he was near
Abused.
Used, rejected, scorned, detained
denied the scope that life retains
Needed, sold to use again
a life that grows more ever grim
Abused.
Battering on body, mind,
that fractures thought, my will and signs
Remakes the person who was me
into something that I hate to see
Abused.
If you have not walked and known,
not tasted fear and so been owned
You do not know where I have been
a place that holds no hopes or friends.
You have not lost the inner scope
that held your course and gave you hope
You have not lived and breathed and died
in soul belief he would not lie.
Abused and Freed
When grief is wrung, despised and gone
while still the spirit listens, longs
To hear the echoes that belong
to the voice that held that song.
When I learned to see anew
that life could be again renewed
And shackles that had owned my bones
were broken by the life I'd grown.
My breath was eased, in body, mind
The walls were breached, dissolved in time.
I tasted, relished, lived and laughed
Freed of what distorted, grasped.
Freed
Manumission of emotion
that can never compromise
The transmission which, evoking,
fractured self to make me wise.
