Poems for Craig

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.  

From First Jasmine

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.