A cleansing by fire

trauma

The first mouthful turns me inside out,
my soul screams down a tunnel of memories.

The slap, the fist, the spittle in my eyes
the sound of my mothers whimpering cries.

A key in the door, the stairwells echo
panicked faces in torch-light.

The desert with impact craters like a scarred brain,
sack cloth floating in the hot seared air.

This is where I laid that memory to rest,
where I exorcised my trauma by transference,

where I pollenated a thousand miseries,
with lead and fist and bomb,

where I punched a peoples shadow
until the shadow was all gone,

and I’m pouring in the poison that blackens out my skies,
for that fucker on the stairwell, he’ll never hear me cry.

2 thoughts on “A cleansing by fire”

David,

This poem made me shudder, as it should. Your honest and gaunt exposes on what you have experienced and have been kind enough to share with the world enrich us. When enough voices rise up to tell it like it is, perhaps then we can move forward as a species.

Respectfully,

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