Backhand

"Backhand" You have turned me inside out, cut open like a tennis ball I used to beat backhand along with the racket hard against the garage wall To make sense of it all as a child, the grief stolen all too swiftly and replaced by the caretaking seeds planted where grew the weeds, to newly bloom the removed mind of an adult Too early What filled me up spilled out like a silent volley Re-visiting the past the future brings back The Lewis Trap, empty pockets a limp withered gun coins that glittered singing like honey bees jingling in a glass jar and all those pretty red and white hard-boiled striped lollies those powdery tablets of peppermint How ironic. The excrement. I am an empty cup no bounce left Blindfolded children have no choice not a peep, they close their eyes to keep the peace they go to sleep The escape from home eventually arrives where father is God to a strange place of revolutionary disposition to rebel with wild abandon in the glossiest, high-heeled freshest freedom The tennis match is made, the partner a cracked egg, bad, what a mess, scrambling for an alibi, lies loose the noose around the neck gone became the dream To be once blessed with the sound of beautiful crying, baby’s breath spilling milk on my breast a real peach to hold close A little bit of a dream for a short while stolen by the turn of the darkest dime the error of judgement the choices adults make there a war torn mother stole into the night away with that little jewel of you You watched her eyes leave bit by bit the life of it all, taken by the scavengers tattered to scat and rags The betrayal was kept blindfolded hushed and refined Marked by the unnatural turn of events in a man the ravages tear into the mother and child the vicissitudes of time buried under the rock with smiling spiders I marry the bed at night on my own in the childless silence I see the shadows on the walls now seeing in my mind all the signs I should have known listening and seeing with the hardened instincts of a child stolen in time left to survive on her own I was too soft a touch maternal and trusting ingesting all the do-gooders and Ne’er-do-well’s advice all their adult paranoia and f*ck clustering oh gee wells I am left alone with the nightmare remnants and the branding of another’s criminal conviction, not mine then - the rude awakening the business of another child stolen in time a child overturned with distance love lies wasting, missing birthdays and Christmas all the good intentions the years spent encouraged to relinquish what was once my heart my beautiful garden is just bare dirt vanquished to the false regent With its talons on a child the one that is mine hand me the racquet I’ll slam it harder than you backhand over the net one more time blue ribbons of silk kangaroo courts and flying monkeys what of justice? my cup is filling with fresh blood and words that cut the deepest blackest imprint a legacy staining the baseline with non-servile footprints Aces no point crying over spilt milk (LadyLabyrinth / 2021) "Heart Shaped Box" / Nirvana https://youtu.be/by6lyNC3D9Y “Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet Cut myself on angel hair and baby’s breath Broken hymen of Your Highness, I’m left black Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back” Kurt Cobain, “Heart Shaped Box” “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. (Dylan Thomas) https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night "Busy, with an idea for a code, I write signals hurrying from left to right, or right to left, by obscure routes, for my own reasons; taking a word like writes down tiers of tries until its secret rites make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS can amazingly and funnily become STAR and right to left that small star is mine, for my own liking, to stare its five lucky pins inside out, to store forever kindly, as if it were a star I touched and a miracle I really wrote." ("An Obsessive Combination Of Phonological Inscape,- Trickery And Love" - Anne Sexton) The Black Art, Anne Sexton https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-black-art/ Dylan Thomas https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night Anne Sexton https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-sexton Kurt Cobain https://genius.com/Nirvana-heart-shaped-box-lyrics Child Sexual Abuse: 1. KidsHelpLine - Australia https://kidshelpline.com.au/parents/issues/understanding-child-sexual-abuse 2. Bravehearts - Australia https://bravehearts.org.au/what-we-do/education-and-training/for-parents/child-sexual-assault-myths-facts/ 3. Interpol - Global, database https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Crimes-against-children/International-Child-Sexual-Exploitation-database Support/ Suicide prevention; Homelessness 1. Project Semicolon https://projectsemicolon.com/ 2. Homelessness Australia https://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au/ 3. Mission Australia https://www.missionaustralia.com.au/ * other countries will have similar Support Agencies as above to assist with Homelessness. Support/Suicide prevention: Australia https://www.lifeline.org.au/ America https://afsp.org/ United Kingdom https://www.supportline.org.uk/problems/suicide/ International - All http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html