Love and hate

Ask any cop. If a woman is beaten or raped or murdered, they first look at the men in her life -- friends, lovers, husbands -- for the perp. How can this be so? How can what one moment looks like intimacy turn around and become violent aggression? Questions on my mind as I fiddled with a new poem.

LOVE AND HATE

Long before dismemberment

he held her with such lust

and something they called love

that grunting was the only voice

left to them, tongue and touch

and sweat, exchanges

of the flesh, such cries

of pleasure and desire

and not a little unspoken

befuddlement, in the dark

unsilent night on which

his darkest secrets slipped out

the unshared truth that

he was vulnerable

he was weak

It was months before he reached

for the knife to stab her

many times before finding

this tool insufficient

to his needs

and so took up the ax

until it too failed, finally

cranking up the chain saw

to finish the job

properly.

He had revealed himself

to her, an accident in lust

and she had betrayed

him (he thought) by moving on

beyond him, to another

taking with her the secrets

of their unsilent night

which he could not allow

lest others come to know

what mistakenly had been

shown to her

he was vulnerable

he was weak

and so he did what all

animals do when they

are cornered, he struck

back and gave her

deeper secrets than even

he was aware of.

So lust becomes hate

in dark unsilent nights

all across the land

by men who refuse

to be vulnerable

to be weak

and by the gods

they can prove it.