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On Love and Time Travel
🕑 Added 2017-12-14 08:18:47 +0000 UTC***
This is a companion poem for the below Tales from the Pit episode: Dungeon Crawl (Feat. Ellen Swaim). Written by Michael.
***
Because there was so much love in me
Pumped in till I was stuffed as a tick
It was a cinch to fly backwards
Soar over years on an updraft
Like a fighter jet, fueled and armed
I streaked past a courthouse, on recon
Long-range sensors locked onto
The face of a woman, a witness
Mahogany-boxed in a room of accusers
Two men at the end of her finger
I braked at an alleyway, my target
Shaming myself with the sight
Of a woman with her eyes closed tightly
Two men in the cruelest context
A young, not-yet mother—
And I had to wonder:
Did you whisper my name?
Did you know I was already with you?
It was no matter…
I fired my sidewinder missiles
With thunderclaps of love
Under mushroom clouds of affection
A nuclear payload laid waste
And exposed the scene to a light
So bright that nothing remained
Just a map of the love you gave
Grown so full it spilled over
To course through time’s arroyo
To shatter and soothe, to do
Anything it damn well wants to
There when you needed me
Impossible reflection
The Department of Corrections
Come back in time
Invincible
Didn’t you wonder:
Where you found the strength?
Whose love fueled you?
It was a mother’s love unchained
Returned to run amok.
***
May 12, 1979
This a poem by Ellen herself, written about the same incident shortly after it occurred. She shared it with Michael after she read the above, and agreed to let him publish both only on the condition that he explain that she believes “rape survivors should shout it out, carry no shame,” and feel no need to hide their experiences from others.
***
Saturday night, nothing has changed
But now she hugs her kids a lot
Since they took her behind the concrete wall
And let her scream her outrage towards the sky
As she watched it blaze
Blacker and blacker in the night.
Nothing has changed
Since they let her walk away
Sore
From the concrete wall
Where they made her pay.
They each stuck a dollar in her left front pocket,
Walked her to the street
And let her go
Back into the city
Saturday night
The bars were still open
And the street filled with lights
They let her go
And the feelings followed her
Coming on for days
Hard and slow.
Nothing is different
Since her legs stuck out
White and naked
On the dirt
Under the sky
Where she couldn’t fight
The sun still beats in daytime
And darkness
Beats at night,
And nothing lasted from it
Except for wrong and right.
Nothing has changed
From that Saturday night
Except that she watches the baby’s smile
And bathes her tired body
In its light.
Comments
These poems are stunning. Thank you so much for sharing these, and for the podcast - you’re both exceptionally brave
Michael! Let me give you more money! Ugh!
