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HOW DO DETECTIVES MAKE LOVE?
how did my parents make love/ was it in the 1950s
way/ in their pyjamas under the blankets/ could my
father switch off from his job as he switched the
light off/ when he made love with my mother in the
dark/ did they laugh/ even though he told me he
couldn't bear to fuck her unless he was drunk/ did
he still pick up the bits & pieces of people from
under trains/ or leftovers from motorbike accidents/
the bloodied thighs & thighless women & eyeless
torsos/ did he fondle the falling away breasts of
bloated corpses dragged from rivers with concrete
boots?/
was my mother's body the autopsy or the
imitation pornography from his blue movie/ & was
his penis the .38 automatic or the black baton that
he used to strike out with/ was their marital bed
like the cold river bottom churning with unfounded
death/ how do detectives make love/ did he talk code
into her soft earlobe or whisper sweet double talk
into her lips/ did he tape record her nocturnal
sighs & her vulnerable words/ taking them down into
his notepad heart to be withheld/ & used in a court
of law as evidence against her/ did he keep her
writhing loss of self under strict surveillance?/
could he love her/ opening his blue shirt or plain
clothes up to her/ dropping away his folded arms his
handcuffs & identification badge/ could he forget
the prostitutes, drug addicts, screaming domestics,
battered wives, shootouts & suicides/ the women in
prison & the raped & bloodied murdered women/ could
he switch off from them/ like he switched the
bedroom light off/ what did he feel in the dark/
with my mother's warm body beside him/ could he let
himself be seen fully/ by her lovely half opened
sexy eyes/ or by hard courthouse hearings &
underworld gazes/ threatening to remember him
expose & destroy him/ did he go undercover for fear
of being found?/
did he take down her details or have
her followed/ could he give a full description of
the woman who loved him/ did my mother find a
trembling & vulnerable man/ did she fingerprint &
file him/ could he be revealed in a second before
orgasm/ only to be charged with breaking & entering/
before his own little death, before the loud phone
rang/ before the infringing twenty-four-hour call/
the hurried reaching for his dressing gown/ in the
cold & stabbing air/ the impatient rap at the door?/
could he love her the way that she loved him/ or
would he charge her with trespass/ his cold heart
prohibited/ jammed up in car wreckages/ alone on
grey train platforms pursued by criminals/ bashed
up in nightclubs or in kings cross brothels/ sobbing
in empty patrol cars or in big dark paddy wagons/
darkly in love, completely alone/ with bitten down
thumbnails on the neighbourhood rounds/ in the early
hours of the morning/ the doubtful silences of her
waiting/ the two-way radio left on/ becoming fuzzy,
switched off/ the heart imprisoned/ her sigh, his
cough? |
