Demolition Man [poem]
Strip me!” said she.
“Oh I will,” said he.
“Rip them off me!” said she.
“Oh, the thrill!” said he.
But it wasn’t to be as she thought.
Then he gave her a look
which she couldn’t understand.
She was waiting for his hands
to start to rob her of her clothes.
And then he dropped the bomb:
“I’m Demolition Man
It’s not what you suppose.”
“But you told me that you love me.”
came the puzzled voice
“And indeed I do,” said he.
“So why,” said she, “will you not start
now with our time of debauchery?”
Then he uttered not a word
as his eyes lit up with fire
and a beam came bursting out from them
like a welding-torch flame
and proceeded to burn through
her intricate limited frame.
“What the hell…!” she then shouted
on seeing his face so determined,
so lucid, so powerfully bold.
Is this your idea of a sizzling embrace?
But she couldn’t perceive
that apart from her clothes
there was something
around her which craftily grows.
Forged out of iron,
(with chain mail beneath)
a thick suit of armour
(in love-terms ‘a thief’
of all trysts and embraces)
which seems like protection
but soon it replaces
her natural talent
to see for herself
when someone’s a fake
or cheating deceiver —
a cad or a rake.
Then when its purpose
she no longer needs,
so used to its presence
has she then become
that it stays on her body
thus rendering it numb.
At first she knows it’s there
having stepped into its steel.
But soon she’s wholly unaware
that her ability to feel in love is gone.
She thinks she’s found stability
and basks in “higher energy”;
but all she’s done is freeze to death
the sunly woman part of her
which then becomes her enemy —
a danger to escape from at all costs.
So then, one day
just when it’s least expected
in her heart,
a man of flame appears
with welding torch
(which sears the shit
from off her vitiated body
bit by armoured bit)
and wrecking ball
and other tools of entry
which she deeply fears.
As layer after layer
of that steel fell to the floor
she kicked and screamed
yet at the same time begged for more.
Just when she thought it over with
and everything was done
the whole procedure starts again
with screams and kicks
and “Can’t you see you’re killing me?”
“Not you”, said he,
“but WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME”.
And so it was, he persevered
despite the bruises he sustained
until just purely velvet skin remained.
And then the flames engulfed them both
for there was no more overgrowth.
When skin meets skin
with nothing in-between
(that is, no more defences,
barriers, impediments or screens),
then lifeness can begin
and all the treasures unforeseen
come tumbling into view
and everything is freshly new
without the obstacles of old;
for Demolition Man had broke the mould
which corseted her soul and thus
had made redundant his expository role.
© Alan Morrison, 2016
The Naked Troubadour 