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There I sat with a cast and black eye
Just got small children down for the night
Tim decided to take tots for a swim
"Over my dead body", I yelled at him

We discussed our views in loud voices
Continued to fight, made bad choices
Very soon Westminsters finest pulled up
Domestic situation, cops abrupt

Got both sides of story, mine in jest
Smart *** me, I was soon under arrest
Handcuffed, shoved into waiting squad car
Was ******-cussed at my treatment so far

"I want your badge number", I threatened the cop
Ill sue for false arrest, and no I won't stop
Assault and battery on who, on Tim?
Refused to put out cig, didn't touch him

Got booked, printed and a soggy sack lunch
Wore old lady ******, rode up in a bunch
In population still in cast with black eye
The word spread around that I battered a guy

I crutched my way across shiny jail floor
Eyes following me as if to implore
Came up on a woman, looked like a ****
Then she asked, "**** girl what's he look like?"

Got released next day, had court appearance
Plead not guilty with no interference
Set date for jury trial of my peers
Never been in court in all of my years

With public defender at defendants table
Jury looked at me as if I were unable
To batter, assault a serious offense
I was so small, this did not make much sense

I bravely testified on my own behalf
Brought up Tims prior abuse, hid a laugh
OBJECTION YOUR HONOR, spouted DA
Too late, the jury heard what I had to say

They filed out to deliberation space
Came back in fifteen, looked Tim in the face
The judge read the verdict, not guilty at all I was a free woman and skipped down the hall
This unfortunately was true. It happened in 1991.
There I sat with a cast and black eye
Just got small children down for the night
Tim decided to take tots for a swim
"Over my dead body", I yelled at him

We discussed our views in loud voices
Continued to fight, made bad choices
Very soon Westminsters finest pulled up
Domestic situation, cops abrupt

Got both sides of story, mine in jest
Smart *** me, I was soon under arrest
Handcuffed, shoved into waiting squad car
Was ******-cussed at my treatment so far

"I want your badge number", I threatened the cop
Ill sue for false arrest, and no I won't stop
Assault and battery on who, on Tim?
Refused to put out cig, didn't touch him

Got booked, printed and a soggy sack lunch
Wore old lady ******, rode up in a bunch
In population still in cast with black eye
The word spread around that I battered a guy

I crutched my way across shiny jail floor
Eyes following me as if to implore
Came up on a woman, looked like a ****
Then she asked, "**** girl what's he look like?"

Got released next day, had court appearance
Plead not guilty with no interference
Set date for jury trial of my peers
Never been in court in all of my years

With public defender at defendants table
Jury looked at me as if I were unable
To batter, assault a serious offense
I was so small, this did not make much sense

I bravely testified on my own behalf
Brought up Tims prior abuse, hid a laugh
OBJECTION YOUR HONOR, spouted DA
Too late, the jury heard what I had to say

They filed out to deliberation space
Came back in fifteen, looked Tim in the face
The judge read the verdict, not guilty at all I was a free woman and skipped down the hall
This unfortunately was true. It happened in 1991.
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Nat Lipstadt
Like the chef who hates to eat
The playwright who cannot act,
The clothing designer, a nudist,
The brave hero, so shy, a stammerer,
The musician, a deaf mute,
The architect, who live in a tent,
I am a writer who hates to type, for his fingers disconnect his eyes, his brain his insane

I am the father, who knows not his own children,

I am the man who hates to shave, and shaves twice daily,

The man who knows nothing of nature, but writes
in and of it constantly.                                                      ­

The man beset by endless money worries,
Who gives his capital away to charity in increments of thousands,

I am the man that never passes a street beggar,
Even the obvious frauds,
Without giving them a bill, and a god bless you,

I am the man that would gladly die young whose
Mother lived to ninty eight and gene'd up him good,

I don't know what you want from me.

I write to please. But I seem incapable of
Giving, paving streets with words you what u want to hear.

Moon, June, pill, ****, me me me be crap on this

I am the chef who cannot cook
The nudist ashamed of his body
The stammered into silence
The mute who screams inside till deaf with frustration
I writer of thin air, the unfair. I know not what
You want of me.

But I weep with frustration at the paucity of my expression,
Good god my final destination not close enough

In the hands of strangers, rejection
In mine own, verbal strangulation
Even

Whatever

Is
Insufficiently
Disdainful

Painful
I cannot give you enough of/if me to satisfy

What is it you want from me

I will write to displease

Why not do
What I do best
Anyway
Secure that this voice
Is lost among the voices
Answering

*whatever
I composed the anti-hallelujah

Are these verses, curses
about Depression
our mutual acquaintance,
or just research notes for further followup,
part two of a pas de deux, and,
did you go this time, too far,
or still not far enough?

Is this why you have deserted me?
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Adel
Sky
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Adel
Sky
the sky
is an unlimited big canvas
is a shadow sketch of life
is an infinite ocean of stars
is a hope for those who are giving up
is a wish for those who are dreaming
is a love for those who are smiling

it's the place for
billion stars,
fading clouds,
pastel shadows,
and hopeless soul
to lean on
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Nat Lipstadt
you have a death grip
on dignity

More not needed.
Not now, not ever.

Let the rage course,
The tears, coarse,
Fall free,
When no ones looking.

The panic attack,
The body all a-wrack,
The fury unleashed,
The sobbing secret,
When no ones there.

I know, I know.

Small consolation.
Worse, no one to share,
Worse, the one to share,
Is the one making life unfair.

But all this pales by compare,
When the words out loud you speak,
The lodestar, the key phrase.
                    
I hear them, though by proxy.
I read them, though far by mile,
I am comforted in the knowing,
That anyone who can write those words
Is stronger than most.


You
Have
A death grip
On dignity.

No more needed.
For the one who wrote those words.
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Nat Lipstadt
Thirty Hours

Who are these men,
Do they have daughters,
Mothers, sisters, granddaughters?
Do they call tenderly their loving
Wives
Their ******,
Behind closed doors?

Thirty hours
In the country
I live, love and worry and wonder about...

This is Justice blinded,
But worse,
Publicly, proclaiming,
I am
Deaf and Dumb,
And lost in Her way.

Thirty hours.

I too, have a question.

Have you no shame?

---------------------------
WASHINGTON — For roughly 30 hours over several days, defense lawyers for three former United States Naval Academy football players grilled a female midshipman about her ****** habits. In a public hearing, they asked the woman, who has accused the three athletes of ****** her, whether she wore a bra, how wide she opened her mouth during oral *** and whether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she had ******* “for being a **.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/us/intrusive-grilling-in-****-case-raises-alarm-on-military-hearings­.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
 Sep 2013 Aya Baker
Tommy N
The thing about running into your house
after it has been on
fire is the amount of cinder and ash.
Something I didn’t know
was after the fire department puts all of the fire out,
the family goes back in.

I was afraid to go in-
-side. I thought the house
would collapse. The idea was to pick out
everything I wanted cleaned and put it on
“the pile.” Photo-albums, Baptism gowns, no-
tes from the war. All covered in ash.

I don’t remember what I picked, but I remember the ash
For some reason I open-
-ed my particle-board nightstand. No
valuables, but books, and a CD. How is
that I remember that it was a Rugrats Computer game lying on
a stack of Goosebumps books, but I can’t pick out

anything but the out-
line of an ash-
-free cd-shape on
books. In,
my whole family, how is
it that no

one else knows,
no one else figured out
that my mother got everyone out of the house
and was so desperate for cash
that she went back in
and turned the iron

on.
No-
-thing was accidental. The en-
-tirety of my childhood smoked out
by sheets of ash.
Coming out of the house

That day I learned some things: When you clean ash out and when
you leave it in, when lies go on and up and build a house of lies to live in.
when to say “I love you” and when to say, “No Mom, I don’t”
Written 2010 as an exercise for the MFA program at Columbia College Chicago
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