Under Fire At Home Poem by Gert Strydom

At times your were extremely happy
and impulsive, sometimes morose,
withdrawn or suicidal
trying to hide from the world
or sometimes even aggressive.

Your Manic-Depressive Psychosis
needed a scapegoat
to whip, to burn with molten plastic,
to cut and stab with a knife
and to shoot at with a gun.

You told me
that you had cheated me
with another man
while I was busy
with the computer
and smashed your heels down
on some software
breaking compact disks and started
kicking at the SCSI drives
of the computer.

I got really angry and told you
that in my eyes
you were nothing more
than an unpaid whore.

You didn’t say anything at this
and walked to the bedroom
and I went to the bathroom
to brush my teeth
and get ready for bed.

I have never been closer to death
than when you (my now ex-wife)
with my 9 mm pistol
fired right through
the bathroom door.

Five shots rang out
and the magazine
had nine more
and the bullets were hollow point
and nickel-tipped mixed
and automatically I kept score.

It’s another thing
to be fired upon
by the enemy in war,
but when your wife
go totally nuts
and bullets fly
just past your head
and one brushes your arm
things are out of control.

I didn’t have time
to lock the bathroom door
and took cover
next to the bath
on the floor

and you opened that door
pushed the pistol
against my head
and said that you
would shoot me dead
and I could smell
the burnt gunpowder
but your youngest child
tried to cover me
with his small body.

I should have left you then
and there,
have called the cops,
have had you classified as mad
but love sometimes
doesn’t ask for intelligence
and outreaches problems
on its own.