Terry Dawley

MY EYES ARE BLUE, HIS ARE BROWN, BUT THEY'RE THE SAME

Domestic calls are the worst, especially violent ones.
Maybe because I’d witnessed so many in my own home
when I was too young to do anything but cry with my siblings
and hope our father didn’t pull the trigger
on the gun he held at our mother’s temple,
or glide the blade of a knife across her throat
while straddling her chest, pinning her to the floor.
When the fear in my gut would sour and the bitter bile
of helplessness would coat my tongue.
And even though the walls of the housing projects
we lived in were no more than glorified cardboard,
rarely did neighbors call the law.
And if they did another kind of fear would threaten
to shake the bones of my skeleton loose
as I gazed up at giant men in blue,
wearing badges and guns and grim faces.

And now here I am one of those giants in blue
with a badge on my chest and a gun on my hip
and I’m sure a grim look on my face
as I gaze down at a trembling little boy
with skin the color of whiskey
whose tears glaze shiny streaks down his cheeks
while a sliver of snot sneaks from one nostril.
Our eyes are locked on one another
and even though mine are blue and his are brown
they’re the same
because I know the helplessness and fear and pain.
I reach down and pick up the boy
and feel the quaking of his body
in my arms while my partner
gives me a What the fuck you doing? look
that I ignore and I whisper to the boy,
“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.
Someday it’ll be okay.” 


Gerald So's YouTube video reading of "My Eyes are Blue...":



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Terry confesses: " wrote this poem at a time when police are being demonized, assaulted and killed at an alarming rate across this nation. I wrote it to show that beneath the badge and uniform beats the heart of a human being that feels and cares for those they serve. I wrote this poem because I lived it."

TERRY DAWLEY grew up in the housing projects of Erie, Pennsylvania. He served as a police officer and retired after being shot numerous times in the line of duty. His work has been published in Pithead Chapel, Soft Cartel, Heart of Flesh literary journal and numerous others.

Terry Dawley

SHOT THREE TIMES

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the piercing sting of hot-metal
as it rips through flesh,
shattering bone, slicing tendon,
opening vein, exploding
nerve endings in white-fire pain.

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the mind-dope of morphine,
chill of an operating room,
fog of recovery,
teeth-gritting rehab, fighting
to regain what I once had.

Having been shot three times
my body is well acquainted with
the disfigurement of limb, and scars
that will forever mar the mind and skin.


Gerald So reads "Shot Three Times":



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Terry confesses: "In the early morning hours of July 7, 2000, I was in a close-quarter gun battle with a suspect in which twenty-three rounds were exchanged within seconds, leaving me with three gunshot wounds and him with four. This poem is about what it’s like to have been shot and the aftermath."

TERRY DAWLEY is a retired police officer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Cleveland Review, Mused BellaOline Literary Journal, Soft Cartel, and Law Enforcement Today. He is an award winner of the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition and a six-time award winner of the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest.

Terry Dawley

SPENT CASINGS

Spent casings scattered
on a summer-night street

like dead brass bees
emptied of their stingers.

The spent body nearby,
emptied of its soul.


Gerald So reads "Spent Casings"



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Terry confesses:"As a police officer, I worked the high-crime hours of 8 PM to 4 AM, and on many summer nights observed spent casings scattered on a city street with a dead victim lying nearby. The simile of dead brass bees having spent their stingers struck me."

TERRY DAWLEY is a retired police officer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Cleveland Review, Mused BellaOline Literary Journal, Soft Cartel, and Law Enforcement Today. He is an award winner of the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition and a six-time award winner of the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest.

Terry Dawley

SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT MURDER

“What are you thinking about?”

My wife’s voice penetrates
that dark place I’ve once again entered
and yanks me back to the light of here and now.
I gaze at her like a man roused from a dream
only it wasn’t a dream but a nightmare.

“Nothing,” I answer.

But that’s a lie, after all, nobody thinks about nothing.
As for me—sometimes I think about murder.
I don’t mean to. I don’t want to. It just happens,
though usually there’s some sort of trigger.
Take, for example, Phil Collins’ song, "In the Air."

"In the Air" never fails to kidnap my thoughts,
and drag them back to the night of my first murder
where my mind’s eye again sees
the large kitchen knife, the perforated body,
and the blood. The blood. Everywhere.

Sometimes the trigger is a smell.
Like how the hot breath of sun-cooked asphalt
blows me back to a blistering day
where, in the baking-sheet parking lot of a tavern
another one of my murders lay sprawled
like a gangster-clad gingerbread man.

“You were just staring at the ground,” she says.

But the saddest trigger is how the sight
of a young mother with children,
can sometimes shove my mind
into that dark place where another young mother
lies on a couch, her throat just slit with a hunting knife,
her bright eyes pleading with me to save her.

But it’s too late for this young mother.
The light of life slowly dims and her eyes glaze with death.
Her three children sleep in their beds
oblivious to their sudden orphanage.
I pick up a little girl, press her face to my Kevlar-armored chest,
and hope my stifled sob doesn’t wake her.


Gerald So reads "Sometimes I Think about Murder":



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Terry confesses: "The exchange in the poem between my wife and I took place while sitting poolside in Aruba on vacation. The realization that—while my body was there in paradise—my mind was in a much darker place, so shocked me that I decided to write the poem."

TERRY DAWLEY is a retired police officer from Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Cleveland Review, Mused BellaOline Literary Journal, Soft Cartel, and Law Enforcement Today. He is an award winner of the Writer's Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition and a six-time award winner of the Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest.