Alone.
Left to fly across the Pacific expanse.
An island filled with others alike;
wings yellow, bill yellow
feathers white.
Hundreds, thousands, waiting around
for a mate, a friend.
Years spent making connections
working hard
trying to make something real.
Exhaustion.
Never quitting
eventually noticing
that ones like you are made of concrete.
Blank, dry, cold,
fake.
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:16 AM UTC
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
Creating movement between the dead.
The battle is over.
These roses know nothing of the fighting disease
that plagues the kings with crowns on their heads.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
Roses are crushed by surviving knights’ failing knees.
As they beg to never again be a part of the bloodshed.
The battle is over.
One rose struggles to move with the breeze.
Its petals dance beneath a blood glazed axe head.
The rose still flutters in the breeze.
The serfs will be led to believe
the roses were destroyed to save their farmstead.
The battle is over.
The bloating bodies in the field of roses please
the crowned ones, for they have not suffered with the dead.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
The battle is over.
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:11 AM UTC
“In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.”
- Kofi Annan
I have never desired to step inside
a mass grave, but the white marble top
covering a piece of the ground like
a band-aid on a wound silently
invites me in with an open staircase.
The closer I move toward the
entrance, the more I am reminded of
hate. The hate lingers on the ground
around the grave, humming a ballad
reserved for attempted extinction.
Machetes, guns, and axes were the
instruments in the orchestra that
played the tune of death on this piece
of land. The screams of children,
gunshots piercing flesh, bone
breaking under blunt force. I enter
the grave not knowing what to feel.
My heart beats consciously as
I control the flow of air in and
out of my body, trying to play life’s
song amid the loud lingering hum
of hate that has seeped from the
ground above. The light that enters
does not brighten my feelings;
it only reveals the moments of
death on the walls which are shelved
with skulls, some with bullet holes,
some with fractures from machetes.
I move through the thin corridor
fearful of making eye contact
with the skulls for I do not want to
stare into the empty eye sockets
to see individual death. Femurs and
humeri lay like ***** clothes thrown
into the corner of a room. No longer do
they represent one human. Outside the
light warms my skin and directs my heart to beat unconsciously,
my breath to rise and fall in unison
with my steps. It shines upon a new
tune being played. Children laughing,
mothers yelling, hymns being sung. It
spotlights a beauty of humanity:
Reconciliation.
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:06 AM UTC
Snapping an ankle is pain.
The shock of your bones turning alienistic
the pop of a ligament
the jolt of pain that brightens the sun’s light
and turns vision into a graphic novel
hurts
Remembering my regret is pain
The veil of anger I used to avoid the truth
the ways I distorted my feelings
the years of what-if
letting self-confidence become
a lost friend
I’m over you
But the regret and memory hang in
my brain waxing and waning
tugging on my emotions
flooding my soul with a foamy fluid sadness
that drowns my nerves
If I could rub my hands across a golden
lamp and meet a genie I would ask
for a pencil eraser that could correct
there, their, they’re, and the thought of
you and I.
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:05 AM UTC
Under a glowing cumulus streak,
baby bumps in the earth
roll in burlap colored dirt
and ankle scratching ferns.
Behind them,
colored blue
by the haze of distance,
tower rock,
sharp and coarse
from years of turmoil,
look like they’re wearing
tiny white fleece caps.
My mind is almost
silent,
only speaking up to
remind me to breath.
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:04 AM UTC
The road that twists
toward the horizon
is black and nonexistent
under the moon that is hidden behind
a sheet of clouds.
The night has obscured the trees around us
and has blanketed
our destination in darkness.
Our car’s steel frame closes
in on us as we race
a glowing point in the sky sheet
to the line ahead where
dark grey meets black.
Yellow orbs in pairs
float in unison
and grow together as they
approach us.
The cars we pass are nothing but
metal and rubber shapes gliding along
the concrete trail
operating by themselves.
The human that was controlling them in daylight
has vanished in
Night’s shadow.
Dec 20, 2016
Dec 20, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
Here I sit,
newspaper in hand,
bite in my in bagel,
watching you,
watching me.
Others around me
go about their business
casually, as if they
are not being watched by you too.
If only they knew.
Your glass-eye
zooms in,
zooms out,
watches me read,
watches me breathe.
It tracks my ****** features,
it scans, and scans,
all day.
I must get up now,
I enjoyed our daily meet.
As I get up,
I pass under you,
and your eye follows me until
you cannot see my face.
But I am not out of your sight,
for you are connected
with your sisters eyes,
as the track me
when I am out of your sight.
Forever you will be watching me,
and don't worry,
I''ll be watching you.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 8:54 PM UTC
It’s lost now.
Our hearts no longer skip beats at the
sight of each other, they beat in our chests
as if we had never met.
You brown hair will no longer lay on my chest
and warm me when I need it the most.
I won’t get another chance to laugh at
the way you dance when I play
your favorite song.
Our opportunity that grew
from a bond bound together with movies
and restaurants,
and floats down the river
where your smile
made me forget about the town and people around us,
has now withered away.
It attempted to resurrect itself
through the speaker on our phones,
the tears across your cheeks,
and the trails lit only by the moon,
but we knew it never had a chance,
the opportunity was buried under seven feet
of lies and mistakes!
But it’s fine,
there will be other opportunities,
but the one that was so golden,
so glorious,
is lost now.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 8:53 PM UTC