Ours was less an Arab Spring
and more a half-hearted coup d'état.
There was no immolation,
no burning desire on your part;
no passion in the streets of you.

You stole in at night
through a window I'd left open,
a crack in my need
for something more than mere
existence.  From me there was
no resistance.

I let you lead, and followed blindly;
my voice I raised on your behalf
against all that I had known before.
Your words, your whispers
alone could incite me to storm
against the strongest walls.

Now, as summer comes
and this sectarian affair,
this spring uprising
that we called us has ended,
I sweep the streets of our debris
and wander down
the empty avenues
of you, half-hearted.

r ~ 6/5/14

Not half but whole you!
You can truly be the person you want.
Want is when you accept everything in yourself
Yourself that you respect and love
Love the flaws and imperfection you have.
Have the confidence; you are beautiful.
Beautiful when you let those scars take you off
Off of these pain and suffers you just light up your day
Day begins in you
You are only one!

Babels of blocks to the high heavens towering
Flames of futility swirling below;
Poisonous fungi in brick and stone flowering,
Lanterns that shudder and death-lights that glow.

Black monstrous bridges across oily rivers,
Cobwebs of cable to nameless things spun;
Catacomb deeps whose dank chaos delivers
Streams of live foetor that rots in the sun.

Colour and splendour, disease and decaying,
Shrieking and ringing and crawling insane,
Rabbles exotic to stranger-gods praying,
Jumbles of odour that stifle the brain.

Legions of cats from the alleys nocturnal.
Howling and lean in the glare of the moon,
Screaming the future with mouthings infernal,
Yelling the Garden of Pluto's red rune.

Tall towers and pyramids ivy'd and crumbling,
Bats that swoop low in the ****-cumber'd streets;
Bleak Arkham bridges o'er rivers whose rumbling
Joins with no voice as the thick horde retreats.

Belfries that buckle against the moon totter,
Caverns whose mouths are by mosses effac'd,
And living to answer the wind and the water,
Only the lean cats that howl in the wastes.

A destruction of self-confidence,
A wicked collection of rules.
Never has my fragile heart
Wished disaster quite this cruel.

They lecture you to be yourself-
More like inject it in your veins.
It doesn't help; for we are different
People with different brains.

Wake-up early, slave for hours,
Come home late, and cry.
This isn't how it's supposed to be-
School makes me want to die.

Change? It won't. So here I stay,
Always exhausted and annoyed.
The little girl who laughed and smiled
Has been replaced by me, destroyed.

I am colorblind
Without you, dear.
I lost red,
When you stole my heart,
A little bit of blue
With every tear that fell for you,
Green when I
Looked into your eyes for the last time.
I lost yellow when I lost you,
Cause you shone like the sun,
Purple went too,
With the last time you kissed my neck.
Pink disappeared when you did,
You took your favorite color with you.
I am colorblind
Without you, dear.
Now all that's left
Is the grays of stormy skies ahead.

Beneath the mango tree
death turns slowly -
creaks the branches/
untouchable - the tears
hanging low above the ground -
slowly swinging - no more singing/
beneath the mango tree.

r ~ 5/30/14