It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

they really do seem
like windows to heaven,
maybe that's the trick

once we get too close
we see they are nothing more than
fire and heat, scorching
anyone in their path

perhaps they are
portraits of Hell
put there by the devil
to tempt us

the dark side
can be so beautiful,
but it burns.

she tells me that she's breathing only that shame again
and that there is nothing i can do to relieve her pain again
she has walked a thousand miles in hand me down shoes
no stretch of roadside can ever quench these travelling blues

i don't know how to feel but yet i pretend to understand
what do i know of her life or this punctuating hard land
bequeathed to her from generations since come and passed
as culture, a sense of identity, a life much too innocent to last

she's reaching out, longing for her own voice to be heard
masquerading empathy i offer all these right and measured words
for with no one to answer to nor no real actions to take
i master in hollow sentiment formed from these feelings i fake

as always i seek the beauty of fragility for only my gain
i play out this butterfly's life as her delicate wings are stung by rain
briefly she flies as her life sparks and dims over fourteen days
by resurrecting my jesus my self satisfaction empowers my ways

so why is it she that carries this shame and i stand left of frame
as a spectator, a commentator, an outsider to the rules of the game
whereas she is the soul of the mythical dancer in the flame
i am the vessel devoid of heart breathing in this cold cold shame