You said my fears were irrational
But how do you deem irrational
That which a person whom
Is deeply in love with you
Deems rational,
How do you deem
My fear of losing you
Irrational?

Look at us now
The mess we've become
We've become such a wreck
A train wreck,
That even the finest form of grafitti
Cannot modify

How do you live with yourself
Knowing that you're the one
Who sinked our love boat
Now we're just another superstructure
Consumed whole,
By the unfathomable depth
Of the endless sea,
From the brutal storms of life
We didn't foresee
We cried of pain from heart fracture
Is it love that you lacked
Or was your sense of reasoning somewhat hacked?

How do you sleep, knowing that
You're the one who ripped apart
The delicate petals
To this precious rose of ours
Perhaps you won't make it
To be in the running,
In the Oscars
For the best actor award
But you do at least, deserve a few medals
Like the paraplegic athlete Oscar
For the best disloyalty

I confessed my fears unto you
And all you could do was laugh it off
You brushed the subject off
As if it were a speck of dust
On your shoulders
Rendering your pride, a form of rust
How could you have traded
Unconditional love
For irrefutable lust

You were once my pride and joy
But now a stranger you've become
Another somebody, I used to know
Sad part is that your presence
No longer brings any joy

How could you say that
My fears were irrational
When you fell into the same trap
I warned you of
How could you say
That my fears were irrational
When you succumbed to the spell
And didn't get choked by the smell
Of our burning bridge
How could you just stand there
And watch, while everything
We've ever worked for
Is burning down to dust?

Look at us now.
A premeditated crime scene we are
No evidence left to prove how close we once were
Not even a chalk outline
Look at us now.

It is only a little word, but carries so much on its shoulders.
Often overlooked as an emotion when placed next to the big ones:
fear, love, hate, jealousy, happiness, greed.
Without it what would we be?
What purpose would we have?
It is a catalyst from which dreams are cast
and possibilities reached.
As an idea it is only touched upon, but without it nothing would be worth following through.
Nothing would drive us
Life would lack ambitions.
When it is gone everything seems broken
no last gasping chances left.
It is embedded in every aspect of life
and yet it quietly hides.
When uttered, it sounds weak,
but can be strong enough to move mountains,
overthrow governments and rattle tyrants off their throne.
Or simply it is enough to finish third in a race,
or be on time for a meeting,
or for the tests to come back negative.
Our hope.

Hope is, by definition, a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen, a feeling of trust**
Hope carries anchors on it's shoulders, afraid it will only meet the standard of almost
We all hope, but we do not all receive
Hope is the product of human weakness
We long that's why we aspire
Imagine how weak man is, we are not like birds that can fly when we want to go to places or we want to see people
We are frail and easily inflicted with illnesses
We are fragile bottles that easily break physically and emotionally, hence the development of the helmet and airbags
The study of human emotion called psychology and psychiatry
And worse, we die, that is why men searched for the fountain of youth to no avail
Hope helps us to move on and continue
Hope is a wish, hope is a motivator
Hope gives a reason to keep going
Hope is the whisper telling us that it will get better in time
But I ask, why do the hands of my clock have arthritis
Hope is not a liar
Hope is encouraging but hope is also deceiving
Hope is joker, a trickster
Like an amateur magician, everyone could see the trap door but me
Hope will disappoint you
Hope is not perfect, hope does not always work out like you think hope should
But hope is valuable, hope keeps balance
Hope carries the unable, the dreamers, the optimists
Hope is the guide
Without hope, we're lost
Without hope, we're nothing

“Woman does not emerge from man’s ribs. Not ever. It’s he who emerges from her womb.” Nizar Qabbani.

1. In the beginning
God asked himself a question and only made half the answer.
The Bible says
That when the Lord realised the world needed a woman
He searched through man, took a rib, and made her.

2. Eve, all apple and velvet.
I know you didn’t come kicking and screaming.
You, grafted onto man like a prize fruit
then cooked up like a red wine sauce all acid and hiss.
After the Bible took away the one thing it thought you were good for in the first place
it had you hold hands with the devil,
all flirtation and fashion,
made you sound like your body was empty of anything else.

Eve,
Mother of mothers.
Carved yourself from the rubble the same way David pulled himself from the stone.
Don’t tell me a woman is ever a safe place to rest.
Don’t think Eve ever let herself be an after thought.

3. On the third day
before the flood and the fire and the rubble,
God made himself a garden and called it Eden.
Or Eve.
Or something.
He stopped, closed his eyes and finally smiled because at last he had made something holier than himself.
He tried every fruit, spat the seeds like broken teeth.
Over the next few nights Eve kissed her life into Adam’s ribs,
told him it was
all good.
When The Lord finally moulded Adam from the clay of the garden, the wind whispered and knew.

4. People say that a great woman is just like a fine wine - full bodied and getting better with age.
Tell that to your mother.
Tell that to every woman who has ever fought for a cause.
A woman’s blood is worth so much more than communion but men just love a commodity.

5. I close my eyes and I am standing in a garden.
Her name is Eve:
her hands are ripe fruit;
head a forest fire;
body sinking under the weight of a great flood.
I say: “Eve how do I think myself into forest?
Will you show me how to become forest fire? All skin and bones and burning map.
You perfect absolute.”

6. So I turn back. Pull her name from my ribs like I was the first and I came from her.
And then my hands, gentle gravediggers.
And later I looked up and there was nothing except earth and light and earth and light and her
and it was over again.
So I sat down. Took a breath - the first real breath, hands shaking like the corners of pages.

7. I looked for the first time and I could see for miles.
I could see for miles.

you said you don't want to hurt me
yet words lash like a whip
rending flesh from the heart
what is done, cannot be undone
words cannot be unspoken or unheard
unapologetic and cold
there is no bandage for the wounds
as the blood falls from my eyes
in sulfur and ash

There is a vague
sense of clarity in
the feeling that
one can be sad at the
passing of something
while simultaneously
sighing in relief
for the silence that
comes in it's absence.