When you are a poet
you don't place yourself on a pedestal
don't spit venomous hate
think fellow writers are dismal.

When you are a poet
you don't feel a superiority
fellow writers you gleefully berate
make yourself perversely witty.

When you are a poet
your heart is a little more wide
you don't fume and fret
readers are not on your side.

If you are a poet
you know better than to be arrogantly vain
don't carry ego's sinful weight
but let your art pour through your pen.

Who’s there -
Remember me?
You silly, scared little boy.
Are you proud now
That you ran away?
I remember it all like it was yesterday.
When you promised you’d be there
No matter what,
A feeble lie
You quickly forgot.

Remember that day
I came out of theatre
with nothing but tears and sickness?
And blood,
there was so much blood.
I was broken,
I was empty,
I needed you to be there.
You promised you would
No matter what,
A feeble lie
You quickly forgot.

I remember most
The last time I saw your face,
When you turned
And said to me,
‘But I haven’t had a night out with the boys in ages’
Like it somehow justified
Those words,
Your decision,
Etched onto my heart with icy precision.
It’s almost funny now, isn’t it?
I’d crack a smile
If I weren’t so ashamed
I once considered you
as worthy.

I remember when you promised you’d be there
No matter what,
A feeble lie
You quickly forgot.

Maybe I’ll laugh one day.
After all,
You turned out to be nothing more
Than one big joke.

My life is crumbling
and all I can do
is stand here, waiting for help.
I've helped myself all I can,
and bad things keep happening.
I need company,
I need love,
I need comfort.
My life is crumbling
and all I can do
is watch.

as a kid, movies were my life,
dramas, comedies, documentaries,
miniature worlds of love and strife,
i sat down and glued
my eyes to the silver screen
to violence and blood
rich reds splashed on green;
as i late-night consumed
an Iraq war drama flick,
i heard history unwinding,
wrapping its tendrils to pick
apart my thoughts one by one
flashback frames spin
past bloodstained orbs,
Iraqi bullets beat a din
in my ear drum echo chambers;
shouts shatter constructed dreams
of innocence,
sweating nightmares, muffled screams
i remembered stray bullets
ridding the body of a wayward child
red inking my green sleeves
as i cradled him, he smiled
and told me his name.
i jolt back to reality
blood forcing muscles to lift pen
capturing the totality
of my anger in writing,
film forcing finger
to tilt stylus to modern papyrus
worried thoughts linger
finger on trigger,
as I write a review,
criticizing needless dredging
of the past, through
cheap, violent thrills
meant to entertain
jaded eyes unfamiliar
with foreign terrain
my fingers move
pressing down with no direction
i transcribe his name
ink soaking a predetermined selection
of grooves, his name
echoes from the past:
Rahim.

i believe that people
are like those sand paintings
that take years to finish
every shape
and
every color
is there for some reason
some accidental reason
or some intentional one
billions of tiny pieces to create one whole
over time the shapes and colors
may change
because they don't seem to fit,
and with all these grains
to deal with it is a slow process
to try
to make the picture right again
sometimes a wind
blows a section off
we then rebuild that section,
but it doesn't look the same
the whole is altered accordingly
we do this perpetually
until we inevitably
run
out
of the sand given to us
by some unseen hourglass
and then we die
and then the sand is swept through centuries into some giant sandbox as the picture slowly blurs
and dissappears,
until the table-top is cleared
and as the children play and dig
and the wind ripples and churns, eventually
we end up
being barely more than billions
of tiny pieces
in an endless
colorful
sandbox