We were beautiful children
And we grew up so brave,
We were touched by death and heartbreaks but we stayed just the same.

We listen to jazz all night and drink red wine,
Find ourselves adventure to pass the time,
We don't talk much about the pain we've felt inside,
No more bumps in the road,
Just enjoying the ride.

Our love is too strong to carry weight of what's gone,
We find peace in the sun,
And the belief of being young.

Love of mine in the world,
We are one in the same,
You can laugh while you're crying and be childish when you lose games,
We are fine, we are okay,
We are in love,
And our children someday will be just like us.

it's looking into the horror-filled eyes of a four year old girl
holding her shaking hands

as she watches her father, her mother
blown to smithereens

it's the family of five
reduced to three

it's the grandmother of fifteen, who is over filled with love
now that she only has six to share it between

it's the cousins, brothers, aunts
packed into a tiny sail boat

who are we to deny the happiness of those who don't think they'll ever be happy again?

who are we to turn away the freedom of people who believe they will never be freed?

Why is there a little boy lying on the beach?
Washed up.
Lifeless.
All for a new life too far to reach?

Why is there a little boy lying on the beach?
Terrorists
Heartless.
What happened to the human rights we all preach?

Why is there a little boy lying on the beach?
Traffickers.
Gangs.
Displacing people no home and no speech.

Why is there a little boy lying on the beach?
A son.
No future.
We hang our heads and weep!

As the bright sunlight closes my eyes
I smell the scent
of my favourite flower
As I touch
the velvet smooth petals
While relaxing on my
soft garden chair

I feel the warmth
of my best friend
as he lays his head on my lap
while waiting
for our daily walk

and the sound of silence
is only interrupted
by the coo of doves
as a deep breath of satisfaction
covers me
and life is good

I bit them off
chewed and chewed
and left with nothing
kept on chewing.

My teeth got crunched,
to destruction I lunched
and when finished
I noticed what had disappeared.

My fingers were shorter
and my face was pale.
I woke up to the sounds of tapping
imagined it were crowds of people clapping.

Imagined I was as magnificent as a two dollar meal.
The brown lettuce returned me to what was real.

Cardboard walls and clicking teeth, drops falling
on my worn out rags. If only I had had a calling.

Why die a thousand death everyday
when you've the option to choose the easy way
of dying the one death faster and supreme
slipping into a blissful sleep sans the bother of dream..

Her voice tried to be uttered from mouth horribly agape
but words had sunk too distant to take anymore shape
the horror shadowed her eyes like when death is too close
mocked by his hand's syringe now emptied of overdose!

He smiled to have accomplished for a cause another ****
help a life escape the pain of a grinding mill
by being a stoic missionary out to achieve a goal
decreed by heaven's will to cure a tortured soul.

He would now record his notes on her physical state
the stage had reached terminal death was natural fate
so her people would be convinced to bury her peacefully
and not approach a coroner to perform autopsy.

You like him. You’re swimming farther and farther away from the shore you’ve built your ramshackle shed on and you’re going to forget how to get back because he’s funny and sweet and you believe him when he tells you how much he wants you.

You believe him when he tells you how much he wants you and you’re surprised that myth becomes the gale force wind that tears down your shed on the shore. And once you’re back on the beach, you know without a doubt, “I can be lonely even if I’m not alone.”

His smile is crooked and he’s cute in the way that makes your heart feel like it’s falling through the floor. You get down on your knees and you’re good at that, have always been good at that, and he tells you so. He seems genuinely sad that he can’t give you anything back, but he’s one of those guys that wants you to take him all the way and refuses to kiss you after.

You sit down on the beach and decide there’s no point in rebuilding the shed. You should probably take some time to listen to the waves.

But you’re nothing if not gullible and this whole twelve weeks or so has only taught you that you are unable (unwilling) to learn from your mistakes. Just because you mean what you say doesn’t mean everybody (anybody) else does.

He gets you to talk on the phone, a Herculean task in any right. He’s from New York and he talks baseball as well as you and he puts his mouth on you for so long, your face starts to go numb.

You held him for hours and stroke his hair and tell him some demons that live in your heart because you trust that what he’s telling you he likes about you is the truth. That when he says he could do this forever, you’re not going to have to be lonely. Or alone.

Time will tell on that one, but as gullible as you are, you aren’t dumb. You are a good story to tell, an invention, something he’ll tell his friends about over a drink back in New York. Never mind that you met his mom. He’s telling you, without a doubt, no matter how unreliable a narrator of your own story you might be, you are not the kind of you bring home. Or give a shiny ring to. Or even text back.

over the creek and through the woods,
a mower roars to life

shattering sweet morning silence with
sounds of this manmade hell.

little homeowner
lazy little **** or *****,

is your little patch
of manicured green
so important a sign
to ruin this sweet morn?

keeping up with the neighbors
buying into this artificial life.

never are you seen out
sitting about
in your little-manicured world
of green.

pesticides and trimmers
blowers and mowers
how i turn my eye with disgusted scorn

at the destruction
your convoluted idea
of beauty
has brought.

earplugs firmly inserted
windows and doors tightly shut

still i can’t help
but to cry out,
"why can’t you just
shut the **** up?!"

it sniffs for the sweet breeze of Florentine
when all around are flies on rotten meat
can vaguely feel being the last of its line
as slowly falls silent sounds of heartbeat.

its fading eyes seek the far off moorland
feet still echo the long runs on limestone
in the deep woods where giant trees stand
a home where never would rest its bones.

in delirious dreams it stalks at the night
hunts for preys chasing opossums rabbits
itself haunted by looming shadowy fright
of fires that brought down all of his mates.

it's so cold out here with the sun ever far
limbs ice frozen to hold the shaking frame
only frail groans and no one to hear
for man the hunter it was another game.

I commit myself to the homicide
of my thought-flowers.
I indulge in the **** -
Killing my darlings
for the sake of art and sanity.
What a paradox.
I have bloodied my hands
with it even so.

No more love-lite poetry!
No more adolescent chinks of the
pseudo-heart!
No more infantile fork-stabs
at the plate of kid-intellectualism!
No more Wikipedia pages
on thoughts
that can swallow computers
whole!

I'm killing my darlings
for the sake of art,
for the sake of sanity -
what a paradox.
Blood is flowing.

I'm a murderer of ideas tonight -
today I will write
about many of life's very few truths.
Like trees.
Like soil.
These are the only constants in mathematics.
These are the identities.

In my garden, I reach out
to crush an
almost-crimson hibiscus.
Petals squelching with skin and nectar -
no perfume.
The hibiscus roils, unliving.

Red pulpy mess;
heart out of chest.