You sit at your screen
fingertips flying in the face of decency
like a spigot attached to a vat of arsenic
dripping your poison, slowly, surely into the ears of the unthinking.

You justify the burnt skin, the orphans, the unending torture as deserved.

Deserved?

How can it be so?

Go tell the orphan, scarred and screaming that her fate was deserved.

Go stand beside mass graves and thumb your nose at the deserving corpses, stained by the blood of ages.

Where is your heart? 
does it choke and sputter,
buried beneath your all encompassing loathing?

You call me stupid, maybe so,
my views naive, my compassion wasted
yet my heart beats proudly, swells with love 
while my tired eyes drown at the unfolding horror.

War is not a spectator sport,
it is not justifiable, nor deserved.

Call me stupid if you will, ridiculous if you must
call me any number of names in your attack on my spirit
I will not care, I will not bend or bow.
Your hatred will be your undoing.
Not mine

Changes within
Changes without
The game without fun is useless
Rules are guidelines not facts
And so the wall begins
The first brick laid in tears
Pushed back across the line
The next laid in blood
Words lashed out
Toughening tender hearts
And the foundation is set
For the wall of regrets

I spent last night a' wandering
I roamed across the earth
Through meadows green
and cities gray
To try and find my worth

I asked the twinkling starlight,
beseeched the roaring sea
I begged the rugged mountainside
for any sign of me

I ran through threatening shadows
and basked in brightest sun
yet my heart remained elusive
and my soul remained undone

Then when the dawn awoke me
with it's dazzling newborn hue,
I found my worth within your heart
and wrote these words for you.

Memories
Moans and groans of the dying and the living-dead
Last words: phrases that lingered
Still on their tongues
Bloods, boots and broken bones on cassava farms
where they fell
Crosses rotten, and this rusty brown shell
Tell stories of a past - that ****** movie
This ****** war

Why fight against the world so hard?
Does your hatred never stop?
Your poems sit here on my tongue
Like bitter lemon drops

What's shaken your compassion?
who put darkness at your core?
Do you scowl down at the paper
As you write your nevermores?

Why not try being happy
try some kindness one or twice
and shed your bitter cloak for good
defrost your heart of ice

I sit and read your poems
and I wonder who's behind
this anger oozing through the screen
but the truth I'll never find

So I say to you good lady
Get a grip, some therapy
and let a little light in
to your tower of misery.

The poet sits in lamplit gloom
alone in ebb and flow
how strange it seems to write of love
but never feel it's glow

A sigh, a lie, a broken heart,
a kiss on untouched skin
yet still this writers heart it sits
uncharted deep within.

The poet sits in lamplit gloom
and stares at paper bare,
then puts to it her broken heart
and leaves it bleeding there.

I carry you within my heart
on travels far and wide
I feel your love with every step
your heartbeat times my stride

You come to me on birdsong
at the dawning of my day
a whisper on melodic breeze,
from you I'll never stray

You come to me when beauty's seen
in nature's finest things
the glory of a meadow wild,
the monarchs silken wings

You come to me when battles rage,
to softly dry my tears
and hold my heart there next to yours
diminishing my fears.

Then when the sun it sets once more
the time for roaming done
I'll watch the moon in grateful thanks
For you, my sweetest one.

This evening I take to the stage
to stand behind the Mic
to read my bits of poetry,
the thought fills me with fright.

My nerves now wrapped in butterflies
My tongue is neatly tied
My knees now knock with terror
and my voice is in a vice,
the thought fills me with horror
as my blood turns into ice.

My sweaty palms are shaking
my book is firmly grasped
as I practise reading clearly
not too slowly, not too fast.

I love to write my poems,
like to read them in my head
but tonight I'll stand behind the Mic
and read for you instead.