lovers write sweet verses
but yours do not compare.
You write ballads with the wind,
and rhymes with the roses.
flowing stanzas with the rivers,
love letters with the stars,
sonnets with the seas.
all You do says ' I love you',
all You do is poetry.

I saw you fall asleep
amidst a garden of stars,
underneath a moon
that if I looked closer,
would realise was just
as bright as your eyes,
and I found my favourite
constellation running
across your collarbones
and down along your chest,
and somewhere in between
all of that,
it collided with planets
that would never have
looked so beautiful
if I had seen them on someone else.
When I looked at you,
I found myself wondering
how a person could look
like that,
like they were the galaxy,
a galaxy so pretty that
for a moment,
the air left my lungs.

You hate my poems
You say they take me from you
that they're pointless
a waste of time
maybe you're right.
You read them,
just the words as they fall,
and say you get nothing
just syllables.
I have lost count
of the sighs and eyerolls,
the you have no talents,
they sit in a memory box
along with the times you've asked me to stop.
Stop.
Just like that.
Stop pouring myself onto paper,
Stop looking for beauty in darkness,
Stop healing.
You prefer me broken, fragile, dependant,
the girl you took from nowhere to god knows where
a once pretty, broken thing
to hang silently from your arm
while you talk proudly of the soul that you saved.
You fear that my writing will end us.
I fear that my stopping will end me.

I thought it was supposed to get easier
The deep hunger gnawing at my insides
I was supposed to get used to it
Yet my stomach feels like a bottomless cave

Empty
       Empty
And these lips are dry and chapped I'm made more painfully aware of the thirst as I speak

Drained of energy
Tired and restless
I slump to one side
As though I can't hold myself up

And everything is irritating
The heat
Engaging in polite conversation
Pretending not to feel or hear the gurgle and growl constant twinge

Or the just about bearable contractions
As my stomach squeezes in on itself
And hiccups shake my body
I deprive myself of water for the people who don't have a choice

Comforted and secure
As the delicious smell of rice wafts to my nose
And the juicy mango melon fruit salad gets prepared for the meal at dusk
I know it's mine to eat tonight

I will eat tonight
Though not everyone does
Not everyone is as lucky

So next time I walk past someone asking for charity
I will remember that I tried to put myself in their shoes
Everyone deserves food and water
I will eat less if it means they can eat too

I'm still stuck in day-drunk unemployment.
A millennial with eyes to a screen,
adopting a science
in a bedroom whisper for Gaza.

Now a writer of pretty words and clumsy verse,
there's no place for happiness
in forcing poetry. There are ribbons and bows
around the fenced-off trees,

there are notebooks of unfinished thought.
I'm searching the skies for a scrap of movement,
for some coded message
to **** the engine of war.

There's a wedding in the morning,
and there is somebody who still believes in love.
Rainbow confetti will kick in the sky,
a dandelion is born in the skull of old Palestine.

I'm still stuck in this new-age desperation,
a constant plea for peaceful completion.
I'm changing address
for a clean way of living,

in your sweet floral dress,
let this be the beginning.

Uncertainty is laughing in my mind, teasing me with the possibility that your reach for me is only to keep me from going before you find my replacement.
It catches my breath in a net of anxiety, telling me that the pounding in my chest is the broken heart that will be further shattered soon enough.
Am I playing the part of an absolute fool?
Should I have just listened when you told me I was nothing to you?
Around and around I am spun, I am in love with you and you are to be mine til death, no I'm not it was just a ploy because I want you to stay close.
All the benefits of a marriage without the fidelity commitment and intimacy, this was your request.
Now you tell me that was not true, and promise to open yourself to the love in your heart and show me the truth.
A promise I've heard a thousand times before only to have brief relief.
Once before I heard this same thing from you, never was in love, made love to keep you convinced but never meant any of it, you abandoned your woman and your unborn son.
Upon your return you said you never meant it, you were just panicking, but here you have brought it up again.
Claiming that it was my fault for not listening to you then, but I did listen.
I listened so hard it nearly killed us both and only one survived.
But I also listened to all of you're proclamations of love and devotion that followed.
I listened to you speak of our union as one, or future together, I listened carefully as you described a home filed with unity, loyalty and love.
I heard and I listened carefully as you started to speak in we, us, and our.
Here we are again the ferris wheel has come full circle with the same dropping feeling in the pit of my stomach as you obliterate all that I thought was pure and true only to say you didn't mean it.
From the second I decided to give you one more chance, my heart and mind are screaming at me, "you fool!" My soul is screaming and begging not to suffer any more damage. I am terrified that that is the truth and this is the lie, that you don't want to do it but you have not found someone to take my place to feed your ego.
May God have mercy and let the real truth be known and his will be done so that I can plant my feet on solid earth. I am waiting, I am watching, I am horrified at the possibility that this is all wrong..