I was born in terrorism.
I grew up in earthquakes, tsunamis and rebels:
in shouting blond girls with red eyes and pixel
smiles.

I was born in blurred faces and mute
voices pulling at my
eyes until I dripped the clotted
tears of a thousand soldiers, or refugees,
or children.

I was atomized, crunched
into small seeds and scattered
across a desert field.
Someday a flower would grow there,
budded from the bones
of my being and  
flowered into a fiery,
empty marigold-- dripping
gold and embers across a thirsty desert,
where the shout
of the civilians was distant
enough to ignore.

I was sodomized,
conceived in the roar--
of the rumbling wave- crashing over-
pulsing through her thrashing cave.

I watched my flower whither
and blister with the deliberate count
down and the glare of the
floodlights-- dowsed in water and soil--
or some semblance of the two.  

I was born in the blood
of my mother and died in the
womb of the world.

I wish you'd hold me even when I push back.

A million twinkling stars
On a purple-grey sky.
A million strands of grass
On a wet brown land.
A million mites of dust
In the air I breathe.
A million specks of rust
On the bench in front.
A million rays of light
From the lamp-post proud.
A million dreams in sight
In the overwhelming crowd.
~Moniba.

Sitting at the kitchen table,
picking at her fingertips: outstretched,
and barren with loneliness,

she touches them
to the hot mug of tea.
It burns.
Sweet sugars, stinging her sorrows,
drowning her desires in lukewarm water,
black with tears.

They hurt, her fingers,
stretched out to reach
something just barely
in the distance.

A sailboat on the edge
of the ocean.
The deep black sea of her
heart.

She peels  
at the blistered hands.
They are not
her own.

FM Frequencies shocking
through my heart,
blurring colors with deep,
droning base.

Sitting in the car,
he looks at me and grins.
His thin chuckle chocking
me in its warm embrace.

'keep your eyes on the road'
'keep your eyes on the road'

Turning up the volume and turning down
our thoughts.

Laughing at the kids screeching by:
Naked and angry, with boiling flesh.

He taps the tone with timid tips
of his fingers.

Strumming on my
heart.

Drumming out my
FM frequencies.

Success is measured
in years, in wisdom, in happiness.

In the amount of people who pause
as you walk,

the number of strangers
who stare at your screen and are moved
to pressing a button.

Success is measured in clicks,
in slow, thoughtful clicks: hammers
pounding through keys with accidental madness.
"I like it," they scream.
I like it.

Success is measured
by happiness. By
snaking smiles stretching far,
too far.

In my peripheral vision, I see it.
A knight battling
a monkey.
A butterfly fighting
a queen.
An old man sitting on the park bench
and laughing at the woes
of the children.

"I like it," he thinks.
I like it