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 Jun 2014 Khaled O
RILEY
Blaze:
 Jun 2014 Khaled O
RILEY
I want to come up with amendments,
But my brains cannot function
Because I have spent the last 8 hours
Trying to memorize the  2 “I’s” of Lebanese history
Irony and Ignorance.

I want to fix the world
But I was never the handy man;
I once broke my mother’s phone
Trying to wipe the screen;
And frankly,
I don’t really know what’s wrong with it.

I want to patch my mother’s heart.
The bullet in her son’s temple
Burnt a hole in her arteries,
So every time she inhales
She could taste the lead
Between her husband’s eyes;
Because before the stars collapsed
They were just scanning the shelves for skimmed milk;
His daughter suffered from diabetes,
And before the sun exploded
At the bend of a thumb
She was hanging from his arms,
Jane trying to swing her way
But in this movie
She never meets Tarzan.
His daughter was only 3.
A car bomb
Can conflagrate
From 9,000 up to 27,000 feet per second
Both are multiples of 3.
A wired van
Can carry up to 12,000 pounds
Of explosives
Also a multiple of 3.
On her 3rd birthday
She blew 3 candles,
And 3 candles were lit-
Every night,
In between the white roses-
Over her grave.

I want to breathe
Burning tires,
I want to bask
In blood,
I want to think
In exchange rates,
I want to feel numb;
If this is the only way…
Is this the only way
To survive?
 May 2014 Khaled O
RILEY
She approached me
Tiptoeing from across the room,
Although no one was asleep around us to wake;
I watched her lower lip bleed
From biting too much,
As she deciphers the DNA codes on her hair
With her fingertips,
Stroking the life out of it
Up and down-
And up and down again.
She said don’t get me wrong
But I found myself;
I found myself lurking underneath the light of your words
Bending with your o’s and standing straight with your I’s,
Because I
Got lost;
I got lost in the stories you wrote
About the girls who broke
And they felt just like me-
Dazed
By the love poems you cried down for her,
And I wondered how beautiful she must be.
I got flustered
In the blank spaces
That you chose not to write in,
And it felt like I should cut parts of myself
And add them in the vacancies
But I just don’t know what to add.
For every time I rest my soul
On the tip of a pen
I feel like I’ve said too much,
And every time I scratch my words
Throw away my being
Behind
Unread books and dusty light stands
I believe I haven’t said enough
For I could give more,
Be more,
If only I could start over,
And you
You seem to know me more than I know myself;
You have built bridges
Out of my paper shreds,
Tunnels out of my unexpressed thoughts-
You have created your haven inside my brains
And settled down in my heart.
You’ve managed to make me chew your words
Like breakfast
Was a poetic meal to be served
At all times of the day;
You’re an image,
I re-create you in my mind
Before I sleep
After asleep
And even during I sleep-
The thoughts of you never quit my head
Like a gamer would never quit
A game of Warcraft
In the midst of hunting season”
She took off her glasses,
And I could see the marks of them
Being there for too long.
She closes her eyes
As if she was about to take a leap of faith,
But instead she leaped two steps into my arms
And that was when
I got to ask her
What her name was.
And that was when I realized
It didn’t even matter.
 May 2014 Khaled O
Sarah
Truth
 May 2014 Khaled O
Sarah
the empty words i uttered and the hollow promises i made haunt me more than the words that were lying under my skin and were waiting for me to utter them but i never did.

— The End —