The battle is over
Vanquished is the foe
Yet why triumph trusts
So bitter, so hollow?

In the eye of my mind
Each enemy was a villain.
Yet when I saw it true.
Were no monsters, just men.

Men, much like us,
Trying to do what's right.
Our perceptions at odds
Mirroring the sides of the fight.

Warring for Lords
Who use us as pawns
Is glory so great, risking
The sight of another dawn?

T'was not the war
But the pillage that came after
Fashioned my doubt of men
Heeding the devil on their shoulder.

Noble causes forgotten
Once reaping the spoils of war
The blood of innocents staining
Mens' honors and their swords.

The crowds cheer our names,
Place on our heads, Hero's crowns.
I paste a smile on my face.
It's my heart that wears a frown.

Running out of
Oxygen, burning out
When contenders feel like
Dropping dead,
In an unexampled manner
Summoning a vestige
Of energy
Bringing into play
A new strategy,
Miruts Yifter Ethiopia's
Olympic legend
Used to surge ahead
Demonstrating a race
Is a sport of foot,lung
And head.
That is why
A commentator
Christened him
“Mirutse Yifter
The gear changer!”
“I dare say
Catching up with him
In a dead heat
There is no way
Once, he broke away!”

Two golds in 5 thousand
And 10 thousand meter race
In Moscow Olympic
With a gear-changing tactic
What a trick, what a trick!
What a story to children
And grandchildren to tell
Recalling minutest
Detail well!”

In our childhood,
With people
In the neighborhood
Our eyes
To TV screens glued
We used to relish
Miruts' sprinted finish
Forcing rivals
Winning dreams
To relinquish!

After the medal
Putting on ceremony,
Heading to
Our football pitch
We used to run round,
Round,round and round
Till exhausted ourselves
We found!

It is adopting
Mirutse's footprint
Haile,Derartu,Kenenisa,
Tirunesh,Selershi and
Meseret sprint!
This formula grand
Gradually has found
Its way to Kenya
And England
May be tomorrow
To Sire lanka or America!

My heroes growing up
were golden-haired princes
and gun-toting superspies
that would crash through my bedrom windows
and whisk me away
to a world more beautiful than this one.

My heroes as a young, ***** teenager
were the scruffy rebels.
Sid Vicious. Joan Jett. Amy Lee.
Gerard Way. Brendon Urie.
who would scream their ways through my bleeding ears
and pierce my heart like needles,
And stir my pre-pubescent *** drive like a raunchy letter to a middle-aged, dissatisfied wife.

My heroes changed as I grew older
As my standards became lower for them.
because I thought i didn't deserve anything.

The man across the street who smiled at me.
The man who offered me a towel when I threw up on the bus.
The classmate who gave me directions once.

Then I met you, and you saved me.
Like the golden-haired prince
and gun-toting spy
from my dreams.

But today

One came in the form of a lady who bought a necklace from my mother.
And now we can afford two coffees instead of one.

Modern-day heroes.
****, I need to learn to save myself.

Everyone is waiting for someone to save them, but sometimes you have to be your own heroine.

Hero

In the lost words of language
In the gaping hordes of time
There stands a hero
He fights with rhyme
For the pen is mightier than the sword
His words we lean upon
In the maelstrom in the eye of the storm of silence
His words cascade like a fountain
A tranquil place in a sea of violent words
Great big man monsters attack him with verbs
Birds peck at his eyes with profanities
and troll him on Facebook.
But he doesn't care, he barely looks
For his heart is strong as is his soul
and he breathes in air
and exhales poetry.

He was never one with words,
He have those in his head,
But not in his voice.

He believed in waiting for the right moment,
And time will reveal it all,
Without ever changing what already is.

Another hero came rushing in,
Shaking her world,
And of what she knows.

He was there first,
But he was not the one to claim,
Years of effort has gone to the drain.


- HIY

A fallen soldier
All in the name of freedom
The ultimate price
Gone, but never forgotten
Dry your teary eyes
Let the memory live on
Forever in time
Carried in our hearts and souls
A heroic death

They promised, my dear you cannot trust anyone
For this world is selfish, surely you know,
It is filled with evil lurking,
That feasts upon your skin and bones

Stay away from all the darkness,
For the monsters show no fear,
They will laugh at all your failures
And whisper nightmares in your ears

But a saviour came striding through the darkness,
Though I had become the monsters prey
He showed me light and love and freedom
And with him I ran away