kitchen counter riddled in grey marble
a fragrance of burning wood and candy
solar blessings filtered into linear lines
fruits spread in an ikebana rainbow
a jar of sickly saccharine sugar atop
a syrupy taste lingers in that air

i long to breathe it in once more
that sweet air of my grandma's
house from all these 11,285
kilometres away from home
and ten years from those
first moments of life

No ceremony
Or invention
Convention
Ever stagnant

You, foul Country
Are my skin
You are not tunic
Not shalwar

Not the shame
With which I
Stiffle my chest
Not love

Fleeting,
Fumbling, flapping
Forced to sit
And forced to flee

Your tongue burns
As a curse
On my tongue
Your hands

Are *****
With my guilt
Your crime
Was me

Your tears seep
In pillow and they
Weep all night
On my face

There is no grief
In me to spare
You bring with you
Everything hot

You beat
As a breathing
Heart of fire
Your feet

Are defiant
Stained with a Henna
That is red as souls
Your wounds

Are flowers on my
Palms, your laments
****** in my wrists
In beauty, I

Return to you
You, the grotesque
Soil of my sprout
Your sins my scars

Your songs my scars
Your violent dances
Alive as tulips
And the love

That you make
Is borne of silence
Whispered, crime
Your law is grey

Your child looks
At me forever
And it moves
Like winds, it moves

Me, it disgusts
At me, and in there
It examines everything
The streets

In your stare
Are quiet and shut
All the jewels
Are jewels of shame

And I do not
Wear you like a flag
I do not rejoice
When you are green

Release me
Or do not leave
Tyrant, I love you.
You peasant, you fool

Your kisses are petty
Your weight frail
You sob like a railway
And all your people

Are dead.
They were running
To you, their homes
Behind. They

Were all running
For you. You reach
In the quiet for me
But I am bleeding

I have killed the sun
And the dawn is you
Sweet, haggard, lover
Of brisk touch and flame

Your massacre
Is my massacre.
Your foul decay
Is my blood.

I heard a call from heaven, I saw a fever dream
Of a land my kin would live in and joy would reign supreme.

But the land of the pure has blood in her waters
Of the children she bore, both the sons and the daughters.

There is poison in her air, her streets awash with shame.
How long shall her people suffer these perils in her name ?

Where justice is all but rare for the ones of wealth and fame
and her defenders sold her bare for fortunes and petty gain.

Her clerics were no different, they were but the same.
Men of God with Godless morals, who put us infidels to shame.

So we wait for spring's embrace, in this garden of yours and mine.
But winter is a mighty foe and it hangs on to every vine.

‘A festive song for thy ears’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Brimming with gratitude,
With pennies of silver
Or the coppers from well-worked hands,
The heavy gold of the rich;
Once weighed down pockets
Generously giving.
‘A festive song for thy hearts’,
Sang the jovial busker;
Playing with precision,
With clarity and care
Or the subtlety of pristine art,
The blending sound of the voice
Soothingly warming.

in her shallow ******* of a life
she's nursed off spite and envy,
the spice of her existence

an fm radio playing
just to drown out her thoughts
on a drive she took
late in the eve

to look out over where the dam
holds the water back
the cool calming black
of the night
reflected off the stale water
that now sat still