If you gave me your heart like I gave you mine
I would gently close my fingers
around pulsing muscle
I would clench my jaw
I would close my eyes
and I would squeeze
until it ruptured in my hand
the warmth of your blood reminding me
just how love feels

The story I read, some forty years now,
Burns inside my head.
A young woman, ***** violently
By two brothers,
Hands and face mutilated,
The horror on her father's face.
Vengeance was his alone,
As he murdered her assailants,
And boiled down their bones.
His name was Titus.
The story was four hundred years old.
Re-told from a story three thousand years older.
Re-told today.
Rwanda, Bosnis, Syria, Jordan, Dahlmer et al.
Disfiguration with acid,
Limbs gone missing,
Tongues cut out, black sockets,
Missing parts of humanity
In prison camps and resistence movements.
We're still baking pies and feeding on human flesh.
Shakespeare was never so violent.

My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
His hand is strong but my face will survive
That pain is one of a kind
My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
My mother has given up on him
My brother has but a look of grim
My father never fails to hit my face; I can’t help but to just stay
I rest my soul, with tears in my eye
Sometimes I wonder if it’s better to die

My thoughts are twisted like a vine
Which cover me in fear and pain
I come home in a wild rage
And beat my lover once again

Waves of relief go up my spine
Yet crash at the guilt
My thoughts are twisted like a vine
Which lay on the foundations I built

After the screams quiet down
And the storm begins clearing
We feel the emotions built by frowns
And we are both left fearing

ANTLIKE STRENGTHS
A poem by Tricia Hague-Barrett 1993

An ant carries its large load across the cracks
in the path on its way homeward
Nothing gets in its way
Nothing prevents him from succeeding,

If only I could have seen the end in the beginning
where struggles are frequent but passable,
testing but not breaking my resolve to give in
to the desparate feelings of loneliness, tiredness.

Ant-like, I too have to learn to carry the heavy load,
The Teaching load, the Administrative load,
carry it across potholes, ditches, mountains
and through distant valleys of calmness.

Turbulent tests, stumbling stones,
each there to guide me along the way
Like guardian angels, each one
Heralding the Dawn of a New Day.

Ends.
(C) 1993

A new town, a new place,
Every day we see them.
They are a blessing and a curse,
To bless us with death.

They're everywhere, they live among us,
And we love them so.
Point your fingers at the tools,
Point the barrels at yourselves,
It all makes sense in our twisted world.

Call 'em blind, call 'em slaves,
We're all the same.
Clones who can't see the raw  truth,
Without a coat of sweet lies.

Sky blue lies,
But the truth runs red,
Like the blood you soak in.

Let's play a game of Russian roulette,
I'll load the gun and you place the bets.
Who the **** will make it out?
Who has to die next?

Your standards have not changed in a changing world,
Tradition has been ***** of all reason.
So set flame the number two excuse,
Forever engraved in depravity.
How can they **** us without us?
We send each other to the slaughter.
Man turns on man, child turns to killer,
Isolation becomes the evil, and reason is retribution.

So let's play that of Russian roulette,
I'll load a few guns, you call those risky bets.
How many dead bodies equals logic?
How much longer can we do this?

Somebody please tell me why I miss someone who has hurt me so much.
Unforgivably and unlawfully has he treated me – and demolished my life with his icy touch.
So why do I miss him with this ache in my stomach and with tears in my eyes?
O why O why? When he caused my childhood’s demise?

​You open the door and a screech pierces your ears, but they're not coming from the old rusty hinges your father never cared to repair. Those screeches are coming from the Rottweilers inhabiting the room your parents once used to rest. The volume gradually increases with each conscious step you take, and as you do, your mind is capturing the whispers of the demons possessing your parental figures; "*******", "good for nothing", "drunken *******", "***** *****" are the offensive terms you learn to use in "self-defense". But is it really self defense if the spewing venom is poison to your heart? It's as if you were a scorpion stabbing yourself in the chest with your own venomous tail to see your ex-lover suffer. You walk in and see acidic spit coming from their lips, and they're just getting burned from the spit of the other. They're playing a game using their words to see who's acid could burn who to death first - but in this game, who's really losing? Are you the loser if you choose to die by the hurt words of your lover or if you killed the one you loved because you struggled to find the words to say you did? You were hurt and you loved them to death - but then you actually killed them. You killed them and now the person you learned to love is gone forever. Now you're dealt with a bad card; you have to learn to love the monster you've mistakenly created. Learn to love the sound of your skin sizzling at the touch of the acid sent from its lips. Learn to love the way it holds your heart in its meaty hands, and squeezes it too hard from the rage. Learn to love the sensation of the fallout: internal bleeding. Learn to love the pain and spread the joy! Show your kids the true meaning of a family portrait, it will then live on for generations to come.

I zip on my smile,
And leave my house covered in fear,
into to the treachery, whom I call Kyle,
It begins joyful,
yet soon falls to doom,
He bursts into flames,
And there I lay in my tomb
After the drama wraps itself up,
I rise from death and smile falls loose
I leave the hell where my screams have been silenced,
And hope that no one else will have to suffer this violence.