#violation
It started slowly, lips on a glass,
liquid poison flowing,
one led to another,
as if the burn might quiet
the storm behind my eyes.
Mingling at the bar,
hoping not to be alone
among the crowd,
yet still alone.
Voices flaring all around,
laughter buzzing like insects
against dim neon light.
I smiled when I had to,
nodded when I didn’t,
letting the night drag me
where it wanted,
not where I chose.
Unable to remember,
memory’s flickering
Flashbacks returning,
the missing events.
The journey home unknown,
a blank space
where hours should be.
Not a touch,
not a drink,
a piece of me
I never offered,
gone before I knew
it was missing.
Awoken in pain,
the room too still,
the silence too sharp,
and the night behind me
holding something
it took without permission.
Mar 5
Mar 5, 2026 at 5:17 PM UTC
Upon the threshold of the one I love, we came,
Only to be turned back by the stranger’s law, the sentry’s wall.
And so I told my soul, perhaps this is a mercy after all;
For what would you see in Jerusalem, should you enter now?
You would see all that your heart cannot endure,
As its houses rise to meet you from the path’s slow bend.
For not every soul, in finding its beloved, finds a friend,
And not all absence is a wound that brings us low.
If the joy of meeting came before the sorrow of the farewell,
That fragile joy could never be a fortress for the soul.
For once you have seen the ancient city, whole,
That vision will follow you wherever you may go.
In Jerusalem, a Georgian grocer, weary of his wife,
Mulls over a vacation, or a new coat of paint for the hall.
In Jerusalem, a scholar down from Manhattan
Deciphers the Law for Polish boys.
In Jerusalem, an Ethiopian cop shuts down a market street.
A machine gun rests on a settler not yet twenty,
A skullcap greets the Wailing Wall.
And blonde tourists from the West who see nothing of Jerusalem at all,
You see them, capturing photos of each other,
With a woman who has sold radishes in the square all her living day.
In Jerusalem, soldiers, booted, tread upon the clouds.
In Jerusalem, we prayed upon the asphalt of the ground.
In Jerusalem, who is in Jerusalem, but you?
And History turned to me, a knowing smile:
“Did you truly think your eyes would miss them, and see another kind?
Behold them now before you. They are the living script; you, a footnote, left behind.
Did you think a single visit, my son, could peel away
The city’s thick veil of what is,
So you might see in her what your heart has always held?
In Jerusalem, every man is someone else.”
She is a gazelle in the long desert of time, a fate decreed.
You are still running in her wake since she last looked at you and fled.
Have mercy on your soul an hour; I see the strength has left you.
In Jerusalem, who is in Jerusalem, but you?
O Scribe of History, wait. The city’s age is not one, but two.
One is a foreign age, assured, that sleepwalks through the day.
And another, hidden, cloaked and silent, that slips unseen along the way.
Jerusalem knows herself. Ask her people, and they will show you.
For in the city, everything
Is given a tongue, and when you ask, it will make its meaning plain.
In Jerusalem, the crescent moon arches like an unborn child,
Leaning protectively over its kin on the domes below,
A father’s love for his sons, nurtured over years of sun and snow.
In Jerusalem, the buildings are themselves quotations,
Carved from the Gospels and the Qur’an.
In Jerusalem, beauty is an octagon of lapis blue,
And above it, may its glory last, a golden dome,
A convex looking-glass, where heaven’s face is captured and distilled.
It cradles the sky, brings it near,
And hands it out like aid in a time of siege, to those who have a claim,
When a nation, after Friday prayer, stretches out its hands.
And in Jerusalem, the sky is scattered amongst the people.
We protect it, and it protects us.
We carry it upon our shoulders, a sacred trust,
If time should wrong its moons.
In Jerusalem, the pillars of dark marble stand,
Their ancient veins like trails of smoke, turned into stone.
And windows, high on mosques and churches,
Take the morning by the hand, to show it how to paint with coloured light.
And the morning says, “No, like this.”
And the window says, “No, like this.”
Until, their long debate concluded, they agree to share.
So the morning is free outside the hallowed walls,
But should it wish to enter,
It must yield to the judgment of the Merciful’s windows.
In Jerusalem, a Mamluk school, for a boy who came from beyond the river,
Sold in a slave market in Isfahan,
To a merchant from Baghdad, who brought him to Aleppo,
Where its prince feared the glint of blue in his left eye,
And gave him to a caravan bound for Egypt.
And there, after some years, he became the scourge of Mongols,
The Sultan’s right hand.
In Jerusalem, a scent that holds both Babylon and India
In a perfumer’s shop in Khan al-Zayt.
By God, it is a scent that speaks a language you will know, if you but listen.
It whispers through the tear gas: “Heed them not.”
And when the cloud has passed, it breathes: “You see?”
In Jerusalem, contradictions rest at ease.
The people do not deny the wonders,
They are like bolts of cloth, the old and new turned over in their hands.
And miracles, there, can be touched by the hand.
In Jerusalem, if you were to shake an old man’s hand,
Or touch a stone façade,
You would find the text of a poem etched upon your palm,
O noble son, or perhaps two.
In Jerusalem, despite the endless tragedies,
A scent of childhood on the air, an innocence that breathes.
So you see a dove declare a kingdom in the sky,
Between the space of one shot and the next.
In Jerusalem, the graves are ordered,
Like lines of scripture in the city’s book, whose pages are the earth.
All have passed this way.
For Jerusalem accepts all who come to her, the faithful and the faithless.
Walk through her and read the headstones.
All the tongues of this world are here.
The Zanj, the Franks, the Kipchaks and the Slavs, the Bosniaks,
The Tatars and the Turks, the people of God and the people of ruin,
The pauper and the lord, the sinner and the saint.
All who have walked this earth are here.
They were the margins of the book,
But they became the city’s text before us.
O Scribe of History, what has changed,
That you have made us the exception?
O Sheikh, rewrite the book, and read it once again;
I fear your reading was flawed.
The eye closes, then it opens.
The driver of the yellow cab turns us north, away from her gate,
And Jerusalem falls behind us.
The eye sees her in the right-hand mirror,
Her colours shifting in the pre-dusk light,
When a smile surprised me; I know not how it crept upon my face.
It spoke to me, as I stared and stared:
“You who weep behind the wall, are you a fool?
Are you mad?
Let your eye not weep, you, the forgotten one from the body of the text.
Let your eye not weep, you Arab, and know,
That in Jerusalem, there are those within the walls, and yet…
I see no one in Jerusalem, but you.”
Sep 20, 2025
Sep 20, 2025 at 9:43 AM UTC
The smell of fresh oranges
Hit my nose
I look down
You pick and pull at the peel
The underside of your fingernails
Have residue
As you poked and stabbed
At the pure fruit
But don’t worry
You’ll be able to wash your hands
From the sweet juice
Yet the smell will always linger, somewhere
You see me starring from above
My face of utter disgust
As blood drips down my thighs
And I lay paralyzed.
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025 at 5:05 PM UTC
Its like I can't get your face
out of my head
its like you haunt me ,
it haunts me
how you violated me
in your bed
naked
without ever caring
to listen to my no's!!
While having to go about the next day,
like nothing else happened
that it had occurred yet again,
although this time
it had left its mark on my face
that I am still battling all these months later.
A reminder to myself
to not trust easily anymore!
To NEVER Allow Any "MAN" to ever disgrace me again,
to never allow anyone to ever take advantage of me,
and my kindness again!
To never allow myself to hookup with someone again!
To never ever doubt myself
And to always listen to myself!
So as I see your face in my mind
I curse at you,
and all of the pain that you have given me,
and all of its sorrow.
because it hurts so so deeply
and the fear carasses at my bones
Jun 19, 2023
Jun 19, 2023 at 6:35 PM UTC
I'm sorting pictures in the archive box.
Shelved for that day that I kept putting off.
The job's to cull and have less stuff to store,
but spiders lurk and snakes are sliding out.
The photo shouts in raw dismemberment.
A howling wind, the prowl of packs of wolves.
I stare at trembling splinters held so close.
Her daytime Self looks like a sweet old dame.
I hear again the creak as floorboards pause;
my breath is held lest I miss steps that halt,
outside my door in seconds held at bay.
I see the handle
slowly...
lower..
down.
Her strides are swift and next, her perfume's here.
With broken breath, she yields to clawing drives
and throws my bedclothes off like spider webs.
My youth she steals as night groans on and on.
For merchants took her bloom on stormy sea.
I clutch my knife and picture stabbing her;
But I've no strength to do the deed - I'm five.
Her mouth is pushed on lips zipped up and cold.
The bed is torn in tangled bits of knots.
My legs are jammed together- ripped apart.
My pillow's wet as aunty takes her cut.
Dec 3, 2022
Dec 3, 2022 at 8:36 PM UTC
Sensing a presence in my bed
I plead that this is all in my head
My gut wrenches. Heart
sinks
once my eyes fix upon you I dare not blink
Cold, numbness proceeding
I could never prepare for this feeling
You cannot meet my eyes
now they aren’t closed in sleep.
Mirrors to a soul you violated
You ******* creep
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 18, 2022 at 7:31 AM UTC
#
**Your door wasn’t locked
and I wasn’t going to wait
Not after I sprinted here,
that’s quite a long way
I’ve run 3 kilometres just to see you**
Kiss my shoe, be grateful.
Surely I am owed some compensation
For my extensive dedication
I’ll take advantage
the only time I know you’re weak
You can’t set boundaries
when you’re asleep
Your vulnerability makes me greedy
the thought of you subdued,
**** Debilitated and unconscious
Entitled, I claim that time with you
#
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 18, 2022 at 7:27 AM UTC
-
i found a can of fish hooks
while looking for a pair
of gloves to—day
_a decomposing hand
crawls its way back
to its owner;_
in the course of parsing
her effects after she was
folded and filed away
_finger over finger by thumb
over lithography of safety,
prying open the subtle warmth
of personal bed space,_
like a pen seeking fluid
to fuel an exhausted
ink well,
the tip of one of
them pricked my finger,
_finger over finger by thumb
over a papier-mâché torso –
casting long shadows, even
in total darkness,_
my blood then violated
an heirloom—
a notepad of dreams she
had on her nightstand
the morning she died,
_between the folds of blankets
towards vulnerable skin—
icy digits commence
with repossession,_
detailing on
her last entry what
i had just written here—
_frantically groping into thick
blackness for the pull chain
of a light switch—_
something to do about a
can full of fish hooks
she happened upon
in a nightmare...
_It was just a Glove
it was a glove
it's a glove
a glove
~_
s jones
2021
.
Jan 24, 2021
Jan 24, 2021 at 8:26 AM UTC
With tweezers I relieve her of the pearls within her eyes / The experiment is finished: Experience and I have ****** her dry / Iris-less she cries, but her tears arise like incense to the skies / How sweet the fragrant plumes of her demise! / I ignore her cries; I have gained my prize / And soon her voice will wane / An infinity of ever-fading sighs | An affinity for exculpatory lies...
Sep 20, 2020
Sep 20, 2020 at 7:08 PM UTC
something he stole
was very important to me
but it’s not the kind of thing
that could ever be returned
this is no game of
lost and found
oh, but the thief
the thief―
they couldn’t catch him,
he’s got
sly talk and
i think he’s part snake
they couldn’t catch him because
he left no fingerprints
Mar 2, 2020
Mar 2, 2020 at 1:04 PM UTC
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXJoRWwYig&list=PLbM5LMVZad0ZiIF3lrjpaboKZ9X88t8lP
Jan 2, 2020
Jan 2, 2020 at 8:31 PM UTC
You found my hills-
ignoring the pleas and appeals.
You rampaged your way into the hidden valley,
while I sat their dissociating - assuming death was my finale.
You scourged through my dips and curves,
as though I should be flattered you came back for thirds.
Imprinting your unwelcomed touch on my mind forever,
the violation of my body will be forgotten never.
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 6:25 AM UTC
(contains references to sensitive issues)
She’s just a babe
he’s only two
of youth refill
they’re broken in
but leave no mark
so they're unspoiled
for clients booked
it's all arranged
no tracks you'll leave
their brain's not through
not 'til they’re three
so chill out dame
the program works
divert impel
‘'you crazy sh-t
here take this pill’
nobody hears
if told some tales
but they won't talk
their lips are sealed
from dot they’re trained
they’re here for us
don't have to guess
‘you talk, you die!’
so pay the fee
their price is high
and bring this dog
they’ll do it all
and shouldn’t you
take all you're due
you work real hard-
on nectar sup
-
Stop! Not so quick
for veils can lift
and imprints made
don’t ever die
archival facts
reveal themselves
when day arrives
you’ll face the Judge
and when you breach
a petal new
it injures both
and gear stick shifts
you've soiled life's bed
with squalid stains
now own the Sh-t
says mirror man
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 6:11 AM UTC
Invisibility cloaks all around
When the scene comes, sirens
Screaming across the streets
Because of you, we never find
Why is it simple to push away?
Like you did in the 50's
Like you tolerated strikes
Why should it be alike now?
.....
Mourn for their lives
When it didn't matter
To you
You'll pay the price
Sooner or later
Mar 11, 2018
Mar 11, 2018 at 7:11 AM UTC
Two sticks of bones
Laid with meat and muscles over
Cradling a devil in its fold.
The devil rises with heat
Satiated when pain is inflicted
Upon the weak.
In the midst of life
And blood and the hidden
There is an abode, a heaven.
Their chest and thighs pour
Their soul and lust
There is pleasure, there is pain.
But not all pain is pleasure.
Ask the skirts with melting limbs
Played with by the stick owners.
They violate, they tresspass
Tear them limb to limb apart
Blood is a colour they own but despise.
Parted are the weak barks
Exposed is their bottled bodies,
Their insides poisoned with sap.
Their mouths tore
To steal laughter
But what escapes are scream.
The devil in the folds
Rears its ugly head
And burnt is the heaven.
Life giving land is made to bleed
And the pillars of faith are shook
Hands to caress, strangle the own.
They are the weak
In a world of lust
They fear the devil and hate themselves.
Not all who bleed
Wish they did,
Watch those covered little girls
They have been once uncovered.
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 1:25 PM UTC
Even though I don't remember the next morning
I know it reaked of violation and filth
The taste of my own tears lingered
Until the next day mid afternoon
Right before the sunset
Right after everyone let me be
If only for a moment
The morning after
When I woke up to a hostile sun
I screamed until my lungs were dry
And cried until my tears covered the kitchen linoleum
I ruined a new pair of clothes
And ripped out a few dozen stands of hair
Just because your fingers may have grazed them
In the shower I boiled the skin off my back
And tried to breathe water
Just to get the taste of you
Out of my eyes
I must've washed you off of me
At least a dozen times over
But I couldn't rinse the space behind my eyes
Where you left the most of yourself
Invasive and volatile
I had to tell my daddy
What happened to his baby girl
And watch him ache to break down your door
And straight into your chest
To take your heart
As some sort of payment
For what you've done
I watched my mother cry
And my sister cry
With pain that was never theirs to carry
And so each morning I wake up
To the memory of what you did
When I had just been out for a little fun
With sweet drinks that didn't taste like poison
Until you made them that way
When you touched me
When you had no right to do so
And I wonder if there's anything that I could have done differently
Since then every day
You **** me again
When I can't look someone in the eyes
Because I don't want to see their pity
Or their judgement, their doubt
When I'm scrutinized in the streets
Or my name is whispered
Behind a closed door
Or is screamed in my face that it was my fault
That it isn't an excuse
I'd rather die than face it
But I fear for my daughter
So I stay
To watch her
Protect her from my own fate
And shake quietly when I'm alone at night
Knowing you're loose
Waiting for someone to bring me some justice
To put you away
Leave you lying in a shallow grave
Anything to give me security again
But I have none
Because I have been robbed
And I smile to counteract it
And everyone tip-toes around the subject
Like it's a sleeping bear
That will maul them if they stir it up
But it's not an animal
It's something that happened to me
And everyone is so afraid of it
I had to be strong
But I'm afraid too
Afraid that it might never scab over
And become a scar
Because scars fade
But wounds bleed
And I am wounded
And every morning in the shower the blood drips from my ears
And leaks down the drain
When I have to look at MY body
That YOU used
And try to remember that I am strong
And that you haven't beaten me
Then wonder if that's really true
I have to make it true.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 11:21 AM UTC
*here you will find me naked
without all my layers
of long silences
or calm reassurances*
here
*you will find me confessing
to Each and every
secret that could've just as easily been a lie*
HERE
*YOU will find ME
More bare
laid out in front of you
honest and wild than when
we made love with the curtains open in the early morning before you went to work and I went to sleep*
here
i am
How Dare You
Look at me
out of
Jealousy
mistrust
Fear
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 9:11 PM UTC
The African sun.
So it's December
Summer in Africa
30cm away, that's how close the sun feels to the earth's surface
Naturally I have a short skirt on
And the worst thing I could have done is walk out the house
Because, you know
"I'm asking for it"
I walk past a few men
Who look at me like some meal
One walks towards me
Pretty young
He's basically ********** me with his eyes
As he goes behind me
Opportunity strikes!
HE SLAPS MY ****
Why?
Because I asked for it
Disgusted!
I turn
Slap to the face
Because he too!
Asked for it
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 7:34 AM UTC