3 Jan 2012

Grindstone

The tear gas clears
hollow bomb shells scatter fragmented society
protesting stones returned in bullets
dead vertical people bag the horizontal living
in Tahrir square a soldier rips off  a protestors’ shirt
and stomps on her breasts, revolutionary heart rib-caged.
At dawn the hungry knife sharpener calls on the broken windows
hanging on shabby old walls of the poor, he honed the blunt knives
of the now free people, today his grinding stone is too dear
I sold the television I watched the revolution on to feed my children
he tells the American journalist.