I let it

I sometimes let loneliness come

take whatever it wants

an armed hooded thief in the night

I let it

steel my chances, swift and light handed

I let it

take my methods and reasons why this life is mine

and watch it

brush off its hand prints, frame me with madness and run.

I'm almost with you

whenever he was late, he’d text ‘I’m almost with you’

his love and eyes austere,

i still think of how he was, almost with me.

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.

Piercing

First they pierce your ears

burden your soft lobe with heavy jewels that hang

wrap chains around your neck

fit a band around your finger

then the final piercing

unquenchable

always to be filled

always to be completed

by a man 

Perplexity

You went back to your pen so quickly

You didn’t shove the books off your desk in anger

You didn’t lose sleep

Or bang your fist on your blank papers in loss of words in absence of muse

You went on writing verse after verse, painted feeling after feeling

You were flooded with my gone-ess

While I, a shattered glass vase; lay redundant on your sill

My myriad pieces dumb; reflecting the rain falling on your window

Perplexing the clouds, I shimmer in the very little sunlight;

in hope I will someday feel.

Embraces

How is your beautiful heart?
I think of you on this dull grey morning

as I winter my coffee with sugar

and cream.

I think of you on this cold lonely evening

as I stir the thickening soup

sending you a thousand unspent

embraces.

Broken people

A blind moth trembles inside the lamp shade above my head,

its paper wings flap violently, desperate for an exit,

trapped in the illusion of light.

I am trapped in this cognitive skull

always looking through these two sockets for an alternative

I leave the light on because I haven’t finished looking

I can’t close my eyes because I haven’t finished looking

when my sadist past makes love to me, my feelings don’t belong to me

its breath hastens and with a final thrust it cups my breast and whispers

broken people are drawn to broken people my love.