Our Boy/Their Man

by

The newspaper said he was a man.

But he is or was a boy.

He had barely gone past the larger double digits

that marked his second decade of life.

The newspaper called him a man.

His papa called him Junior,

and he looked like he was all of 12.

The newspaper called him a man,

when they reported on his death.

Strike that, not death, murder.

They murdered a little boy,

who was barely a man,

with a life stretched out ahead of him

for the taking and making.

22. Gone. Life snuffed out

by the blade of an anonymous knife.

The newspaper called him a man.

We shall bury

our boy.

Pinked Out

by

Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There is pink everywhere. And it gives this feeling of light airy joy. The posters encouraging women to get their mammograms are full of happy, smiling women. You can see that light, airy thread suspended in their smiles. The NFL games in the US are ‘pinked out’ for October; my friend in France shares a photo of a downtown street in Toulouse adorned with small pink umbrellas.

Pink. We associate this color with femininity. Well, traditionally. Because of my job, I now associate this color with strength.  Continue reading →

Exist

by

So many in draft,

covering up so much,

offering a free space

where none exists.

 

The hurt is clear,

the way forward not,

bringing tons to surface,

where nobody should exist.

 

So much ‘I don’t know’,

ripping out a heart,

in this free world,

where love should exist.

Fading

by

Campaigning for your time

is really difficult.

I am not equipped for this,

I know not what the term limits

or expense guidelines are.

I reach for you

only to have my hand slapped away,

and reeling in hurt and confusion, Continue reading →

Breaking Good

by

The love letters are hidden away,

placed neatly in a drawer that

is hardly ever opened.

Shut away in that dark space,

never to see the light of day…

just like the heart you so callously

discarded out of that window

of that moving car

you call your

soul.

And you mumbled out a half-hearted apology

as the heart thudded and cracked

upon the bare tarmac of

that road that was to lead

to a forever together oasis.

You never looked back,

to see how the heart bounced up,

then shattered into pieces

too small to glue back

and how the heated tarmac

melted it even further,

the heat from broken promises

and loud silence in the

twisted face of needs

and love languages ignored.

 

Next to the love letters, in that dark drawer,

never to also see the light of day,

is the hope nursed back to life

from the previous encounter.

You held that hope up high like Simba,

then proceeded to dash it against the dashboard

of your own ill-timed choices and decisions,

which, with every smash, jabbed that ballooning hope

piercing it through and through with no thought

as to the holder of hope and those that are in

the line of fire as it explodes in your hands.