Both infancy and childhood

Are siblings from the start

Their friendship, seldom understood,

Is primal at its heart

Adolescence is a crowd

That passes through the night

It calls, exuberant and loud,

Yet quickly fades from sight

And middle-age is but a band

Of neighbors in their fields

Behind each swathe of tended land

Their secrets lay concealed

Old age, a stranger in the park,

Prefers its calm repose

Akin to dwellings cold and stark

From where he first arose

I lie on the couch listening to my husband of nearly three decades playing the guitar. I watch his fingers light upon the strings, his eyes closed, his face alive with emotions set free through each note. I fell in love with the music a long time ago.

I was so sad when it ceased. I had worried that childrearing, mortgage and bill paying, endless hours of money-earning and in-laws intruding had killed it.

Then, one day, my son started playing the guitar, picking up songs by ear that my husband had played once upon a time.

And then, my husband started teaching him. Their heads bent together, my son watching his father, my husband watching his son. No arguments or outbursts. No impatience or anger. Music filled my home once again and I watched as son and father found a new harmony together. My heart was full.

And then there’s the music.

I lie on the couch listening as he plays the same song over and over again, this man of mine. Milonga. A tango. My heart begins to melt filling my eyes with tears, as I hope we share this tango long after he plays the last note.

Your musky scent was clothed in magic

I breathed your scent and backstroked

through your crimson blood of betrayal.

I turned my face to your sun

and saw your beauty as you promised

me the world on your platter.

The sobs of your wind laughed at my pain.

My nights with you burned quickly

as I drank you with my eyes

gulping your music in my hunger.

I felt your tarnished knife in my back,

my exposed rouge wounds dripping

fresh blood of the kiss of Judas.

My universe trembled as you

were lying and I was dying alone.

You went back to your other life

tossing me like a used shirt

into your hamper of deceit.

Empty air washes off your taste

from my soul as my heart marches on,

refuse pile of bittersweet memories.

The tension inside me is crushing. My own blood boiling so hot that it fills me up and drowns me. Heated copper brimming over, bursting my veins, enveloping my lungs. And it rises from the pit of me. Spews out my mouth, geyser-like. Flowing faster than I can release it. Until all I see is red. Until all I breathe is scarlet. Until all I feel is crimson. Until I’m so full that my own hungry shadows consume me.

I hate falling asleep.

It’s as if there’s a demonic creep

Lurking near me

When my unconsciousness falls deep.

My nightmares are a constant upkeep.

Mostly I wake up terrified,

But sometimes I weep.

Salted tear stains tint my eyes.

The unconsciousness is a world of vivid lies.

When I’m lucky,

I dream about guys.

But the majority of the time,

Someone dies.

Most of my dreams,

I face my demise.

If I die,

It’s more like a prize.

Because if it’s someone I love

That dies,

I wake up in cries.

Sometimes I think my fate is

Death by tsunami waves.

Mainly because I always dream about them,

And I never get saved.

I always see the trave

Arising.

It’s as though it’s destiny,

To reach my grave.

Hold onto me

Don’t let go

Grip these veins with fingers,

stop the world from coming out of me

Watch my tears flow

Don’t look at me like that

I still love you , I whisper to the wind

Hold my wrist

They hurt

All the times you just let me go

I remember who you used to be

A line from my poetry

Books so dusty

They hold no value

Except to the writer

Of these dreams

I love you

But your killing me

I cannot force my air from lungs

Or the screams from a choked up throat

I hate who we have become

This is a battle of wits

A war invested in our hearts 

I’m willing to fight

Yet you intend on 
Shooting me down

Pick up your shovel

Dig me a unforgiving hole

Place my limp body 

On the threshold

Cover me in dirt 

I’m already covered in guilt

Ashes to ashes

Let this be a lesson

For two eyes to see

You waged a war against me

I intend on surviving

#poetry

He is two steps closer to heaven
& I refuse to pray

On two knees , I beg the day

Starved for a life

No greater than he may provide

All I ask is to survive

Past the point of breathing

Inescapable greedy lungs

Stealing his name from my lips

I offer me instead

Take these breaths

Inhale them

Keep them next to your soul

They are for the beggars

Who refuse to be anything better

Locked in a cage of my creation

Chasing impossible shadows

Daylight is for survivors

Who have given more

Than my heart could provide

No prayers for those who hold

The darkness in their soul

Willing to sell it

For a touch of light

#poetry

On the precarious lines we tread

for the vacuous lives we’ve led

with coins we feed the guilts we labour under.

The sparkly thoughts that magpies scrabble after

and laughters cure for all the anodynes in pills and wines

Our eyes distractions easily caught the weakness of our petty thoughts.

We call the pot the weed the kettle black and so

deeds in furs are measured wrong and there the throng

have right to pelt you with their eggs.

The dregs on pavements spit and in back allies souls are slit like purses.

Silks and leathers empty save for a plastic meal.

But for a thought not fit tip top to steal.

The secret word on broaches close to hearts we carry, none will see.

The tapping on the walled machine.

As useless as the broken shoe on a rainy day.

Dispenser drug machines, we use the wall to pay

there is no need for paper lest you hide the taxable commissions

as expected by the citizen, on so we all agree.

The money in the malls has gone and cashing in means getting on aboard

a train of thought that seems to make a sense in retrospect.

As intellectuals debate the day to day and days like none has ever lived before.

Constellations forming characters with cloud obscuring sanity and vanities.

Humanity has tasted not the sweetness of its poison.

Believing in the gated minds the keepers of a purpose.

Feeders forcing fatness down a spiritual gullet.

In plumpness ripe the prefect pluck to pot

a joint for scalding hair from flesh till baby smooth.

Sense is separated from meat beneath a moving corpse

and androids walk and talk and tell their woes for what is lacking.

Deliveries of parcels spill the diesel into choking atmospheres.

A snaking water canopy the ancient forests stolen trees in chains are hauled

across the mothers skin in mirrors sitting plucking, peeling, preening,

pulling tucking back a year of “adverinfo” product sifting.

The glaring LED saved energy directs a stream of blinding verbs,

and reality is there to be dressed up in just by wanting.

On a line no sign rejects a payment and all notices ignore when checkouts close.

The hours four and twenty never ending ever spending.

Goods, a box of packaging, the choking island swirling in a

sea so far a way form blame. Shamefacedness’s berried

Kopf in sand with arse in air and not a care for seeing not

the micro pearl that strangles sex out of Poseidon.

The poisoning of sea and earth and air, there will be none here.

In a “wordly” thought out world where worries wane

with every swipe the satisfactions therapy has taken

us so far from us and taken something from us all.

(We shame our tragedies with blame

and shame the blame with guilt.

It is time to change.)