Communally hated!

This is me, a martyr,
Bleeding inside, lacerated,
With a thousand wounds inflicted,
By all of you, strangers, whom I hate.

You who deprived me of my livelihood,
You who raped our women,
You who brought your skills and toil,
Where I was comfortable with my existence.

You should die for your sins,
There’s no forgiving your greed,
You who snatch our money,
And money order it to your kin, must die!

I am good, you are bad,
You have no right to exist,
A world without you is my dream,
You who manipulate my destiny.

You live on my soil, drink my water,
And don’t respect my culture,
You bring your alien rituals,
And pollute my environs.

You are people whose rages,
Have been compromised in smiles,
When you laugh, you do not,
Laugh with me, but at me!

For your transgressions you must flee,
For the harm you have done,
We must teach you a lesson,
And kick you out of our homeland, our state.

goodbye

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. - Book of Lamentations 1.12

it takes only seven fragile letters
to hold the burden of moments about to
disappear...how i hate
the bottom-right corner of my laptop
that displays day, date, time;
how i hate my eyes straying there
(why do we follow those who slip away? tick tick tick...boom!)

it takes seven letters rushing in
to open a door and let someone hurtling out
without getting hurt...how i hate
the seas you cross leaving me on burning sand
that swallows what remains;
how i fear to stay, how i dread to follow
(remember what happened to pharoah? clip clop clip clop...whoosh!)

just seven letters remain observing
silence for the waste of space in emptiness
that is left behind...how i hate
my room, my music, the sky outside my window
that will soon become the center
of my life, my grief, my grave, how i fear
(who will remind me to breathe, to breathe? inhale exhale, in...)

seven letters, seven sins,
seven lines falling one over the other
without rhyme...how i hate
this feeling of containing just ashes and dust
in the absence of those who pass by
and disappear as if they've seen a ghost
(who am i in this burning bush except a myth? nothing else...)

seven letters
die stillborn in our throats,
stifled by the other words
we speak to build a bridge across silences;
seven letters
form cross-bars to lock and store
our tears.

CLEOPATRA

All else notwithstanding (and it wasn’t much
by mores of time and place) history finds
for her. One can see her juggling brothers,
wooing Rome, looking for ominous signs
from the less kindly disposed others
who viewed Alexandria as a touch.

Not easy too her bit of cheek on the Tiber,
flaunting son complete with sire’s name:
that needed nerve. From their villas
the wives watched like hawks as she came
in triumph to shake an empire’s pillars,
silk and steel entwined in her fibre.

But she was doomed. Fate would intervene
with the Ides; and with her patron went
whatever Egyptian wind that bore her sails.
Actium did the rest. She was spent.
She came home to asps; and the tales
clung like unguents to embalm a queen.

***