Women of the Congo

Women of the Congo singing,
we will never be broken -

brutality rampant babies crying 
six nine ten men guns firing
bayonets slicing lives organs
in shreds no place left for love
fragments feebly stitched disease spreading
babies dying beautiful women singing,
we will not be broken -
no worth no bride price abandoned
shunned bodies maimed diseased
gang banged cruelty soldiers
seed harvested hateful intent

sing out sing out, they cannot take me -

bodies shattered spirit courage

they do not know me

Ghost

You hover,

a nameless face in
the corner of the room.

A faceless shadow
in each family picture;
the whoosh of a stirring breeze
through the silent room -
the prickly sensation
down the back of my spine.

I sense you with us,
and yet not with us;
the pain that never quite leaves.

You hover.

I Am

I am
the piece that 
no longer fits; 

the single note
that won't complete 
your song. 

An exquisite 
gem in the simplest 
of settings; 

it was never 
your reflected light 
that made me shine.

Gone

Grieving, dear son,
is what you are doing.

The sadness you feel
isn't self-inflicted, but
a slow insidious rise
from so deep inside;

all those faraway places
you thought had been
left long, long ago behind. 

A lullaby turned elegy,
and bright memories discolored
or were they just mis-colored –

the more recent, hastily drawn
pencil sketches, not quite complete,
some partially erased.

None are what
we expected them to be.

When you hear
the tales, or watch others,
knowing what might
have been or what never should be,

it is grief that you are feeling,
not pity, not just sorrow –
there's been no body to bury,


but he's gone just the same.

Sage Advice

You tell me
that dots will not connect
in rooms painted
by children.

Any persistent
search for intrinsic patterns
makes no more sense
than an attempt to
count the stars.

Things Shift

Things shift.


Once 
you had to reach
up avariciously

for me.


Now,
inexplicably,

parts of me
gravitate easily

down to
you.

I Washed Over You

I washed over you,
a desperate beat -
tsunami in minor,
so little left in its wake.


The steady trickle -
does it keep you up at night?


Dust-laden crevices
edge the window pane;
the screen scarcely guards
against imaginings of what lies 
in the shadowed darkness 
of the wooded yard and beyond.

Straight flushed
from your life, or is it mine?
I ebbed to your flow, bobbing
while you were sinking.

Victims aren't always preyed 
upon, or left hapless on the shore.


I said, 


Swim, swim, I'll help you.
Don't look back now.
Just breathe.


You chose to settle in the foam.