She uses her pretty face to set
meals on her table Her bills get paid by the
swiftness of her hips because her brains aren’t able. At least that's what she tells herself to get through the day
At night the company of strange
men silences the thoughts as she offers them a lay. Two, three, five rounds
depending on how deep his pockets Currencies assigned to orgasms
popping his eyes out of their sockets. He jabs deep into her, digging
her pelvis like a man in search of a treasure He has a family at home, a
paying job but in her hole is where he finds his pleasure. “Call me Daddy” he instructs as
she stirs his excitement wild For a moment she wonders what
daddy would do this with his child. Three years, eight abortions
because her womb is no home for his seeds His only use for her is to
satisfy his own feeble needs. He’s weak in the world but in her
bed she makes him feel stronger A little extra cash on the table
to make the foreplay last a little longer. Her pleasure is secondary to
his; he doesn’t notice her self-lubricating Though it’s her he pictures in
the office bathroom when he finds himself masturbating. Three nights a week for two
hours, she almost looks forward to his visits Who knows what he’ll ask for next
so her leisure time is spent practicing flips and splits One drawer is full of condoms
of every size, color and odor The other with birth control
and morning after pills just in case he decides to go in raw. She’d tie her tubes but she has
silent prospects of a husband and a kid Believes she knows the secret
into the heart of men and waits on the timing of cupid. A mistress of erotic arts bearing
naivety like her is often unseen Her thin waist, voluptuous ass
and breasts hold back that she’s only sixteen. “I’m only doing this for the
money” has grown into a four year old chant The way out for an orphaned
child oppressed by empty days and an abusive aunt. Prostitution is a trait for
many growing girls in her neighborhood The elders give up on them and
cry that they’d amount to nothing good. She remembers very little of
her father and she knows he wouldn’t be proud But he had left her alone in a
scary world and for that her actions were allowed. She thinks of her mother with a
lot more grace Reminds herself of the
effortless smile that rested upon her friendly face. “Mama, I want to be just like
you” her mind hears herself utter Mama replied “You won’t be like
me my child. You will be better”. And when she’s drawn into the
words her mother had said She whispers “I’m sorry” as
another stranger occupies her bed.
I woke up without my soul today. Last night before I slept I left it dillydallying
around the concepts of love, life and other prospects I've wrecked my mind in search of it, checked
everywhere in my heart down to the insides of my pockets Strange, but I was thinking maybe it got
caught looking for some change. I've widened my search range to the street,
begging complete strangers indiscreetly what I could give in exchange for
theirs. My soul-seeking desperation reeking of fears
peaking into tears leaking down my face and smears what composure I've held
through the years. Who has it, what ditch does it lie in? Where could it have gone, could I have kept
it from fleeing? My questions echo through the hollow residue
of my being Maybe I should pray so I’m down to the floor
kneeling, praying wordlessly to a God I claim to believe in .Maybe I should sleep now and see if it
returns in the morning. But what if my soul doesn't miss me? What if it’s running wild through the fields
like an untamed child screaming “I AM FREE, I AM FREE” “Free of this tiring lunatic chasing after
things she can’t have and still can’t figure out where she belongs Free of embarking her childish fantasies that
gets so damn frustrating as the journey prolongs Free of excusing the misuse of her life, at
this age she still can’t confidently walk in her own shoes They’re always too tight or too loose Sometimes I even give her the option of going
barefoot but she still won’t choose.” I imagine my soul lying in a hammock on a
beach in Maui Sunglasses on, sipping on margaritas glad to
be rid of me. I let my body sleep but my soul I never let
rest So today, my bones and flesh must do all the
work and endure the stress Today I woke up soulless.
Let me
remind you first that war is no joking matter
War is
thinking of home with such piercing pain that the nothingness of a stranger’s
place found in the strangest of places appeals to the numbing emptiness that
provides the only room for rest
It is the
stories of seen but unspoken evil refugees and the stranded many carry heavy on
their chests praying to whatever they can bring themselves to believe in that
it should never again manifest
War is what
breaks a man’s soul when he does the most questionable just to exorcise what
little control he has over a situation that draws his family to its knees
It’s a woman
whose dignity is stolen from her even in the discomfort of her abode so her
entire family sees
How does she
heal herself in time to teach her little girl who suffered the same episode
before she begins to see herself as nothing more than just a wet hole?
War takes the
penis of a barely teenage boy out of his hands and puts a gun in its stead so
in his head a finger on a trigger is how to masturbate
War is these
ugly truths told to you straight without much room to exaggerate.
It is no
specific target of gun shots and indiscreet slaughtering in the streets.
In Sierra
Leone, they ignored pleas and grieves before they cleaved arms like branches
off trees and blood dripped down helplessly like leaves
The
dismemberment of another flesh and blood was reduced to the levity of long or
short sleeves
Rwanda saw
800,000 killed within a span of one hundred days, that’s eight thousand humans
a day, three hundred and thirty-three an hour
Six lives
devoured a minute worsens the taste of what’s already sour all in the name of so-called
power
The falling rain
itself came to be a reminder to the people of Liberia that they were under attack
In 1990 the heaven’s
cries met gun powder in the skies so when it poured down, the water was black
There are
media footages from DR Congo, Somalia, Burkina Faso, all publicly accessible but
remember not all the details were archived
Many of us
will go deprived of the sordid reality lived by many of those who survived.
All die be
die be lie to the living
When you’re given
the displeasure of seeing the spirit of your loved one escape him and the
emotion your feel first is hatred before you even get the chance to mourn
And know now
that war knows no age so even babies fall victim before they’re born
War is
missing brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers and lovers better off assumed dead
because your soul is just too weary for hope to beget
War is me at
twenty-five, seventeen years after my family got out alive convincing myself
the object that flew unrecognized by my eye wasn’t a bullet
The one I
believe I had seen, eight years old locked in my neighbor’s tight room with
steel doors because that was our definition of a safe haven
Rebels a few
years older than me trapping two dozen of us due to our fear of what they could
do with an AK47
That kind of
fear grows with a child’s imagination so there’s no more telling what’s real
and unreal regardless of what truth is revealed
My truth is
what eyesore my mind told me my eyes saw
War is me
still too scared or angry at the nightmare to ask what we were fighting for.
Wars are the
singular cause of the mental deconstruction of a people with no therapy to
their tragedy
They are a
sadist’s feast of rape, murder, cannibalism, abuse and everything tragic
The human
comparison to the ugliness of the foretold black magic
War brings
out the evil side of evil and is its own justification of immorality
War is the
unnatural decomposition of humanity
The sensitivity
of this issue is paralyzing without a doubt
So please
don’t make light of this because war my dear people, is nothing to joke about.
