Spare Me

Spare me your wars
Your naked assent
Spare me your frigid springs
Your empty highways
And irises glazed;
I have pains to last a generation
And I have sorrows galore.

Spare me your whines
Your cheap tragedies
Spare me your miseries
Your children and packaged lies
Spare me your hearts
Stuffed with apathy
Spare me your horrors
Off the clearance shelf.

Spare me my life
Tainted with yours
Spare me a shred of sanity
A word, a tear…
For my tears have dried
And my rage is boiling over.

Spare me a soul
An honest apology
A life filled with regret
For I bring back to your doorsteps
My dreams refunded
My fury stifled
And tantamount.

Spare me a shovel
A helping hand
Spare me the last dignity
Of burying my breathing corpse.

(Originally posted on Apr. 4, 2003; re-posted on July 24, 2006 and July 21, 2014)

Angelic

Song (Re)Cycle: Of Fury I

2006 - Lebanon

My mother said,

They still looked beautiful

while they were picking them up

in pieces,

the children.

2014 - Palestine

2018 - Syria

(Originally posted on August 01, 2006; re-posted on July 20, 2014, re-edited)

SONG (re)CYCLE 2017

Because I know I want to forget about them. 

Because I know I want to pretend that it’s not happening, that I don’t care. 

Because I know I want to look elsewhere, I won’t.

Because it’s the least I could do, again: bear witness.

Sometimes that’s all we could do.

So for the next fortnight or so, like four years before (Palestine), and eight years before that (Lebanon), I will post a photo from Syria, along with an old recycled poem. 

Because they are human. Because we are human.

Because they matter. Because we have become numb.

And apparently sometimes we all need a reminder of that.