You are in a beige waiting room Sitting on a plastic chair You stare at the carpet: Reddish-brown, with coffee stains Grief shivers through your being How long have you been here again? Sweat drips from your palms, your brow Your emotions stretched on a rack You try to compose yourself: Your loved ones need you. You shift unsteadily Treacherous waters rise around you; Your feet in the Rubicon. A jolt; someone calls your name You look up and you hear “He is ready to see you now.”

By the still waters Won’t you linger for a moment To digress, stop, remember? The Scriptures say: a time to weep, a time to mourn Do you not then discern the seasons? Even in this darkening day You see how the leaves whisper, shiver Though they be anchored to oak as old as time The sun, After it rages at noon, Shies away, takes refuge under the sure horizon Will you not then allow your stiff soul to liquify To condense, perspire, heal?

It was always, first, blue: Young, breathless, free The blue of sinless skies; A riot of sturdy yearning. And always, second, yellow: Thirsty, tender, full of promise The yellow of cloudless noonday sun; A hue of good things destined to be. But a menacing hiss of red Did destroy our proud flag. Thus violated, thus sodden, Our colours called out to us And bid us in courage to stand. This earnest blue Now darkened with bleeding; This bashful yellow Now stricken with bile; Seem now to us emblems of eternity Unperturbed by the arrows that fly by day And the pestilence that stalks by night Summoning us to courage, courage, Courage. For these tainted days shall pass But O my country and my countrymen: Ours is the earth and the sky above it Ours is the earth and the men buried in it.

The pain It sings a song A dirge; an ode To what is lost And what is being lost Weak knees I have and burnt feet Yet still beset to travail these peaks Pain: sing, O sing And provide tissue comfort to this aching heart.

She looks at her tender little boy Swaddling in a blanket too big for him Serenely at rest, barely a stir She begins to weep Remembering that a time will come When he will leave her side And be united with a wife, starting a family of his own Then the days will be filled with anxiety For the next phone call, the next return home Or worse! He may die before his time She shudders at the thought of attending his wake

Don’t be too hard on him Reprimand him not too harshly For he was baked into sorrow in his mother’s womb And baptized into grief as he entered the world He was born with a rusted spoon in his mouth He was fed with gall instead of milk Now he is old and bent Bleeding, he seeks blood Weeping, he yearns for tears Across the sky, a reddish-blue hue The flaming sun sets, absorbing darkness On the edge of a cliff sits a lonesome figure Staring at virgin stars, thirsty for peace.

It’s the unstrapping of the dress shoes The loosening of the tie The familiar comfort of a decades-old couch That draws a line beneath a brutal day’s work. It’s the little things that keep us sane, You see. It’s the inhale of fresh morning air The languid shade of centuries-old trees The gentle roar of engines stirring That reminds you that, come what may, this little life Continues creeping at a petty pace from day to day.

If I told you, on that cursed day, beneath the old rugged cross, you wouldn’t believe it, that one day this instrument of torture will become an ornament to adorn the neck, its slender branches an emblem of youthful rebellion; contort all four sides at ninety degrees and you get…

On days like these The rain just knows when to fall The cadence; the drizzle The unhurried hush In my heart An age-old wound leaks A trickle of wistful despair On days like these I sit by the window pane And commune silently with nature In the aftermath of a tearing — Of the heart or of the heavens The seams come apart The poison overflows Dark clouds gather Ominous; heavy; unmoving Yet I choose to take comfort That when the last squeeze of tears fall The sun will shine anew.