Empower Yourself: aaduna NPM Day 16: Kevin, Persecution, Alok, Shana

October Rain

October rain

Falls from the sky

Like Harlem girls jumping double Dutch in summer.

two haunted faces drinking chestnut tea peer from a tear stained window

It is the end of another evening where

Love and darkness co-exist

A Man & Woman surrounded by a fog of silence

which sends a message more lonely than the howling wind  

wounded memory is the bond that holds them together

desperation is stronger than love

Black swans swim at midnight in a funereal cadence 

What was once passion is now survival

One of them puts on a winter coat for protection from the cold,

The other stands naked in the October rain

© 2013 Kevin Jenkins                        

Jamaica, New York   

Kevin Jenkins (photo provided)

* * *

“Torture”

From lust to dust, lives sentenced before dusk:

A drill piercing my ear drum, your voice twists and turns tarring it from my ear. Your too often requested reaffirmations of our love are the ridges that bight and grip; too many ridges to rip it out- anchored too deeply into my spinning, oozing flesh for simple removal.

Your breath like a freshly sharpened steel cheese grater taken to each side of my septum; my nostrils burn and pour blood with each morning greeting you re-utter at first view. Shards of my sinuses breadcrumb the liquor lined liar’s path that bought me to you.

My throat scorched beyond repair from the taste of feigning interest in you; puss filled and choked from the cyanide that I spit when last we kissed. The almond offset of my true antipathy for you poisoned into silence by super-ego established obligation.

Your touch closely comparable to swimming, completely submerged in a 10 inch pool of alcohol, broken glass, tacks and screws; but the depths that I have gone too was my choice and so my wounds burn because I didn’t use common sense lying with you.

My eyes shot full of holes, bullet reminded that your present remaining place in my space is unwelcome. Thanks and everything- you’re giving me something immeasurable but, how the hell, did that one night stand turn into 37 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, and 45 minutes of fuck-less torture?!

© 2015 Persecution Avenue              

Baltimore, Maryland  

posted posthumously

Persecution Avenue (photo on file)

* * *

 3.

I pull the beggar’s hair out in clumps and sell them
I beat the arrogant man with a bottle on his head
I jump on my dearest friend and kiss his eyes twenty times
I call my brother’s wife a whore and show my brother’s hand her wet crotch
I return decades-old slaps to my father’s face
I suckle once again at my mother’s breast
what fool drinks to

© 2012 Alok Bhardwaj                                 

Sioux Falls, South Dakota      

Alok Bhardwaj (photo provided)

* * *

dusty blues

i told her

i would not support

her white humanitarian

adventures in China

but for you

i dress up.

maybe it’s pink shorts over

blue sparkly tights

or a purple dress

with a spin of a

tulle skirt.

into our date,

your friend's tattoo comes up.

it's of goddesses in my cultures.

it “means something to her.”

it's the pretty cursive

font on clothing labels,

and turning thrift shop finds

into several hundred dollar

fashion lines.

it means so much;

click and save the starving

children.

but the thing is

these are stories i walked

away from, bored.

after all

i forfeit my right

to my histories;

come and get them.

© 2012 Shana Bulhan Haydock        

Northampton, Massachusetts  

Shana Bulhan Haydock (photo provided)

 *   *   *
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