Monsters

Monsters.
They're real. I've seen them. I swear.
They live inside us and they fight unfair.

When monsters win they ride around victorious.
As a reminder that if we hide they will always find us.

Some monsters are bigger than others.
Like the one that paralyzes me and torments my mother
or that one who consumed and suffocated Heather.

Monsters don't make good company.
In fact they bring out everything that I despise in me.
Reminding me of my mistakes, shameful memories.

My monsters are real.
And sometimes they are strong
They whisper lies like "you can't hold on"

Sometimes my monsters win
but sometimes they lose.
Suffering their attacks, their mental abuse.
The kind with no physical bruise.

Monsters are mean.
Because they really dont care.
they strangle your hope and cut off your air.

Monsters. They are dangerous
because it's more than just a game they play with us. 

Miss Gray

Right now I feel like screaming
Faced with your stance of moral superiority 
Instilling on me, this stereotyped idea that you understand me
When was the last time you listened to me?
When did you stop to hear what I was actually saying?

You've categorized me into these pigeon holed ideas of what you believe 
Brushing off my substance
That being raised in your “conservative society” 
Has ruined me, I’m tainted by my upbringing

You ignore the irony
Thinking you’re intellectually liberated. 
But actually you’re a living hypocrisy 
Whose gratification will only come through being isolated

You don’t want coexistence and understanding 
You want to be the judge and determine the standard
And for those who don’t agree, then it’s fine to slander

You bug me. 
But yo'ure not worth the frustrated conversations
So I’ll sit silently
And practice my patience.

I am a Bird

Before I could fly I never would have thought I would dream for clipped wings

That I would desire the songs that the caged bird sings.  

Before I could fly, all I did was dream

I sat and imagined such wondrous things

I dreamt of the unknown, the adventure, the thrill

That I would change the world, as if there were a prophecy I was meant to fulfill

When I started to fly, I quickly wanted to soar

To leave my home behind, to travel more and more

But the farther I got the more I needed to rest

I longed for those days I spent dreaming in the nest

Birds are born to fly south, away from their home

But do birds ever return to where they were born?

I miss the calm, the ease of the days.

Where hours would pass softly in summer’s haze.

The world is so big, convoluted, complex

I’ve seen so much hate, and hurt with such harmful effects

The simplicity is gone

The love and compassion is few

Support systems are compromised

People’s self-interest has become toxic skewing my worldview

Peaceful birds are shot and killed

And their freedoms are torn from them against their will

It’s dangerous to be a bird

To sing the songs that have been left unheard

That now when I reflect I don’t know what I prefer

Because now I dream for those clipped wings

That my days would be filled only with my wondrous dreams.

My Angels

Lately I feel like my angels were listening too carefully

I feel like my angels are trying to humble me

I thought angels were supposed to guard me

Protect me

Walk next to me, kindly

But things that were supposed to be right are now terribly wrong

I’m looking for guidance but my angels are gone

My supports have crumbled my crutches have fallen

Angels, I don’t have wings to fly, have you forgotten?

Come back to me angels.

I need you.

Do you see what’s happened? What I’ve been through?

I can’t do this on my own

You’d said you’d never leave

That you’d always be here to me help me with whatever I need

Where did my angels go?

Where have they disappeared?

Everything is crashing down, breaking,

Now I’m facing all that I feared.

The strength that was once there is with my angels now

Somewhere hidden

Why cant i find you,,, Tell me. Who made this decision??

come back to me

please, just come back.
Angels, help me get my life on track. 

Good in the World

To be the good in the world
We must first be the good in the world

We must stop this culture of demanding love, innocence and faith.
Screaming “ive lost hope for humanity and the human race”
And then being the first one to chastise and ignore a welfare case.

These contradictions are twice as ineffective.
Because as soon as your love and charity become selective
You’ve lost.

We have to set a higher example.
To let good works have more weight than a promiscuous scandal.

To stop criticizing and blaming one evil
To not condemn but combat it. Because sitting back is twice as lethal.

We need to be the good in the world
For there to be good in the world.

We must show kindness and compassion
Too stop yelling and start speaking through our actions

We need to find respect and love blindly
To honor our neighbors and speak more kindly

Because we are all God’s Children
Therefore we must use the hearts and the hands we were given

To be the good in the world
Because there is has to be good in the world.

For Rachel

*****For Rachel Corrie****
Rahmatullah 'Alayk

It’s gotten to the point where I just don’t understand
I cannot comprehend how people still defend
This apartheid and injustice

Do people not know what’s going on?
That we give 23 million a day to sustain their bombs
That Americans are so focused on the security threat in Iran
That they don’t even bother to hear the truth anymore

Tell me. Please explain.
How can you cry for the machine gun and not the Palestinian?
Everyday these people suffer violent cruelty and lose loved ones

You can forget the religious debate you’re about to use
I’m talking about the unreported abuse that is ignored by our news.
The basic human right violations that are disregarded and inadvertently supported by Americans and her government.
That its own citizens go without protection

Rachel Corrie. Do you remember her?
The non-violent peace activist who was murdered
Today’s her martyrdom’s 10-year anniversary.
Her sacrifice breathes as a living memory.
Of the injustice and racist ridiculousness that is so openly practiced.

For all the martyrs the ones who have been murdered
For the collateral damage, the human shields.
The exploitation and abuse, for all the scars that will never heal

The truth, your sacrifice will be heard.
Because when people start to listen
When people begin to care
About humans as humans
When our ignorance and culture of being unaware ends.
Your death would have been for something.

For You

Ive been doing this for you.
Pursuing all of these opportunities
All the ones that weren’t offered to you

You are my drive my inspiration.
You compel me. I must be your vindication.

Because if I don’t that’s selfish.
I know what it is to be blessed.
I have seen the struggle, the fights, the defeat of the rest.

I’ve been doing this for you.

You could have been a doctor.
Maybe a painter. A dancer.
A political campaigner.

But you were given cards
Not told the game
No matter the rules, youre beat
no how many times you deal again
you will always lose.
It is all in vain

So I’ve been doing this for you.

I know you are looking at me.
Supporting me always.
Giving me strength and love
Til the end of my days

Because if I were you and your were me
You’d be taking advantage of every opportunity
We have the same hunger
We have the same drive

The only difference is one of us has been deprived.

And that is why I am doing all of this for you.

Freedom of Speech

They denied me my freedom of speech
Words I didn’t even get the chance to speak
But I guess my Arab education.
Makes me a threat to national security.
So much for the only democracy
Functioning in the Middle East

State funded racism.
Another word for Zionism
But don’t you know it’s the same thing as anti-Semitism?
That both ideas both practices call for the complete separation.
The denial of integration.
The foundation of the Jewish nation

Those ghettos in Germany
Are now settlements in Jenin.
The power is separating them based on the Hebrew ethnicity
Our Jewish brothers and sisters are again separated from the rest of society

The refusal of co-existence.
The suppression of all resistance

I am not anti-Semitic nor am I a Zionist
I’m what we call a humanist
A person who believes that all people have the right to exist
I am the opposite of a separatist

These are the words that I wanted to speak
When they isolated, interrogated
When they detained me and denied me my entry
Telling me that they didn’t believe
Telling me I was constantly changing my story

And as they stamped and labeled me
A threat to national security
They told me they were sorry.

But it wasn’t a real apology.
These were the words they were trained to speak
What they’re taught to say while serving in the military
In the only democracy
Functioning in the Middle East.

Long live freedom of speech.

Ambition

When you look in me you will find strength in me.

Because I was raised and taught to have tenacity.

To take up the things I do full heartedly.

To remember my roots and all those who came before me.

To talk and act respectfully.

That my purpose is not defined by the constraints of possibility.

Because I know the grind

And I’ve seen too many failed fights

To not recognize my opportunities and not work with all my might.

That when I say imma do something I do it

I put in the work damn straight I commit

That roadblocks are normal.

In fact they are practically a constant

But stopping my dear has never been an option

So for those bumps those gliches those problems I have

I say beware

Because I do not nor will I ever handle with care.

I wish I were Brave

They tell me I’m brave.

They tell me I am brave.

I go to a land of apartheid
I work in a land of genocide
I see men lose their children
I see them cry.
I see them looking at the land in which they are denied
The land their fathers worked
The land where their mothers birthed
them.

I see a travesty.
A travesty my own country helped create.
They give them the money, money to sustain their gates.
To sustain a wall that fuels each side's hate.

But they tell me I’m brave.
They tell me I am brave.

I read about the fire, I read about the bombs
I don’t see them I cannot feel them. My city is always calm.
Does it feel like our country is at war?
You know those battles our men and women have been fighting for over 3 score.

We are not dealing with equal sides.
There is the occupier and the occupied.
Where every act of progression is denied
Yet somehow, these people they thrive.

But they tell me I’m brave
They tell me I am brave.

But me? I can walk away.
Because honestly it does not directly affect my day.
I can pretend this doesn’t exist.
That even if this violence persists.
Nothing here will change.
The only thing that has changed
Is the distance of missile range.
In this so-called Holy land.

Let me be the first to say there is nothing holy about killing an innocent man.
That collateral damage is a little too much in demand.
What people will do to get the so-called upper hand
Erroneous it is that these murderers will never see the witness stand
In their defense of national security for the holy land.

Am I’m left here wondering who is it that needs to be saved?

I wish I were brave.