The Wrong

It was before a cat had become
My greatest wish.  I was three.
In a child-like—childish—game, I remember
I cornered a skinny stray cat.
The sun set aglow the red
Brick against the cat’s side,
And a stick in my hand was heavy,
Black, cold from the snow.
A stick?  I seem to remember it was
A metal bar.  Only would the cat
Have survived then the blow?

The creature’s black-orange striped fur
Stood up on ends, not masking
The protruding bones, and the animal
Crouched to the frost-covered earth,
Scared, anticipating the blow.

It came, and the cat like lightning was gone.
And sheltered behind the black garbage can in the yard,
The creature—perhaps—nursed its wounded back,
The blood pulsing beneath its sticky, moist fur.
Or—perhaps—the blow missed, and merely the hit
Of the bar on the brick send the shattering sound,
And its echo’s crescendo shook the bar and the hand.

The memory’s misted and partially lost,
A justification.  Irrelevant.
For there, not yet stripped of it, stood a girl
Who was to be me,
The blow reverberating in my hand.

The Day of Silence

The bright, lime green poster I held glowed
In the sun, loud against my black shirt.
The spring breeze tugged at its corner.
When the wind calmed, the air was still,
Filled with voices lost in their multitude.
A bee buzzed around the poster and left.

My deliberate silence for those
Silenced by fear every day
Was not burdensome.  I was used to it—
The heat of the yesteryear’s sun,
The rustling of yesterday’s crowd;
My silence transcended time.

But I held the day’s meaning in my sweaty hands,
The poster’s idealism, faith in good.
And the silence was an empty cathedral—
Cool, holy, deserted, dark,
With mosaic, bright windows—rainbow—
Shining for people on the street.

Going Home After a Long Day

House, house, house…
The bus rattles on.
The window’s not shut
The chilly wind pulls
At my hair and prickles the skin
On my ghastly pale arms
And sore, bended back.
The night stretches out and envelops me.

But when the bus stops, I look out at the ground,
The asphalt—mundane and strange
In the darkness.  Covered with dust, yet
Pure by the blue-tinted shine of a streetlight.
Unfamiliar and welcome – something a traveler sees
Nearing new home for a first time.
The bus starts again, slicing the dark,
And the spring breeze caressed my face.

He Was a Boy; She Was a Girl

"He was a boy; she was a girl;
Can I make it any more obvious?"
"Oh, yes, you can," I want to say.
You just assume your life is all there is.

They might be friends; they might be exes;
They might be siblings warring in rivalry;
They might have not known each other at all;
He might be gay and she a lesbian.

Don't just assume based on yourself
That all the world revolves around you.
Maybe I don't want to blindly conform
To that commercial image of youth.

Don't you just get that you degrade
Whatever is not in your formula?
A sin of omission hurts no less
Than open oppression, don't you think?

So, for the next time, I would advise
To err on the safer side of the line.
It's not redundant at all to explain.
What's obvious to you to me might seem the other way.

* * *

There is a belief
Where I come from
That how you greet the New Year,
The same way it will go.

So in font of a mirror
Alone I now sit
And try to predict
What this year will bring.

Each action, each word
Might be a symbol of what,
In the darkness of future,
The Fate for me holds.

It's so strange to decipher
The present and past.
I'm like archeologists,
Who discover clay plates

With carved hieroglyphics
Freed from the grave built by years,
And no one is sure
What do they mean.

A new language of signs
Right before me unfolds
Obscuring the picture
Of my future world.

And I try to decipher
Their torturous code;
There must be a key here,
Right under my nose.

Yet I doubt that I'm smart
Enough to unveil
Zealously guarded
Maiden named Fate.

Does predicting my future
Make me feel more secure?
No, because, with not key to this code,
I still do not know
Where to go, where to turn.

Mabye Fate's ancient words
Should not be understood
Maybe we're meant to take
Present's straight route.

* * *

Unwinding the intricate web
Of philosophy and psychology,
I try to submerge myself deep
Into Hume's ideology.

Nothing you know for yourself
Can be sure--
Observation and knowledge
Always defeat the unknown.

How can one know if
One's ideas are rational;
That they did not sprout from the soil
Fertilized by instinct's chicanery?

And nothing around here is certain
And nothing here is for sure.
Once again, this uncertainty
Tortures my soul.

* * *

Can you find the mising shade of blue?
If you grew old in the world surrounding you,
You have seen blue million times a day,
Never thinking once of that rare
Missing shade of blue;
The one forever obscured for you;
The one you can never see,
Since for you it does not exist.
And you never know what you're missing in life
By not seeing the shade that hides from your sight.

But I seek to find
That missing shade of blue--
If I have to, I will look through the whole spectrum
For its truth.

* * *

When it's dar outside,
Darker yet in your soul;
When you've lost your way home,
Knowing not where to go;

All around you is night
And you're crying alone,
Realizing that now
You have nowhere to turn;

Tugging the chain
Built by your heart;
Thinking it's cruel of Fate
Not to let you to die;

When the tears' salty stream
Poisons your world,
I would like to know
How to open my soul.

* * *

"Is this really a life?"
You are asking yourself.
"Or a version of death
Worse than all other deaths?"

What makes you think you are living?
The question unfolds.
Complete lack of feeling?
Apathy towards the world?

No love, no hate burns in your heart--
Total despair is its sole ruler now.

Rainbow Flag

I was young and foolish
When I first read on one site
That magical phrase,
"Rainbow flag, the symbol of gay pride."

Naive as I was,
I let my thought fly,
Imagining gays
With the flag as a child

They nortured and cared for,
Adoring its sight;
For each its achievement,
Feeling their pride.

But, as I've come to see,
That is a mirage
Created to wave
With wild cries around,

To show ourselves off,
To show how PC
Our self-righteous struggle
Has made us all be.

Commercialized, packaged,
Preordered for show,
Is this really pride
Or its selfish exploit?