Friendships

I cannot cry,

I do not know why.

Inside I’m crumbling,

My stomach rumbling,

For my soul is dead,

Alike to thin thread.

This thin thread is cut,

My wrenched gut

Bleeding death.

 

A friend gone,

A song that once shone

Is now nothing but stone,

Leaving broken and alone.

 

Nothing makes me laugh or smile,

Nothing much will for a while.

I can see her still, her grin

Rising my spirits, like non-alcoholic gin.

My dear, says those who have cried along with me,

Take it easy.

 

She may be gone from the living,

But the spirit world has not finished existing!

She is happy, full joy up there,

With her mother and brother, who cuddle her close, and mess up her hair.

No sorrows, no pain

No bad memories, nothing slain.

She will see you soon,

When you join her in the afternoon,

When you leave this world in peaceful want.

 

Her body lies cold in the tomb.

By her brother, who was before her come out of the womb.

Pale face,

Chilled grace,

May she be joyful in her resting place.

I leave you now to contemplate what you have and haven’t done.

I cannot stay, I must leave, me and my spirit, as one.

 

Just happiness, flowing in her veins.

Her mother, brothers and father, will see each other, in a better place, and forget their banes.

World! Can’t you hear the cries?

Can’t you feel the heartbeats of a child fade as it dies?

Can the guns not be silenced?

Can the people at least mourn, so that she be reverenced?

 

The thud of her limp body is joined with those of children around the globe.

Animals are, alike, killed until they are no more there, while scientists probe.

The sun intensifies, the bears drown.

Men continue burning, oxygen exchanged for power, the leaves turning brown.

 

Can they not see?

There is discord in my poem.

Her hair was the colour of a gardener's hands after a day's worth of toil,

Her dreams were shining so brightly that I thought she would taste them tomorrow

I was going to ask her to eat lunch with me the next day.

BUT THE GUN WAS THERE.

 

The gun was there.

Like the bold flame.

Like the uncertain stone on the edge of a cliff.

Like ice about to crack.

 

A teeter. Below, the unknown.

 

Mother told me how it happened when I got home.

I was numb.

She sobbed as she told us how her oldest brother waited for each member of his family to come home.

Like an adder.

I wanted to scream.

Where does a voice go when the grief wants you to cry out?

 

What is worth all the control over land and people worth if you are blind to pain, can’t you agree?

The way the sunlight gleams on the expensive things you own

Does it make you think of a gun's barrel?

 

You, the chosen leaders of the world, you may fight all you want, take what you want,

But something is wrong with you.

Because a girl, a friend, and a person who was going to change the world is dead.

Dead because you aren't taking the guns away.

Her name

Her name was Milan. 

 

Poetry Slam: 
This poem is about: 
My country

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