when a child talks of heartbreak

when a child talks of heartbreak
she is a room of combating shadows
broken utensils
and photographs taken in the altar
then a voice chasing another voice with rage.
when a child talks of heartbreak
she is a wind carrying people to places
cities of walking bones
towns of dead dreams
where guns are birds that sing melody
to the ears of the metropolis
when a child talks of heartbreak
she is a street filled with blood
blood of bodies
that auctioned their lives to vehicles.
when a child talks of heartbreak
she is a defiled breath under
the nose of her master
she is a demolished building
weeping in silence
a bird singing for her mother in a necropolis.

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holiness

to be snow you need
to hide from the touch of night
you need to be nest for every bird that needs rest
candle burning/ offering of oneself into the church box/ carrying God in any of your textile/
will never guide you into empty sky
where a moon takes people to Jerusalem. because it was you who bottled the breath of a torso in gourd, it was you who held one’s dream till it is too late to twinkle, it was you who pulled a trigger and a young voice goes to the cemetery.        there are only two ways to go to paradise,
to die redeeming an alien
or to become butterfly
in heart and body.

————-

Daddy

do you still hold the taste of life
in your mouth,
When you used to put songs in me
and watch the tempo travel through my vein in excitement?
nights, I guess you have all set them
ablaze, when we gathered like hawks in anticipation of wildfire,
time you made us rainbows,
and said we must stop the rain
pouring from the cloud of life,
life that you always see her ugly face,
face that scares success,
success that has never grown in
your garden,
garden filled of sad flowers,
flowers planted by those allergic to progress. do I have to stand every day in between tears and death daddy?
is time a tailor?
it has sewn a style that doesn’t fit our body,
it has made mother a scarf too heavy for her head,
it has made you a wind wandering in abnormal atmosphere,
it has made your children stars that cannot twinkle.
how do we walk back to our bodies?
how do we fill this empty space dying in loneliness?
how do we bring back time
and cook life in the pot of peace?
or are we going to stand near this river waiting for best time to drown?
are we going to keep voting sorrow
to rule over our roof?
are we going to keep cracking these bones of our slaughtered dreams?
father, let’s say to grief,
it is over.

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Poems © Philip C. Abonyi
Image by Karen Smits from Pixabay (modified)