GREEN

Love thy neighbour as yourself , he said as he kissed me goodnight 

i once spoke about the undying love of the montagues and the capulets
the kind of love that leads you to believe your life is worthless
without the other .
I loved these bed time stories he always read to me , 
Although my mother laid complaints about how it was too mature 
and i was only 8
but i loved it 
i  lived in Shakespeare's head , i read them over and over again
although simplified to my taste. i dreamed of this world 
I believed my parents and i lived in this world 
this world where everyone would die for one another 
lay their life just because......

My fantasies were short lived
my father no longer had the time to sit by my bed side 
My mother grew weary by the day 
paranoia , arguments
the love i once knew became a facade
It lived and died with literature and mozart

Strange phone calls at our house, broken televisions sets
Constant crying and accusations 
I was a 10 year old with the mind of a 25 year old
Constant bickering about how 
"He didnt touch her anymore"

Soon , i had no father to pass by my door 
the rum and juice now lay him awake and put him to sleep
Heard constant confessions of my mother to her peers
In tears she would admit to how 
"She didnt love him anymore "
How he was an animal and deserved to die 

All this pain and suffering i believed you only felt
when you are being torn away from the one you love
that youd be willing to give your life
Did they learn nothing from shakespeare?

Soon i began to understand it 
15 years old, broken and tortured down
How was i supposed to pledge my allegiance 
to someone else for better for worse
When the only world i believe in 
Got broken down in pieces in front of me 

How i burnt all my books , that reminded me of him and what he did
But the stories have never left my head 
5 years later at the strike of 20
everyone's expectations of a certain love"
You should already posses 
The union of marraige is nothing to me 
But sacrilege.

How you are supposed to be imprisoned and forced to tolerate
for the rest of your life is beneath me 
And in the eventuality that your heart stops to beat for that person
the arteries that transports your love becomes crippled
Then you turn to religion 
for days and nights 
offering sacrificies , Good or bad
Depending on your level of desperation

Or your only source of life becomes the children
The one who you have given life to 
you now hold on to it 
For your emotional and mental survival
This disaster that people who are lucky recover from 
the people who arent get to suffer 
till they become at peace with it 

Walking down the streets and the disgusting catcalls
Mostly from men who have women they have sworn to 
Imprinted on emotionally 
With bands on their fingers or shadows of it 
It makes me sick 
It makes me even sicker that the lot of them believe they were born that way

The admittance to wanting a certain variety
That Eve been made specifically from Adam's ribs 
was simply a jolly story 
an excuse , we cant get away with because we have to be meek

We have to curb our sexual appetite
Spread our legs to prevent our men from seeking elsewhere 
Knowing fully well they would do what they please without reason
Be everything and nothing
And drench our dresses in tears at night as he lays beside us 
then wake up with breakfast and a smile

I watched my mother for years 
from the hidden tears to the open smiles 
the sickening wave of unhappiness that coveted her 
all because she wanted to feel something 
she only read about it books, heard on the mouths of artistes 
Saw on the palettes . 
Look at where it got her .
 I FOR ONE AM IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING FAR GREATER 
SOMETHING THAT WOULD ENABLE ME REWRITE THAT STORY.........