Love between guns and slow starvation

Often wonder how love plays out in our town
forgotten in the margins of a nation that has
nothing to do with us, because a love like ours
wouldn't survive, it depends on regular conversations,
a coffee passed around, the mundanity of reading
side by side in a library,
In our town, the public library was burnt by a violent mob
and it was never fully restored
It's been a month since the goods were blocked
from reaching us, the nation didn't cry fowl because
we are not part of the national imagination,
that makes it easier for them to kill us,
like flies, with so consequences, year after year
There are lines in ATMs, there are lines in petrol pumps,
And there is no place for love here,
We barely manage to survive
If you aren't killed by a bullet,
you die standing in line for money or food
And yet, despite the burden of history,
and the cruely of politics,
they tell me people fall in love here too.
One can only wonder what promises they make
to each other, how does love stand to fare
between guns and slow starvation?

To live on the smile of strangers

Last night passing through the town of no name
Where winter winds were upon us,
the hillside glittering with lights,
A cafe beckoned me inside
I ordered a cup of coffee and opened my book,
a constant companion, a safety blanket
Your song cut through my reverie,
The light was dim and I couldn't see you clearly
But I caught your smile,
The warm smile of a stranger to another,
The smile you can built a life on, a lie on,
How it must be like to live like that,
to sing songs and dance and smile like that,
to spread oneself between continents and oceans
To live on borrowed kindness,
To never live in one place too long,
Just enough to fall in love, but not long
enough for heartbreak
You see, that is all a bit of wishful thinking
Instead I carry with me a loan of bitterness
And exchange grimaces with familiar faces.