I Love You I Love You Not

I. Beirut I love you. My feisty grandmother is throwing rice from balconies Bullets, bullets, in the sky shooting fate in the eye what a merry wedding. II. I saw Abu Saed The cab driver in debt Weep, weep, Children overdosing On your streets Falling one after the other a domino act after act after act a foreign show Or are they sleeping? perhaps...dreaming? of a brighter tomorrow? I can’t hide the sorrow. III. Your women are beautiful. rounded and sharp almond eyes sticks and twigs for thighs sea-shell hearts that open and close they’re asking why IV. Why? Why didn’t you write back? Was it the booze? Was it the smack? Was it the young men I saw dancing in the forest to gods they don’t understand? Was it the girls in their 20s Walking out of bars 10 minutes and 23 seconds pregnant when it was unplanned? Was it your fertile land and your sky pink and blue your cedars your views that you had to screw over the only thing that might’ve been good for you your people. V. Beirut, I love you not. I can't walk straight anymore. Your teens are deep-throating life vomiting their futures in the toilet. I love you. I love you not. I love you. I love you not. It's raining rose petals God is bleeding I see him in the sky.