No one ever told me it would get so lonely.
That there would be no one home, waiting to hold me.
Is there another way? Can someone please show me?
I look like I’m swimming, but I’m drowning, homie.

No one ever said that everything is a lie,
That wars should be waged without asking how or why,
That we all live in a corporate-sponsored pig-sty,
Where protesting nets you a Colombian necktie.

No one ever mentioned the predatory interests,
Nor the dimension of mandatory contingents;
Never thought I would hear of “peace-keeping” armies,
Nor of these deceitful, political parties.

What we were told as children was very different,
Like a testimony that’s too inconsistent.
I remember hearing about true liberty,
That the world aims to eliminate poverty.

We weren’t taught to understand, digest and think;
We follow the invisible hand to the brink.
We did hear that anyone who works hard, gets there;
Then why are we starving whilst working our bones bare?

No one ever prepared us for this **** right here.
No warning about how life hits like Everclear.
At least, now I know how ****** we are.
Drinks are on me; let’s **** up the bar.

One, bright star,
In an otherwise dark sky.
That is what you are,
And now I know why.

Much like a star,
I could only observe from afar.
You were always there –
Radiant, with a certain flair.

I witnessed as you overcame nightmares,
As if you had the energy of a thousand solar flares.
Forged from unstoppable chemistry,
Leaving earth scorched with phenomenal synergies of energies.

I always saw you through this lens tinged with admiration.
Head and shoulders above the rest, a jewel of all creation.
I felt inadequacy by comparison, extensively -
I never respected myself enough,
I gave myself to people recklessly,
People who turned me cold and tough.

And so, our paths never crossed.
A faraway star you remained,
And over our friendship I casually glossed.
I was always coveting unspoken fantasies,
Never realising I was sheltering under broken canopies.

Perhaps you also had this thought.
Perhaps from afar, your own insecurities you also fought.
Never have I hoped with so much suspenseful delight
To see two stars collide;
I wish to fill up the darkness of this universe with light,
And bridge this divide.

Now that I’ve realised
I no longer need a canopy,
All I can think of
Are excuses to seek your company.

Do you feel uncomfortable in your own skin?
Here's a tip, from kin-to-kin:
If you don't fit in, don't fit in.
Simply, be.

The sound of silence.
Peace after violence.

A mother’s browbeaten servitude.
A child’s coerced gratitude.

The world’s most prosperous nations.
Architects of the most dangerous machinations.

Economies like never before;
A life that still leaves you wanting more.

The embezzlement of public finances.
The settlement of a case’s nuances.

Two colluding entities declaring each other free of ******;
With ease, starving YOUR wallet until YOU are down on your knees.

The oath: ‘to protect and serve.’
The reality? ‘To suspect and unnerve.’

A cartel that’s in charge of the guns;
Like leaving a brothel in the hands of Huns.

The lie of representation in government.
The election, expectation of endowment.

Spending your life washing your master’s feet,
Then somehow being surprised by their trickery and deceit.

The mistake of prioritising convenience.
The finalising of our own, eventual obsolescence.

We are a species that will die
Clueless of our role in it, desperately asking ‘why?’
When it’s way too late.

Frozen in place I stood,
A deer caught in a hunter’s crosshair.
I never thought you would,
But you did; you killed me, right there.

I am angry at myself, most of all;
For staying when I should have left,
For not dodging the bullet and taking the fall.
Twice now, I found myself broken;
Carelessly adrift in life,
Like a raft on the ocean.
Too much pain this chest,
These monsters in my head
Feel like an obstacle I cannot best.

I don’t just want to be loved;
I want us all to love and understand one another.
‘It’s not possible, we’re too different,’
Those who wish to rebuttal will answer.
No, that is the distant path you chose,
I choose to keep my humanity close.

And yet, I cannot stop the terrifying flashbacks.
You made me feel like a train veering off its tracks.
Like a bridge that leads to a precipice,
Nothing but a cold, dark abyss.
Meet the millennials -
The most criticised generation,
Suffering from emotional stagnation,
Raised on a steady diet of instant gratification.

‘What do you want, then?’
I want us to feel the soil with our bare feet.
To associate freely with others we meet,
Not bow down to the pretension of the elite.
To embrace our soul,
Not shun it and drive it into a locked room;
To retrace our role,
Not simply run our life’s course to its doom.

We are being led astray,
Our hopes and dreams hidden away.
We have no room for thought, little to say,
For few want to go out of their way.
No criticism, no originality -
No witticism, no vitality.
We are criticised for criticising,
And we are ostracised when we act defying.

We are the paralysed;
Our fears leave us immobilised,
Anxiety and depression,
Killing variety of expression.
We languish in prisons
That we build for ourselves in our own head;
We have nightmarish visions,
Like a guild of the living dead.

The fabric of human life,
An elixir of strife –
Passion is everything and nothing.
Passion
Is the sweat on my palms
Whenever I behold you in my arms,
Passion
Is the breathlessness I feel
Whenever my lips delicately caress yours,
It is the hunger inside
That I can only feed
Not with steak or fries
But, exclusively, with one deed –
The deed
Of opening up
Like a fresh pack of cards,
Exposing everything,
Concealing nothing.

I wish
It could be that easy –
I wish
A thin film of plastic
Was the only thing
Separating the cards I keep close to my chest
From your gentle fingers.
But,
It is not –
Beneath that spark of passion
Lies a great inaction
There is
A layer of cold fog
Swallowing everything up whole
And the only thing I can see
Is you, desperately
Trying to understand
Extending your hand
Into the void.

Sometimes I wonder
Whether I should build a dam
Instead of letting my river of emotions flow –
BUT
Your touch, your presence
Infallibly bring me back to that feeling you get
When watching a pyrotechnical show.
Spending the night with you
And waking up regenerated, anew,
Brings me towards this question:
“Who goes there?
Who
Is bold enough
To venture into this cave
This structurally unsound mess
This tavern of stress
That is my soul?”
The light of my heart intensifies –
Feeling, thought and action
Are easier,
If for just a while.
If you could only understand
How difficult it is to reconcile
All the anxiety
All the pain
With what I experience in your presence…

Imagine
Being in an art gallery
But being unable to see colour
Imagine
Being an unsung, fallen hero
A spent life, ended with no valour
Imagine
Having the mind of a genius
That is trapped in a minefield of anxiety, unable to speak.
All of this –
It is a mirroring of what I feel
Of who I am.

I am an individual
That loves the world and life itself
But walks through it warily
A shadow
Walking in the plains of the living
Aghast at the thought
Of permanently becoming darkness.
Stealthily
I am creeping out of this nebulous underworld
A process that will take time,
A tunnel wherein the light at the end
Is not yet visible –
I yearn
For your tender touch,
For your warm presence
To be there
When I finally crawl out
When I can finally walk
Steadily, on my own two feet
A man made of solid steel
Who will bend his knee to no one.

Despite my misgivings,
Despite all this maddening rage
I have towards the world
I also think of things like old age,
The crumbling temple of our youth –
In truth,
I do not see myself settling
I am investing
Not in a house or a bank loan
But in a better world for all
A sacrifice
That will only lead to immeasurable yet the noblest of hardship.
But,
Until then,
Until push comes to shove
And I am still willing and able to feel and love
I will just content myself
With waiting, and hoping
To see you again.

‘Playing it cool’ – defined as follows:
Lacking visible emotion as a rule,
Trying to avoid looking like a fool.
In other words,
The pretension that your heart is merely an engine,
That it is clear you feel nought beneath your veneer.

Of all the people I meet hereinafter,
I shall ask only the following:
I am no lord or master,
No unduly glorified *******.
Thus, with that in mind,
I hope your true voice is mustered,
And it no longer becomes difficult to find.

Please, if you are around me,
Don’t play it cool –
If you need to, DO act the fool,
Do display your emotions, **** the rule.
Do not taint your soul with undue restraint,
Do not hide behind platitudes vast and wide.

Cry, be bitter, rage if you must!
Never say die,
Be a hard-hitter or become a sage one can trust –
Open up those clogged channels,
Feel it, as your soul unravels!
Cherish it, as an adventurer does his travels!
Only a fool would be slow enough to conceive
That the act of playing it cool is something I believe.

The bitterness of hate and disappointment.
The hollowness of state appointments,
The shallowness of reform,
Like an anti-aging ointment.

Hidden histories, systems built on blood –
Forbidden mysteries, bodies of martyrs,
Unmarked graves covered in mud.
I understand, now – fully self-aware,
To talk is not enough; to do, we must dare.

No government is better than the self-governed.
Remember; the betterment of society must happen now,
Before we ruin ourselves, to be later discovered.
Remember that the rich have always been afraid;
Remember their long-standing debt that is yet to be paid.

Retribution is within reach;
Landlords, puppets and their armed thugs,
Parasites with no contributions, akin to a leech.
Warlords and their muppets, ***** profiteers,
Genocidal crimes, no restitution, just greed.

You may have killed off most of us,
But you will never **** the black flag.
You will simply make more of us,
For surrender to your ill-will is never our plan.
For every ‘example’ you make out of us,
We’ll just keep on coming back.

We are the anarchists,
The nightmare you’ve tried to bury.
Down with rich masochists,
Let righteous fury tear apart their territory!

The white flag has been raised.
The earth lies scorched and blazed;
Medals were pinned on chests,
Testament to the best murderers,
Killers being given glory and praise.

The war is finally over.
Go home, soldier.
Pick up the hammer and the nail,
For houses have been torn down –
Bombs have fallen like rain, explosive gales.

Now, the bridges must be rebuilt;
Lost hopes must be found,
Somewhere in the debris and guilt.
POWs must be returned safe and sound,
The world must continue to spin, at a tilt.

Bridges can be rebuilt, yes,
But imagine if we tried to not burn them down, at all.
Empty cups can be refilled,
But imagine if we never dried them out, how we’d all stand tall.

If we always choose war,
We shall never know peace.
If we always even the score,
We shall sire desperate pleas.

I want to apologise.
Broken relationships, I shall eulogise.
To those I know (or, knew);
Forgive my absence when you needed a warm caress and a hug,
But instead got frostbite, a torrent of snow or dew.

I am sorry for drawing a sword
When you were hoping for an olive branch;
I can be as thorny as an all-knowing lord.
I wish my heart was limitless,
And my kindness infinite –
I dream of love that is fearless,
And of joyousness completely exquisite.

Yet, that is not who I am –
I can be a calm ocean or a tempest,
A total commotion, or peacefully at rest.
I can be enigmatic and reserved,
Or, I can be charismatic, if the mood is reversed.
We are not good or bad;
We can be lewd and strikingly mad,
Or cunningly shrewd, or maybe sad.

We are the yin and the yang;
We all tend to sin, to our demons we hang.
We are objects of pure fascination,
In constant fluctuation,
A recalcitrant reconciliation.
So, I will say it one more time –
Look into my eyes, see through my guise.
I apologise to those who had no shoulder to cry on
And sought mine, when I was not there.
I hope you’re fine, and that someone showered you with care.

Held back, with a knack for spectacle,
A need to be, specifically, to be beheld.
A paradoxical existence –
An oxymoronic persistence,
An urge to merge unsuppressed emotion with the notion of defensive insistence.

There ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, indeed;
I paint these scenes with fine lines in my mind’s eye’s canvas,
The thought of you floats through like the haze of cannabis,
You are the source of that which I seek, thou art the seed.

I attempt to gaze deeply, as I love to do,
Yet I cannot do so unfazed, it is a price I pay steeply,
For sadness overwhelms me, leaving me blue.
Instead, I cast myself in a lifetime of debauchery,
Each and every night hoping it’ll be the one that does one in,
That one night it’ll be too much, too out of the ordinary.

Forgive me for making promises I can’t keep –
I guess I am a grown man when I can no longer weep,
When tears have dried out a long time ago,
When pain sears memories that died like an ember’s last glow.

I want to be able to just be inactive emotionally,
To respect boundaries reflective of love that is felt platonically.
I am capable of doing that just about as much as a bull is able to tip-toe around a china shop.

Seems wrong, feels right;
Feels like longing, seems like it’s alright.
Like it’s alright to ignore sentiment,
Despite my heart being set alight,
Intensely bright, incandescent.

Rationality, grounded in reality –
In opposition,
Spirituality, grounded in alacrity.
When these two are bound together,
We drift through life peacefully, light as a feather.
When these two oppose each other,
Then we must compose ourselves, or otherwise suffer.

There is so much our two eyes cannot see;
It’s the third one that really sets you free.
When internal conflict arises,
When infernal flames contract your irises,
Know that on the inside,
Deep in your heart, where you cannot hide,
Know that you know what’s right.

It might seem irrational,
It might feel insane;
It might be unfashionable,
It might even sound lame –
Your decision is only limited by you,
The perspective which is your frame.

Listen to your heart’s hidden chambers;
Turn its volume up, like your annoying neighbours.
Let your soul speak;
For our lives are not long,
And the future seems rather bleak.

Traffic, an artless moment for us all.
Static, unmoving; this is our downfall.
Manic, and frantic, in panic, anxious;
A nation that thrives on the unsanctioned.

Softly, we slip away, as the sun shines;
It’s time to make hay, ‘fore the planet dies.
Absorb the grey decay, smoke in our skies;
This ain’t a game, we don’t have several tries.

From the office, to your house, to the bar.
Fall in deep love, find a spouse, live on par;
Get a job, pay your taxes, buy a car.
Adhere to templates, forget who you are.

Don’t think about your disappearing rights.
Elected racketeering, sleepless nights,
Running on fumes, there’s one too many fights.
How we’ve fallen from those divine, sublime heights.
Angrier, sadder than we’ve ever been.
Top-tier madness, hating coloured skin.
Unforgiving badlands, dealt some bad hands;
No going to heaven, they won’t let us in.

Slowly slipping away, like time itself.
Pretending we are fine, we don’t need help.
You can almost feel your soul fragmenting.
The cries of your inner child, who died lamenting;
Stifle them.
Suffocate them.
Placate them.
This is our life; there is no happy ending.

Smitten by her charms,
Driven by a desire to have her in my arms.
Here I am again, with a paper and a pen -
My thoughts are devouring each other,
Like walking into a crazed lions' den.

I don't know what else to do;
I have been wrong before,
I have been left wanting more -
But, I can't deny there's something true,
Something real and deep,
Beyond trivial, the stuff of dreams.

I wake up, and I see an imprint of that gorgeous face,
That bright smile that could illuminate the darkness of space.
It's killing me, knowing that this is not happening.
I'm willing to move on, I know I have to,
Yet I am too busy reeling from this crash landing,
From realising that all I want is to hug you,
And hold on for dear life.

I am yearning for you,
But life has deemed I must not;
Our journeys must take us where we are due,
And evidently, what I want is not what I got.
I wish I could explain this urgency -
It feels like a need greater than myself,
Like the call for help in a national emergency.
My thoughts call out for respite,
Yet you override them like an insurgency.

Please, don't get me wrong;
I don't want to stifle a spirit that's so free, so strong.
Just know that should I ever set foot in your sanctuary,
I will leave offerings and heap up blessings,
I will be there, even in the bitter cold of January.

I just wish you felt this as fully and fiercely,
I wish we were just dancing with destiny,
That our lives found a way to intertwine truly and sincerely.
But,
I guess they won't.

My life, my labour, my lineage;
My time - a favour, a privilege.
My very existence, up for sale;
Watch, as democracy gets impaled.

Sold off, bought by the highest bidder;
Out in the cold, caught in a blizzard.
Meanwhile, loyalties are on sale,
Lives are sabotaged, set up to fail.

Born, reared and raised inhaling dust,
Told to vote, to do so’s a must.
Led to the edge by the undead,
Fueled by secrets best left unsaid.
Sworn in, cheered on, values betrayed,
Victors portrayed, losers dismayed,
Our disillusionment displayed;
We’re in deep ****, be ready to wade.

There’s no lust, no zest for life;
There’s no trust, when there is strife.
I see strife aplenty enough;
I see many are acting tough.
Hardened hearts that have come apart,
Forced to live like this, playing a part.

Sold! The entire, impoverished lot;
Sold to the men of the black hand,
The string-pullers, crafting the whole plot.
The world is being auctioned off,
And you are the merchandise,
You are fuel for the enterprise.

You might not believe what I’ve just conceived;
Mark me as read, a fake ‘message received’.
You might look away, maybe take a day off;
I won’t, I can’t, I mustn’t.
There’s no time for going soft.

Analyse –
The difficulty which one finds in this rat race,
Attempting to materialise
Food in one’s belly
Electricity in one’s home,
Hell,
To even HAVE a home.

The state of the world
Isn’t what has made my pen meet this paper today;
It’s us I’m concerned about.
Hard-wired to be social creatures,
We ignore these features
Our lives focused on money,
Not enjoying each other’s company
Not even when the sky is blue and sunny.

And,
Worst of all,
There is the great truth –
‘Behind every great fortune there lies a great crime.’
This is not to say
That every rich man or woman
Should never see the light of day,
But, it is undeniable
That overreaching influence and concentrated wealth
Are unjustifiable
When we live in a world that fits all of us.
The worst part about being poor
Is the isolation, it’s your heart
Travelling alone, one with the moor.
So many missed good times
So many lost communication lines –
All caused
By this stratification
This intolerable alienation
This algorithmic separation
Of human beings.

Do you know
What it feels like
To ration things you need
To feel grateful for every sip of water,
Every **** of ****?
Dying on the inside
Every time someone asks
‘What are you doing tonight?’
Tonight
I will be trying to traverse this never-ending tunnel
Attempting to reach the light
At the end of it.
Tonight
I will be trying
To keep myself together
Without letting all this weight crush my soul.

If we are to base our society
Our everyday life
On the concept of wealth
Then we must preserve our health
We must ensure
That not only one or two families in every hundred
Are able to survive and endure,
But all of us.

This lack of balance
This Roman phalanx
Of men and women in mass unison
Working and toiling
Hours upon hours of labour
All attempting to obtain favour
With their masters –
For what reason?
I would rather get hung for treason
Than work for someone else.
I am tired of being sore
At the end of the week
Unable to obtain the stability I seek
Simply because the pyramid scheme
Demands it to be so.

I am a kindred spirit
With all the revolutionaries of the world
The divergent, the insurgent
The activist protecting his country from business interests.
On some days, I lose hope
On some days, I can barely cope
Because there’s so much to deal with –
So on those days
When loneliness and poverty mix together like a lethal cocktail
The tree of knowledge I shall hail,
Its flowers I shall consume,
Its co-evolution with man I shall exhume.

I am incomplete.
The great desolation.
Filthy desecration.
A heart’s laceration.

I dream of war, I wish for love.
Send a sign from heavens above;
What must I do?
Must I tear off the velvet glove?
Should I just give my heart a shove?
Just push it, onto life’s dance floor,
Act like I’ll live forevermore.
What must I do?
Must I willingly close that door?
Should I not think of love, anymore?

Someone’s missing, I can feel it.
Hearts must love, I can’t conceal it.
I wonder who that someone is;
In this world of state-run showbiz,
Are there any as angry as me?
Listen, hand each other the key,
Hear and understand to be free.

I hope she’s out there, somewhere.
I hope she’s running with her feet bare,
Freely, without a ******* care.

_____________

Stricken-down, struggling and stranded,
Dealt a hand that was quite underhanded.
I am done with never settling down,
Always having to run –
I am standing my ground stubbornly,
I am a storm of sounds,
Discourteously curmudgeonly.

I will not accept defeat -
I feel naught except the beat,
The rhythm, the flow, the show –
The hurt dissipates as I let go.
On these two feet,
I fight the finite, finicky, fraudulent conmen of deceit.
It’ll serve you right when you get roasted by the roaring heat,
When mother death cometh with hungry babes at her ****.

Stranded or at ease, it doesn’t matter,
Landed like a breeze, serving poetry on a platter.
I’ve been feeling like my time is really up,
Like there’s the ceiling and all I can do is get numb.
That, or just ******* wander off and die;
Just like that, with no explanation as to how or why.

I can’t go on like this, I can’t blow off life’s bliss.
Thing is, if I knew I was going to die and live on somewhere else,
I can’t even think of what I’d actually miss.

Picture –
The ancient slave
On one knee, hands in chains
From his dreams, he refrains
A soul destined
To follow his master
Like a beaten dog tied to a post.
The few who rebelled
Either died, or were expelled,
Outcasts for life,
Labelled as heretics, agents of strife.

The ancient slave
Was born a slave, a captive soul
Animated as a shadow, not a whole.
No freedom, no choice –
A voice
With its chords tied,
Its right to speak denied
Because slavers and a bill of sale said so.

Visualise –
The modern slave
The one who is born
Not with bonds made of chains
But of laws,
Of the systemic corruption
The incessant drive for consumption
And the illusion of freedom.
It is the modern slave
Who lives the greatest lie –
A purposeless drone who will die
Thinking he has lived
Because he had an affair with life.

A life fully savoured
Cannot be just this.
Working 40 – 60 hour weeks
A system that just reeks
Of exploitation,
Of the horrible foundation
On which everything we know is built.

Most of us
Work to eat, to provide,
No secret accounts to hide;
Most of us
Make enough to get by,
Maybe enjoy the weekend
When given the leave to do so.
Most of us
Have this affair with life
Living freely for a few hours
Like rain when it’s just summer showers
Brief flickers, drops of rain
Sprinkled onto an otherwise barren field of crops
Of which the main harvest is pain.



A few of us, however,
Endlessly profit and plunder;
The modern slave
Differs from his ancestor
For he chooses his master
And loves him.
He is conned
Into thinking his masters care
Allegiances are laid bare
Hands are cast in adulation
Rights undergo strangulation
And nobody bats an eyelid.

The modern slave
Caresses his chains,
Wears them like a badge of office
Distaste for dissidence of the state
Pouring out of every orifice.
The modern slave
Could learn and understand
Confront the shimmering illusion, the shifting sand
That is the realm of made men,
But doesn’t.

Rather than fight back
We consume the great lie like crack;
These made men
Will run our planet into the ground
Until it is no longer a home
But a graveyard made for us, by us.
These made men
Spin lies, smear the truth
Force them to mingle and interchange
Like mismatched lovers in a diner booth.
Reality has shifted
It has become unbelievably twisted,
Our perceptions are suffering.
Towards each other, we direct our hostility
Unable to grasp the possibility
Of a better way.

The modern slave
Is cosy in his prison cell;
The reality of the world outside
Is a structured, engineered hell
To be avoided.
So, we just build our own bubble
Outside of which
Our only, primary concern
Is how to get rich.

Life isn’t meant to be an affair;
Life shouldn’t be
Something we are given permission for
But a free pursuit of happiness,
A learning experience.
So, with this I will conclude –
Raise your fists in the air
If you are tired of living bare,
Resist
If you’re tired of a world that does not care.

Stirring, snaking, coiled up in your soul –
Slurring, shaking, embroiled like an actor in a role.
You feel it rise up from a well of distaste,
With zeal, it controls you,
Suppressed anger flowing with haste.

Truth chips away at your defences,
Your uncouth hips sway off-tune
As your mind battles in the trenches.
You feel it, again;
An anger that shakes the cages it is in,
A battle for the ages, confined to the mind within.

It doesn’t have to be like that;
You shouldn’t have to bow down to a philistine
Just because their wallet is fat.
Stop the defensive, launch the attack!
Let the awakening happen, get the vermin off your back!

Be the message that ends this war on the poor!
Arise from the wreckage, and of this be sure:
You are controlled only if you act demure,
If your faith in what you believe is right
Lies cold, dead and insecure.

Youth to the fight!
Bring truth to the light!
All will be lost
Unless the fires of justice burn bright.

A silence, saliently insisting on its one day of reign,
Reminding you to reflect before you act,
To think beyond what you could gain.

We look back at our ancestors,
Recalcitrant in the face of the British, the French;
We praise their heroics, remember them in feasts,
Yet still, we are divided, brawling like beasts.

Against the oppressor, we stood united;
A colonised nation, struggling for identity.
Master-less we finally became, celebrating independence;
Yet now, we have subverted to sadist deference.

Men in sharp suits and their slimy, convincing faces;
They like to think they hold all the aces,
That they can and will divide and conquer all of the planet’s open spaces.
They tell us what to think, what to feel, what to do, what to vote,
They’ll tell you when to swim or when to sink,
When to squeal and how to heal,
What is true when you don’t have a clue,
And what to quote when you want to sound profound.
They are snivelling, Rolex-wielding, aftershave-wearing ******* with an arrogant bearing,
And they have no issues with asking you about why the *******’re glaring.

So, I suppose, today there's not much choice;
There is a snarling wolf on one hand,
And an angry bear on the other.
When your choice is that bad,
Why should you even bother?

'By any means necessary', Malcolm X would say.
There seems to be no solution,
Excepting a call for armed revolution.
Anarchists and troublemakers, unite;
Time to take down the state,
Like cutting the line to a kite.

The fortress is the mind,
The esoteric experience is the key –
Remove the interference, amass the will to break free.
Your body is merely a shell,
A medium in which to dwell.
It is your soul that you must look for,
Stashed away behind that locked door
Which leads to your heart's dancefloor.

You will sift
Through years of conditioned thought -
A painful journey which is, nonetheless, a gift,
One that leads to greatness being wrought.
It doesn’t matter if you’re deeply distraught,
There’s always a source to elicit;
Seek it and relish it,
Speak through it and embellish it,
Be unique and cherish it.

You may find your soul
Hidden beneath a veneer of hate –
Be it reserved for yourself or others,
It is an ugly twist of fate
When the fires of rage outlast logical reasons,
When we unshackle the cage and let out our suppressed demons.
Our connections to each other get severed;
We become nothing more than another failed romance,
Another love-sick storm that has been weathered.
We sob silently because of loneliness,
Succumbing to society, numb and emotionless.

Let go of the poisonous fruit of anger –
Do not dispense vengeance in every sentence.
Do not love others
If you do not fully intend to love yourself first.
We must be an oasis to the nomad,
Quenching each other’s thirst.

Before doing so,
Just make sure you always know:
To fill up another’s cup
One must have a full glass themselves.

I am so ******* done.
I am now a loaded gun,
So you’d better ******* run.
I am hateful, like a forsaken son,
I am spiteful, like the blazing sun.

An appetite for self-destruction,
Akin to handling dynamite without any instructions.
The chaotic disorder that runs amok,
The scavenging hoarder pillaging dead schmucks.
This language is those dark corners left unilluminated by love,
A savage from unknown lands coming over the ridge,
That unsated, insane impulse that turns push into shove.

Throbbing veins and demonic thoughts,
Sobbing dames and manic frauds.
Your mental kingdom, your palace of peace –
It all falls apart, piece-by-piece.
Hate is like a saboteur, sneaking in,
It robs life of its grandeur, sinking its teeth in.

Rhythm just doesn’t happen,
You feel stricken, like you’re borderline bed-ridden,
Feeling as used as a ***** napkin.
You see hate in every pair of dead eyes,
In every new set of ******* lies,
Whenever another inner child dies,
Whenever another bomb-dropping jet flies.

We have two languages, in this life –
The language of love, and the language of hate.
Which one do you want to speak?
Which realm do you seek?
Choose wisely;
Mistakes are not taken very kindly.

The natural order of all things –
The love and joy that connection brings.
The beautiful smile of a human that feels loved,
That ear-to-ear grin that warms the heart for a good while,
The kind that makes bearing life’s chagrin worthwhile.

I bet you thought of someone, just now –
A face your mind instantly sought, somehow.
The language of love –
It is hardly expressible just through words,
It is only accessible through bridging two worlds:
The realm of loving your soul,
And the realm of accepting humanity as a whole.

Eyes that twinkle like stars,
Hearts that mingle in nights spent diving in bars.
The freedom to open your mind,
A kingdom of your own,
Away from the wilfully blind.

Give yourself a reason to live,
**** religion, be a heathen,
You have everything to give!
Let go of that which serves you not,
Flow with whom deserves to share your life’s plot.
Dance to rhythms,
Sing along to your favourite song!
Be colourful,
Like light passing through prisms,
Lose yourself in the heat of the throng!

Let your mesmerising heart shine and glow,
Let go of the overanalysing,
Let your fear head on over to death row.
Gladden the world with what you bestow,
Madden those who do not wish to grow.

The language of love, the syntax of affection;
The essence of life, its most crucial section.
To drink from its fountain is all that counts,
A divine link capable of moving mountains,
A storm to end all droughts.

The last, few drops of beer;
You tilt the glass back,
It now becomes clear.
You step off the bar stool,
As drunk as a czar’s fool.
Your mouth tastes like a graveyard;
****, has walking always been this hard?

You find your way home, somehow.
Balance and vision are now impaired;
****, is there somewhere I can get my liver repaired?
It’s now a challenge to get to the kitchen.
You’re in no position to think,
So you just sit there and pour another drink.
At those minutes turning to hours on your clock, you stared.
For this life, you realise you were not prepared.

You shuffle and scuffle your way to the couch;
You stumble, your stomach starts to grumble.
This is the moment, the solemn promise;
You swear you will never dare do this again.
You tear at your hair in drunken throes,
In the late hours of the night,
Hopelessly trying to shed your woes.

You wake up on the morrow,
A pitiful mixture of regret and sorrow.
Your hangover follows you around like a faithful hound,
You feel like your soul has been hollowed out.
You swear once more, ‘that was my last beer;’
But, we both know, you’re far from being in the clear.

PART I – AN EXAMPLE

Mohamed Bouazizi –
A name we should never forget;
The name of a man whose loss
Is one of many we shall forever regret.

He did not want much;
All he wished for was an education,
A proper house, warm to one’s touch,
The right to make a decent living
A humble being, never taking too much yet always giving.

Mohamed Bouazizi
Was a man who never had it easy;
His story profoundly echoes among us all
A tragedy fuelled by greed and corruption.
Put yourself in his shoes –
Fatherless since he was three,
Working since he was ten,
The right for education stolen from him
By his own, cold nation.

It is difficult to understand
What it’s like
To be buried beneath the sand,
Just like that.
Mohamed had to quit school
And support an entire family
Essentially, reduced to a tool
An instrument
For financial gain;
Eventually, he was unable to take the pain
The humiliation
Of having his only means of remuneration
Confiscated and destroyed.

So, incredulous and angry,
All he had was one final attempt at diplomacy,
His penultimate demand to a governor with no soul:
“If you don’t see me, I will burn myself.”
His produce, his vending stall,
His scales – all taken from him, accelerating his fall
Into desperation,
Into deliberate, self-immolation.

Every authority that was supposed to be a protector
Instead acted as a horrifying molester –
Mohamed
Tried every route he could possibly take
A brave explorer confronting snake after snake.
Alas,
He reached his breaking point,
And true to his word,
He set himself on fire –
December 16th, 2010
Was the date when his ire
Could be contained no longer.

PART II – THE CATALYST

Mohamed Bouazizi –
He who lived as a prisoner of poverty, and died a martyr.
His last moments
Were eighteen days of a comatose state,
A body burned all over, twisted with hate
Hatred for those who chose
To oppress and control, to steal and cajole
From people who could barely afford
What one needs to survive.
Mohamed
Died as a symbol of resistance –
It was his insistence,
His dissatisfaction at living like a slave
That served to dislodge
The Tunisian nation from its slumber.

Suddenly, the agonising death of one man
Was all that was needed to ignite a revolution,
It was not a solution but rather a convolution
Of pain that was already existent –
He was a catalyst of sentiment
A man who gave up his life so everyone else could open their eyes and realise
That we are all victims of a system that does not care.

“Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you,”
Is what the people chanted.
Like a nest of hornets
They angrily took to the streets
A populace enraged to this day
Eight years of delay, a delay
Of justice being served, of the dire recalibration
That Tunisians now demand
Of their corrupt nation.

THE DILEMMA OF A GENERATION

Mohamed Bouazizi
Represents not just the struggle in Tunisia
But of an entire generation –
His life was a consolidation
Of a series of injustices
Of economic apartheid.
After all, let us not hide
And call this tragedy what it really is.

Mohamed’s life and death
Was one of many terrible examples
Of the depth, the breadth
Of the gap between the rich and the poor.

If you think to yourself,
“I’ll never be that desperate,”
Think again;
You are fortunate
If you’ve never worked and worked until your fingers chafed raw
Yet it was not enough.
You are sheltered
If you’ve never experienced
The yoke of the owners of the world.
You are blind
If you do not see that we have ‘freedom’
That is built on top of mass graveyards.

This yoke
Has served to choke
Not just Tunisians,
But everyone who was not born with wealth
Or the opportunity to make it;
The millennial’s dilemma
Is common across the globe –
Do I lose hope?
Do I succumb
To a life of fast money and being numb?
Do I stop caring, focus instead on the life I can enjoy?
Do I ignore the stolen livelihoods, hushed, covered up and coy
Do I fail to think about the exploited labour
Of suffering human beings,
Of the ****** of my country’s neighbour?

Do I simply sidestep my knowledge of all of this?
Complacent, lacking the will
Unaware, perhaps lacking development of the skill
To realise that our world is dying
Not a slow natural demise
But of humanity-induced suicide.

Or do I, instead,
Pull up my sleeves, avenge the dead?
Do I sacrifice my well-being,
My opportunity to reach that thin demographic of the population
That fragment of the nation
Which lives a life of luxury,
In order to change the world around me?
Do I go against the swirling, swishing current of life
Give up all opportunity for power, leave this society that is rife
With abuse?
For if I don’t,
The sick world we were born in
Will perpetuate its unholy cycle of sin
I will be an instrument of that process,
Whether through complacency or an excess
Of loyalty towards the state.

If I don’t fight back,
If we don’t fight back,
Who will?
Our stillborn children?
The posterity that will be born
To a world that has no clean air,
A world that is built to be unfair
A world that separates people like an algorithm
Those above a certain monetary threshold
And those below it?

No.
It must be the millennial who fights for rights,
Before they are sold off completely and stocks run out,
Before men and women in power with infallible clout
Turn us all against each other
And make us destroy ourselves.

The one who knows;
A presence that radiates wisdom, practically glows.
Always an outcast, never welcome -
He who realises we have lost our way
Will eventually rue the day
whereupon such knowledge is gained.

He carries his knowledge
Like a doctor carries a lethal injection -
To the greats of the past, he pays homage,
Breeding a comradely type of affection.
Life is now politically correct;
He does not dare to incite or expect
Any resistance from anyone but himself.
He meets his friends,
and they warily avoid discussing
‘politics and such’ -
‘It’s too much,’ they would say
Of his ideas for a better world.

Semmelweis; a man ruined
Over sound advice.
A brilliant career grinding to a halt,
faster than the momentum
of a fallen angel hitting the asphalt.
He carried his knowledge like a shield,
Hoping that pride would yield
In the face of reason.

Yet, not unlike the infant who wishes
But cannot fathom or understand,
Cowards and base men alike
Dealt his career the final strike.
It is the curse of the gifted and the observant
To be outnumbered by idiots, mitigated and made to be complacent.

Hubbert and Zwicky -
equally well-schooled in their different fields,
equally ridiculed by their incoherent peers.
One tried to tell us of our greed,
Of how oil dependence should not be our creed.
The other of our unwillingness to discuss the unknown,
Discovering dark matter and having our minds blown.
Both were ignored for a very long time.
And then, to truly reach a clime,
There is the one who knew the most -
the bright, shining light of Nikola Tesla.
The man who dared to dream
Of a better world for all;
Free energy, a wireless world,
A better way forward was his call.

These men could be incorrigible;
Tesla was sometimes brash and incontrovertible.
Hubbert was weak and predictable,
Semmelweiss should have shouldered the crucible,
And Zwicky could sometimes be downright detestable.

And yet, they all had one thing in common.
They wanted to know more.
Not taking anything for granted,
They wanted to go where none had gone before.
Men of vision; whereas others sought convention,
They sought the untrodden path, the next great invention.

And, for all this,
Pain and dejection lay in store.
Some died alone, like an unloved *****.
The miserable company of ignominy -
Careers swatted aside without any dignity.
For years, the visions lay wasted,
Like an expensive engagement ring
When love has evaporated.

But then, the visions were eventually revived;
Other luminaries stumbled on them,
Awareness peaks after the source’s post-mortem.
Once truly invested in by those gifted with hindsight,
The souls of the deceased became twice as bright,
Their words finally acknowledged and proven right.

But, now we shall have to live with remorse;
Definitely not as it could have been
If we’d listened to the ideas from the source.
Value each other, keep your love pristine,
For it is an ugly, gruesome scene
When we don’t listen to the ones who know.

We sing,
But nobody truly listens.

We dance,
But nobody truly sees.

We recite,
But nobody truly understands.

We paint,
But nobody truly resonates.

We write,
But nobody really reads.

We act,
And everyone applauds,
Everyone says 'that's so true,'
And everyone moves on.

The plight of the artist.
Requiescat in pace.
Beginning of humanity - 2019.

Travelling royalty, a princess with no home;
Inspiring love and loyalty, everywhere she goes.
A radiant smile, captivating eyes,
Flagrant beauty, the kind that never dies.
A lover of life, an enchanting presence,
An overflowing fountain, wonderful decadence.

The princess met the peasant –
A man from a land where very little is pleasant.
Clawed a path out of the dirt,
Flawed, yet always hungry for answers,
An explanation as to why we’re all scarred and hurt.
Temptation incarnate, freedom given life –
Impartial, a storm about to deliver strife.

It was a spark worthy of Zeus’ thunderbolts;
Worlds apart, yet tolerant of each other’s faults.
Equals in their intellect, conjoined at their hearts;
Immediate and mutual respect,
Together, they could make the seas part.

The peasant got blessed by the divine,
The princess was impressed by the sublime.
Her, with her presence,
Him, with his essence –
Two people who, despite their charms, don’t fit anywhere else.
They found shelter in each other’s arms,
A respite from their personal hells.

Yet, the princess needed to journey once more,
An ending to a story that leaves the heart sore.
The peasant lay there, looking at his fields,
Reminiscing, bitterly sipping comfort in a glass.
He could do naught but shed tears, and think:
‘I’d give up every harvest, all my work and what it yields,
To have you by my side; you gave me peace and strength,
You made me feel like I can bend swords and crack shields.’

The princess could only stare,
Right at where his hand once held hers;
She could only think of the dare,
The night where they both let down their hair,
And think:
‘I’d give up the road, all my walks and journeys,
To have you by my side; you gave me sweetness and kindness,
You made me feel loved, breathless and weak in the knees.’

The bomb’s flash is blinding,
Brighter than any kind of lightning.
The enormity of the mushroom cloud is frightening;
A monstrosity both terrifying and grotesquely enlightening.

The eyelids instinctively board shut in fear;
Adrenal glands working overtime,
More in this moment than a whole year.

Yet, eyelids seem useless,
For the reality leaves one speechless.
In this moment, you will see an X-ray of your own vessels and bones.
It will feel like a ghastly omen, like the earth itself shakes and groans.

And then, the shockwave hits, gut-wrenchingly raw;
A fallout so powerful, it might break the bones you just saw.
A cataclysm of impossible energy, an apocalypse that ends in sheer awe.

The nuke –
Admired and feared from afar,
Trepidation come alive, a door to hell left ajar.
The symbol of being forever at war,
Apocalyptic nature in its demonic core.
Loved only by its makers,
Hated by most living on earth’s many acres,
Respected by all.

“Maybe, if you slipped and fell here...”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”
I walked on, one foot, then the other;
I killed the voice, left it smothered.

“You can get back up as much as you want.
I will come back, with a readied assault.”
“Get out of my head, you ******* psychopath.”
I left the spot I liked, off the beaten path.

As I walked, the dialogue quietened;
Guard down, senses still alert and heightened.
This calm scene is too serene,
And that’s got me frightened.
Permanently damaged, like a collapsed cliff side.
Crumbling down, dead on the inside.

“Aha, I’ve got you now, you weakling of a specimen.
I am your lord now, and misery’s your regimen.”
“I. SAID. I. WON’T. HEAR. IT.”
**** me, this is it, I can’t bear it;
I’m trying to run but my legs are giving out,
I’m trying to scream and shout but there’s no air,
Lungs are burning, blood’s getting sapped,
Can’t do anything, I’m completely trapped.

The only one who’s always there;
The voice from the void speaks viciously,
It whispers that I’m beyond repair.
Oh mother, where have I gone so wrong?
Oh father, why couldn’t I be strong?
Oh brother, why’d we never talk?
Like I was cheese, and he was chalk.

“Nobody will ever read this.
You can put your pen away.”
“Maybe they won’t read it;
But I’ll be ****** if I don’t write it.”
When you find this poem,
Or read it, or hear it from me,
Know that I died a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist,
Know that I died wanting to be free.

I clung to my past,
Glimpsed awkwardly towards the future.
I looked at the present,
Stitched together by sutures.
I can see why a few of us are scared;
Many more than a few.
Hoping to weather the apocalypse,
And watch it with a view.

“I’m done. Last straw, that’s it.
I don’t even want to wake up tomorrow.
You ******* ruined me.”
“No. I just point out the sorrow.
Nobody gives a **** about you;
Stop waiting for something to come through.
It won’t”.
“Not with you in charge, you sick ****.”

I ran out of kind-hearted dialogue a long time ago -
When I speak to myself,
I feel like there’s nothing good for me to find or show.
It’s just the voice from the void,
A conversation I wish I could avoid.

“Take me away.
I don’t want to see another day.
I’m done. **** me.”
“No, you must do it yourself.
Grab the knife, take your life.
Do it swiftly and you’ll die quickly,
If you do it right.”

A wide-eyed kid, aged nineteen;
Bottled rage, a kind unseen.
Then, a sudden light beam burst forth;
Like it was a song of ice and fire,
And the Mad Queen met the ******* of the North.

I was killing myself with drugs and *****;
I still am. But, back then,
I was permanently binging.
I had nothing to lose;
I was a soul running loose,
With no clues about all these blues.
Short-fused and self-abused,
And extremely ******* confused.

But then, she showed up;
I hesitantly slowed down.
I was a mine about to blow up,
Whilst she upturned my frown.
At least, that’s what happened, for a while;
It wasn’t long before vitriol and bile.

We were living wild, all functional survival.
Sharing shelter with a woman who was vile;
A mother twisted and snarled up with hate,
A completely ****** up fate complementing a ****** up life.

Somehow, amid the *****, unwashed dishes,
The stench of alcoholism and all the hitches,
The sting of a mother ignoring a daughter’s wishes,
This was when we were the happiest together.
We had nobody, nothing, except for each other.

Bonding over an enemy in common;
Us against the world, baby.
I felt like an angel had been summoned;
I thought I’d won the golden ticket,
Until I realised the paper was laced with a tracer of poison,
And we were getting sickened.

But, during that first year, we were alright;
Hell was around us, but not inside us.
Walking through fire, but not set alight.
We held on; for each other, we went soft,
Like I was Indiana Jones, and you were Lara Croft.

We struggled, we survived, although we never thrived.
We lost everyone around us; remember how I cried?
Our friends, gone with the wind,
They dropped us, or we dropped them,
Like a benefit one rescinds.

We clawed our way out of that black hole,
Said goodbye to the drunk skunk on the couch,
A merry day to get away from that blackened soul.
We had no plans, no real goals;
We were just running away,
And starting anew on our own.

Filled with hope, so open to the world;
So naïve, believing we’d be able to cope.
We’d give it a whirl, we said, holding one another’s hand.
We were lost, like wayward, wind-strewn grains of sand.
But, somehow, we slept fondly in each other’s arms,
Disarmed wholly by each other’s charms.
I loved you, and never wished you any harm.
I gave you all I had and all I knew;
I wish it was enough to get us through.

As soon as you glanced at me askance,
My heart jittered, it stood no chance.
If it were up to my heart,
It would already be on my sleeve;
Although it's been tort apart,
Somehow, it still believes.

Gone, as quickly as it came
The spark that lit the flame
Briefly flickering into existence
An abrupt campfire of warmth
In the Ice Age of my heart –
A bolt from the blue
An arrow that struck true,
With the kind of aim that makes Cupid look like a silly amateur.

A battlefield of heartbreak –
Amidst all the chaos
In the din and clashing of steel upon steel
I felt like I’d found refuge
In the folds of your arms.
Foolish, unaware
Of how selfish I was being
Of how unwholesome I am
Of how chaotic it is
To be with someone like me;
I hope that now that you are free
You are able to see
That I never meant any harm,
That maybe if given more time
Our love could have blossomed
Like a well-kept farm.

I realise now
That I was blind, careless
Both with words and actions, I was reckless
You gave more than you received
And because of that, you felt deceived
My attempts
At being a supplicant at the feet of your heart’s throne
Came too little, too late
And once more, I find myself alone.

Maybe
If and when
If only I’d seen it then
You really, actually tried
Instead
I took you along for a ride
Without considering your needs and wants.

A part of me is glad
That for a moment, love was something we had
Until my lack of attention, my lack of care
Made you feel like a ballroom that was once beautiful
But has now been stripped bare.
Another part of me
Is vitriolic with self-distaste
In my haste
I wanted you to be a part of me
Whilst not realising
That I wasn’t trying to be a part of you.

I’m sorry
For not realising how left out I made you feel
I am a walking, sentient horror reel
I wanted you to be a part of me
Yet instead of realising it goes both ways
I tried to uproot you like a tree
That just had the misfortune of encountering a hurricane.

Once more, it’s time to grieve
I don’t want you to leave
But I can’t force you to stay, either.
Your soul with mine
Felt like fuel meeting the spark of a lighter
And now
Now that I’ve used up all that I had
I realise we were in the Garden of Eden
Until I let it all turn bad.

I hope that one day
We might meet again
Reminisce over the good times
Remember how intensely it all began
And maybe
I’ll be able to show you
That I’m not just full of it
That bit by bit
We might have had something great
Had I not been consumed by this hate,
This hate for the world around me
This inability to be there for you
And not just for myself.

This violent sadness,
A self-devouring source of madness.
It is an Atlantean endeavour,
It is pure, jaw-dropping terror.
It is this dense weight that I carry -
Snap out of it, hurry, do not tarry,
For my shoulders quiver
And my nerves grow tired and bitter.

Please, hurry;
Wake the **** up.
We don’t have much time,
And up to the mountain’s peak
I wish to climb.
Do not delay;
Every moment wasted
Is an inch further towards necrotic decay.

Why could you never understand?
Why did you never want to cross into uncharted land?
Why the need to cocoon in one place?
Why did you resort to making me hate my own face?
This road, this journey that is life -
I will live it on the edge of a knife,
In between the worlds of peace and strife.
With the soles of my feet,
I shall run on burning coals, exposed to heat.
Within the corridors of my heart,
I will host freedom as my eternal mistress,
And make my life her work of art.

A sun that never quite rises,
After all this, I feel like a discoloured iris,
Like a struggling butterfly,
One that does not want to die,
But does not want to live, either.
I don’t know
Whether you’re lying to yourself or me,
But all I know is that of these hateful chains
I wish to be free.

I will now walk alone, towards the balcony,
Ready to jump and spread my wings;
I wish to fly alone,
For the skies have no queens nor kings.
I am who I am,
A soul, permanently on the lam
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Greet every person you meet;
Embrace warmly, enjoy the heat.
Savour their company, taste their flavour;
You’ll know if it’s golden or rotten,
If you’re holding a gold mine,
Or a poison ill-begotten.

Maybe, not at first;
It’s hard to tell, sometimes,
For some are like chameleons.
Blending in when they have to,
When their plan is to trap you.
Prepare to be encapsulated,
To have your energy castrated.

Eventually, though, things change;
We are able to tell, most times.
Even if we must go against the grain,
Feel the pain of the Milesians.
Your gut instinct will tell you,
Let you know you should change the tune,
Hell, maybe even change the venue.

It is an act of aggression to abuse someone’s affection.
There should be no digression here,
I shall not allow any concession, not in this lifetime, nor the next,
I will make sure of that, I need nor context nor pretext.
If you do feel abused, rejected and refused,
Then taken back to be re-used,
You might have a leech attached to you;
You might have to bleed to feed someone who’s attacked you.

If you feel like something’s wrong,
Stop, and reflect; what’s going on?
Inspect the nature of the relationship,
Critically analyse your companionship.

You must trust your fellow man;
But, in these times, you must also verify.
Make sure your mind’s gun doesn’t rust;
In these times, people hide behind their alibis.

A mentality
Permanently ingrained, a lack of impartiality
A mentality of one tribe, one leader
Conquerors of all
Watching one denomination rise
As the others fall.

We see this
In our daily lives;
Competition is our focus.
The locus
Of our society
Is the proliferation of one
At the behest of many –
The most popular,
The most fashionable,
The most sought after,
The best of the best.

This ideology
Is a narrow, winding road
Fraught with many perils –
For example, in our education,
There is this infatuation
With the pressure cooker environment.
This toxic affinity
Of the extension into infinity
Of one’s mental ossification
Of the mind’s degradation
As it is appraised
By a system that is based
On the standardised quantification
Of the truthfully divine abilities
Of the human mind.

A system designed to create drones.
It’s basically a free-for-all;
A few get to be called the best
Whilst the rest
Fall through the cracks.
Those who struggle
Are risking getting marginalised
Or at least, probably penalised –
The letter ‘F’ blankly stares back at you,
Its power to grade one’s mental capacity
Wielded like Aaron’s Rod
Borne by those who receive it like the Mark of Cain.

The us vs them attitude
Arises from this system
A point of interest on the same latitude.
We built a world
That conditions in us
Not a spirit of co-operation
But one of aspiring to *******
The prioritisation
Of one person or group deemed fit to rule over all;
Be it a sport, or a work of art
A theory, a criticism,
Or a measurement of the schism
Between one political party and another
It does not matter –
If there is an issue, people will be divided.
Those of us who think outside these parameters
Those who dare look for intelligent, fruitful discussion
Are destined to a life of being given the side-eye
A social concussion.

Why must we compete?
Why is our life replete
Not with community spirit and a betterment of humanity
But with iron-****** regulation
And an inability to concede?
Why must we divide our resources
Not fairly and justly for all
But like a fire that scorches
Consuming all it finds
With no thought for the morrow?

Imagine
7 billion human beings
Not only co-existing
But actively seeking
To be smarter,
To consume less, to work harder
Not on commercialisation or profit
But on travelling farther
In the realm of human creativity,
On sustainable ingenuity
And the wiser administration
Of a planet we inherited.
Always, incessantly
We adhere to our tribe’s superstitions;
Our decisions
Are not exclusively ours
But a result of countless hours
Of indoctrination, of believing in entities
Not morals or principles – in our identities,
We conceive of ourselves as vessels that are imbued with what we consume,
Not with what we are actually made of.

How about
Instead of being sealed off from each other
We realise that it shouldn’t be us vs them
But us vs us –
A moment of introspection
A brutally honest intervention
To give ourselves time to realise
That mindfulness is an exercise
All of us should engage in.

It is easy to exist
Within the frameworks that are provided to us;
The ‘us vs them’ mentality
Is like sandpaper to one’s individuality.
We trim and edit our personality
To fit our group’s motifs.
It is much more difficult
To realise that nobody is going to fight for us
Except for ourselves
And that this fight
Needs to start from within.
All we need to do
Is learn how to say ‘No,
I will not be a part of this –
I will not be a serf to the kings and queens
Who blind your eyes, and steal your dreams.’