Something inside me asked politely
to try some poetry, just for fun.
Now I know who asked.

Bypassing social expectations,
my inner critic,
and judgment's voice,
I speak my truth at last.

Poetry is a winner.
It unbounds yourself.
It frees the tears you suppressed.
It connects with yourself and soulmates.

When you lost your voice,
Poetry brings it back.
When you don't know who you are,
Poetry will tell you!

Poetry has the power
To beat the hell out of you.
To dig with endurance
Until you bleed truth.

But what it leaves behind
is cleaner than before.
It rips the rot from your soul
and calls it transformation.

Should one sing by the voice of
one and others silenced.
Shut! Speak!
Silence speaks.
Silence speaks like a rapping knock
  to its host.
Should the voice of a singer sings
louder than its crowd.
The singer sings.
Crowd cheers than their crowd.
Should silence speaks when voices
speaks?
Who hears the voice of the dead?
Who hears the voice of
emptiness?
Barren.
Who hears nothing when it never
happens.
Silence speaks
And its biro writes [un]willingly.

Keep on
Fellow poets!
Keep on
Shouting your pain
Putting a voice to your trauma
Releasing that unspoken part of you
That is crying to be heard
Crying to released
Out into the void
For there is power in sharing your truth
To show the way
And give permission
For others to release theirs too

There’s a man
who speaks for me
when my throat burns raw
from holding too much back.

British.
Refined.
A little too sure of himself -
but isn’t that the point?

He showed up in the static,
when my own voice
started splintering
under the weight of smiling.
Back when masking
meant survival,
and sounding different
was the only kind of safe I knew.

He’s not always kind,
but he’s always ready.
Crisp consonants.
Neatly folded sentences.
No stammer, no stray emotion.
Just enough distance
to keep breathing.

He isn’t me.
But I let him live
in the hollow between words,
in the pause where fear used to be.
Some days, I speak
and only realize later -
it was him, not me.

He doesn’t ask questions.
He answers them.

I wonder sometimes
what he’s protecting.
Or hiding.
Or holding up like armor
against the softness of me.

Colonizer?
Comfort?
Cohabitator?

He was born
in the croak of survival.
And now,
even when I’m safe,
he stays.

I would never send him away.
He kept me whole
when I didn’t know I was breaking.
If I carry him still,
it’s because
he carried me first.

One day you will read these lines,
maybe under a tree,
or somewhere far as the sun shines.
You will notice in these words,
all the norms and values I once mentioned
about how the world works, and how it is shaped by intention.
My voice will play in your mind.
I hope you remember me as someone
strong, sincere and kind.

In our world are oranges, olives and birds, but the hard truth I must tell you is this:
the world holds space for broken systems.
The same ones you profit off still hold victims-
the lives of those deemed meaningless,
and easy to risk and rid.
For those you must amplify your voice,
keep them alive and on the grid.
Life does not matter, while it flies and spins,
if you do not try and give your all from within.
For those oppressed and forgotten -
we, who remember will rise,
the rest let be rotten.

Dusk falls as I lay in your arms, I return to life for your glimpse of warmth upon my form, I listen to your lush voice coming as the waterfall of sound from your lips to my ears, I could not have telled when you arrived from the dark as the cologne of a long lost friend with the scent of celestial tenderness, I invite you to never let me go, for I still carry you as the halycon of my heart.

I've lost your voice.
The world has gone silent.
All I hear are endless
echos bouncing from the walls of my mind.
I only wish to hear it
One last time.

I had an idea
  Of what to write
                          say
                        recor­d
But got lost
like a rabbit who took
the wrong turn at Albuquerque—
and so I’m lost for words,
but here I am.