The more you struggle, the more you sink;
Cut down the divine, sever the link.
Lost in a forest with no clear way out,
Riddled with fear, crippled by doubt.

Your feet start to disappear;
They’ve never been so heavy,
You’ve never felt this kind of fear.
You pull and you kick and you scream,
You beg and you grovel and you plead,
But to no avail.
The weight of life’s burdens,
Sentenced to life in jail, no bail.

The sand is up to your knees.
You wish it was just a bad dream -
Your life flashes before your eyes.
You see the truths, the lies;
You see the pain, the falsehoods,
Those times you left your feelings disguised.

The hungry pit has now swallowed half of you.
Your hips start to get ****** in,
Like the earth itself just declared a coup.
At this point, you stopped moving,
Hoping to delay the inevitable.
You’re a living corpse in funereal grooming;
Hoping you’ve left a legacy,
A mark that’s indelible.

As the sand starts crushing your lower body,
You realise you didn’t do much, anyway.
You resign yourself to fate,
Realising you never did quite seize the day.
You feel like life slipped through your fingers;
Born to suffer, put through the wringer.
Your limbs are now submerged.
You hope your sins have been purged;
You hope you’ve done enough good in the world.
You savour your last breaths,
Realising you never really enjoyed fresh air;
You now await death,
Wishing you weren’t so alone and scared.

The sand fills up your mouth,
And clogs up your nostrils.
You face the golden meadows,
And find peace in rolling hills.
You never did feel good,
Except when you fell still.

As long as men die,
Liberty will never perish.

As long as there’s a sky,
Freedom will always be cherished.
Whenever men cajole and lie,
Oppression refills its chalice.

Mausoleums and refined cemeteries;
Hypogeums, perfectly aligned symmetry.
Resplendent medallions, ostentatious statues.
Dictators depict themselves as majestic stallions,
Doing everything to sensorily detach you,
Removing you from the frailty of reality.

A dictator will control discourse of all sorts;
They’ll hunt dissidents like it was a national sport.
They’ll turn the nation into their little fort,
And they’ll leave generations traumatised.
Opposition is demonised, criticism is stigmatised;
They’ll tell you that the enemy is everywhere,
And that entire communities should be marginalised.

A dictator will huff and puff until the house falls down.
Dictators **** entire countries, tearing sovereignty’s gown.
They’ll seize the population’s weaknesses,
Playing to your mind’s fears, its deepest recesses.

A dictator will convince you that he is a living god;
They’ll try to avoid you seeing through their fraud.
Remember that dictators are sacks of flesh,
Just like the rest of us;
They’ll rot in the ground when put to rest,
And their bones will return to dust.

What would I do,
If you ever graced my arms?
Would I have a clue?
Would I raise your alarms?

Or would you behold my charms?
Would you leave me wholly disarmed?
Would we grow together like roses in an orchard,
Or would we be lucky to escape unharmed?

Speculative stanzas, all of the above;
Love is when it feels like the hand fit the glove.
Here’s what I would do to you;
I’d slowly and gently run my fingers through your hair,
Marveling at its sheen and shine, mastered through your care.
I’d overthink everything to the brink;
You’d have to hold me tight, as I let go of grief,
As I try to cry to find relief, struggling to not resort to drink.

I’d be a ******* mess, for most of the time;
I’d be unhinged and stressed like I’ve got all of the world’s anger bursting through my chest, for the rest of the time.
But, through the nightmares and the despair,
I’d skip and saunter through it all with a certain flair.

Plenty of demons in my head, that’s for sure.
We make for quite the squad, though;
About twenty of us getting drunk in the moor,
Ready to die free, obscene, and poor.

I’d lend my shoulder to you if you need to cry,
Whenever you feel like you just want to die.
I’d want to hold you like it’s our last night,
Like tomorrow morning’s first rays of light might not be there.


I’d absorb every glance or glare;
I’d wonder whether our future should have me giddy,
Or whether our future should have me scared.
I’d listen to you intently, like I was deciphering the code to your heart;
I’d sing my heart out to you and write down odes to your art,
I’d mark your soul like a bullseye, and strive to be the dart.

I’d make love to you, just like I should;
I’d worship those curves like nobody else could.
I’d want you to rest your head on my shoulder,
To stick your hands in my pockets when it gets colder.
I can’t promise that I’ll always know what to say;
Sometimes, all I will be able to do is try to brighten your day.

I can, however, promise you brutal honesty.
I’ve tasted dishonesty, and that’s a worse travesty.
Your parents might have issues with the lack of polite lies;
I’m sure that as soon as I mention I am an anarchist,
Your father will probably choke on his steak and fries.

I can promise you it’ll be a wild ride;
I can promise you that you won’t have to hide.
I want to see every shade of you,
Every mood and every bit of banter;
I want to share food, and drink to your success,
Or taste your disappointment and anger.

I guess what I would do, is love you until we’re ruined.
I’d love you like there was nothing else to it,
Until I’m empty of empathy and my heart breaks and I won’t have a clue as to how to glue it back together.
I’d love you like it meant nirvana was ‘round the corner, and that’s how to pursue it.

I will be the biggest paradox you’ll ever meet;
A master of whispering nothings that are bittersweet,
A master at being the flame that burns faster.
I will spread around your forests like a ******* disaster.

I hope you’re ready.

Tekoşer studied for three years;
Shed tears, and tore hair,
Locked failure in a stare,
Pushed sleep down the stairs.

He grit his teeth and rolled up his sleeves;
He thought on his feet and took no leave.
Exams came around, and then went on their way.
He aced them, and could finally call it a day.

All he had to do was wait for the fateful morrow;
Marked ‘x’ on his calendar,
A day of great joy, or greater sorrow.
Everything banked on that one set of results.
He waited for whatever followed.


Amy was one night’s sleep away from Gustav -
6 months away from the one she loves!
She couldn’t believe he was coming back;
How painfully her heart had cracked.

But now, she’d finally get to see him!
It would really be him,
Not a text, or an image on her phone;
Asleep next to him, not crying alone.

Just one, more night of lonely sleep;
Just a few more thoughts of blades running deep,
Of red rivers or her haphazaradly slit wrists.
She was terrified of herself,
Of the unfettered abyss, of death’s kiss.
She waited for whatever followed.


Another day, another 14 hour shift.
Michael had it up to here with all this ****.
He was one shelf-stacking away from losing it,
From giving his boss a stabbing and calling it a day.

There is no place in the world worse than a supermarket.
When it came to work, he’d rather be a hornet’s target,
But this was all he could do, for the time being.
This was as far as he could go without hitting the glass ceiling.

But alas, his only breather was around the corner!
His one holiday, his one escape to Berghain;
Drugs and music, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.
Better to live recklessly than to die lame.
He waited for whatever followed.


Tomorrow never came.

Black Friday sales and Christmas deals;
Hot on the next bargain’s trail,
Itching to fill the void the heart feels.
Transactions and agreements,
Trappings, false achievements.
Welcome to the era of the shopping mall;
This is where your dreams hop off to die,
This is their final port of call.

Everything and everyone is a commodity;
Barcoded, plastic-wrapped merchandise,
Categorisation for you and your progeny.
If money doesn’t germinate from its seed,
If it does not clothe and feed,
Then it is not something we need.

We are a philistine’s *******.
We strive to achieve the American scheme;
Delusional and overworked, about to scream,
Believing all of us can be billionaires forever,
As the planet grows hungry and lean.

Or, believing some deserve yachts and limousines,
That some should starve,
Whilst others gorge themselves on fine cuisines.
Believing that society should be divided in layers,
Assuaging our guilt with thoughts and prayers,
When instead, we could have just refrained from leaving others behind.

When everything becomes a commodity,
Art for the sake of making it becomes an oddity.
Poets retire their pens,
And painters put down their brushes -
Apathy and despair fog the lands,
Like irradiated wind corrupting everything it touches.

Singers go quiet, actors go numb;
Musicians will riot, orators will be struck dumb.
When our own turn on us, tell us to get “a real job”,
When “job creators” are done calling us “lazy slobs”,
None of us will be around to point out the irony.

We will go extinct, a dying breed, finally gone;
Life will be succinct, the greedy will have won.
Slay your kings and queens, or remain a pawn.

The tenderness of a reddened cheek;
The softness of puffy eyes.
The bitterness of a mind bereft of sleep;
The emptiness of forlorn skies.

A caress, gentle and sweet;
A teardrop, as it slides.
Kneeling at love’s feet,
Even though love lies.

Honest, to the point of self-sabotage.
The protégé of wild predecessors,
Those who see through the mirage.
Emotionally combustible;
Violently vulnerable.

The beautiful, passionate side of humanity -
The irrational point past this side of sanity.
The raw, tearful embrace;
The clenched jaw as voices shake.
Getting kissed all over your face.
Goodbyes, like falls from grace.

Fragile, scared, and susceptible to feelings.
Strike me with arduous candor,
Raise wolfish cries to the ceiling.
Whenever I feel like this,
I feel like I fully understand the idiom:
‘Deer in headlights.’

And yet, paradoxically, the moth flies towards the flame!
Quizzically, we reach into the fire,
And expect the heat to take the blame.

I’ve been taught that emotions are by-products;
Excessive excrement of the soul,
Ill-fitting of those of sober and good conduct.

Sometimes, I feel like I can’t cry anymore.
I feel like looking to the sky for answers means nothing,
Like God’s skiving off his chores,
Like he ran to his room, and just slammed the door.

You reminded me it’s okay to cry;
To run tear ducts dry first,
And then later figure out why.
I will always owe you a debt of gratitude;
I wish I could bestow you with love of a fitting magnitude.
In the mean time,
I’ll relish your inquisitive eyes,
I’ll crave hearing your ‘what’s wrong?’
Like a golden-era relic from better times,
Like one of those eternal songs -
You are divinity,
And you don’t even know it.