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.

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.

I am.
That’s it.
I am not in your parameters;
I am not defined
By what I make
At the end of the month.
I am –
Spawn of this earth,
Of stardust and chaos given birth.

We are.
That’s it.
Not our countries, nor our flags,
Not the imaginary lines and borders,
Not our laws, or self-assured orders.
We are –
Sons and daughters of Mother Nature,
The fruits of her beautiful labour.

I am.
It is this belief
This sheer conviction
That universal respect for all life
Is key to avoiding strife.
That is what should unite us all.
To answer
The now ubiquitous question
“To be or not to be?”
I would dare say,
”We have little choice,
My dear Prince Hamlet.
The moment we borrow our first breath
We are, already.”

Even though
Many of us
Have been under siege,
Oppressed, hushed up,
Manhandled, cuffed up,
Generations of families
Lost forever
So a corporation can get contracts
To rebuild their nation,

EVEN though
EVEN more of us
Have had their souls ripped out
And left
To stumble around with no purpose,
A life in service
To faceless overlords
Who will drain and absorb
Not just us
But the world in which we came to life,

EVEN THOUGH
All of this pain,
All of this greed
This amalgamation
Of hate riding loneliness like a steed
Has been infesting us
Since time immemorial
We still are.

We
Are here,
We
Can be the tip of the spear,
A vanguard not bent on blood
But on refusing
To look the other way and obey
When the world which we breathe
Our air, the food we eat,
Our health, our spiritual,
Immaterial wealth,
Are taken, abused,
Packaged, used,
Spent and then left,
To rot and pollute.

This is why
Not enough of us
Are fighting whenever we can;
The resistance is there
Its strength lies
In this belief, a steady hand
That fortifies.
Action,
When taken
Like a swift, decisive arrow,
Like the forlorn will
Of thousands of millions
Of souls lost, of children
Washed ashore,
Of blood and gore
Spilled for a billionaire’s gains,
Someone’s profit margin;
When action
Is taken as described
When that rage,
That void inside
Is realigned,
Re-aimed,
Recalibrated to hit
Not an innocent soul,
Or a friend, or any
Of those who are
In the same gladiator pit
But those who built it –
Then,
Then we will all get to be.