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.

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.

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.

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.’

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.

You are
My heart’s invader
An enabler
Of its desire to open up to you
Drawn to you magnetically
A living soul
Filled with passion and love
Animated
A spirit that is elevated.
This iron heart rusts
A corroded tool
Left in disuse, its owner played like a fool
Yet, somehow
The world isn’t such a terrible place
When I hold you in my arms
And gently caress your face.

I don’t know
Whether this insatiable need for your touch
Is sustainable
Whether or not
It’s a future that’s attainable;
I don’t know
Whether we will always be good for each other
All I do know
Is that I never want
To let you go.


This feeling was once foreign
A concept whose origin
Was swallowed by the sands of time;
An Alexandrian library’s worth of loss
An ancient civilisation’s ransacked ruins
Covered in moss.
Yet, somehow
To destiny I must bow
As I attempt to comprehend
This newfound emotion
Of wishing the hours would never end
When you are here.
I am now handing you
The keys to my heart’s kingdom;
This “falling” in love
This attachment
This instinctive need
To drink from your fountain
To greedily gorge myself in those moments
To relish your soul flowing through mine -
A chill goes through my spine
As I consider this…
The night
Doesn’t feel the same
When I don’t see you.

I don’t know what else to say -
I have been afraid of this day
For I don’t know how you feel
This is surreal
I find myself in a daze
Trying to fathom
How you get through the walls of ice
How you have me coming back like a vice
It hasn’t even been that long
Yet after being with you, my heart breaks out into song.
I am fearful of this day
Yet
I will never regret
Being real with you
This is who I am
This is how I feel about us
It is undeniable
The chemistry is indescribable
A surge of current
Polarises my insides
Every time
These two wayward souls meet
So, no more shuffling of feet
I am playing all my cards
Summoning the power of the ancient bards
To bring you this poem’s clime,
With one, last, hopeful rhyme
And the following words:
*“I love you.”

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.