Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
L’ homme est né libre,
Pourtant partout il est enchaîné.
An eternally torturous question,
Oozing out of our minds like an infection;
Are we all equal?

Perhaps not when it comes to skill;
Some can lead, some can thrill.
Some can cook, and therefore feed;
Some can run, some can read.
All of us can do something –
No standardised test,
No uniformly assigned competition
Could ever possibly measure
This unique treasure,
The human ability to set off on an endeavour
And achieve astounding feats.

So, then –
Are we born equally endowed?
Perhaps not; should differential talents
Be stimulated, encouraged,
Voiced aloud?

A resounding yes, a thousand times yes!
We should only accept being under duress
When of forced labour and working to exist
We start hearing less and less,
When that concerted effort is directed
Not at striving at surviving
But at truly living, not just slowly dying.

Truly living is about doing what you love,
Being able and free to do so,
Learning that which you don’t know
And expanding that which you do know.
This is not our reality –
We are all born exactly the same,
Yet the country you were born in
Hell, even your family’s name,
Are things that determine
Where you will be positioned
In this foul, ***** game.

This is where we aren’t born equal –
In our right and access
To freely engage in the pursuit of happiness.
There is a seedling of potential in all of us,
One that can be grown –
Let it be known
That all seedlings can become a mighty tree,
If given the following three:
A space in which a fertile mind can be cultivated,
A community in which love can be propagated,
And the freedom to exist without being incarcerated.

Exasperated.
Feelings that have been exacerbated;
Grinding each other, tectonic plates
Shaking the world itself,
Sliding past each other like bolts in gates.
Despair weaves its cobwebs around me,
My hunched figure is immobile.
Paralysed, my throat is sore and vile
Unable to speak
Unable to give you
The stability you seek.

If only I could stand
Shake off the silky threads
Reach out across this vast expanse
Of failed attempts and regrets
Of poor judgement,
Of ignoring things that were incumbent.
If only
I could reach out
Make you see through my eyes
Feel beneath my skin
I would be able to show you
That it wasn’t a mistake to let me in.

You would feel
This anger I have, hard as steel
This growling, hungry lion
This snarling shade of Orion.
You would feel how I am a volatile substance
How a trail of corroded bonds lies on my conscience
How heavy my heart feels
How badly it mends and eventually heals.
A crooked, misshaped *****
Sometimes functional and happy
Sometimes made of stone, cast under the eye of a Gorgon.

Forgive me
I have tried
Within me, it seems something has withered and died.
Maybe I will get to see you
One day, after the clock’s heavy hands do slide
After experience teaches me more
After I find peace within myself,
After my heart stops being sore.
Maybe,
I will be able to serenade and thrill your soul
Maybe,
We will share ourselves again,
Make building our life together our goal.
Or
This frozen world
I shall wander alone,
Of this pain and suffering
I shall forge an iron throne
And be the ruler of myself.
Be wary
Of a king whose subjects are his own reflections;
For every decision shall be the consequence of a war of thoughts.

Contempt of court –
The legal term for a charge
Levelled against those who dare
Those whose emotions and criticisms are laid bare
In front of judge and jury.

Contempt of court
Is when one is disobedient, or discourteous,
In the face of a system which is injurious;
It is the charge
That snaps one’s knees into bending,
That makes your dignity cave
And one’s case never-ending.

To oppose or defy the authority of the courts
Is viewed as improper, an act
That will have you prosecuted by your own cohorts.
Fellow human beings
Tasked with the imprisonment of another
Brother turning on brother
As the wheels of justice turn and grind,
Leaving trails of lost lives behind.

Contempt of court
Is a feeling I find difficult to abort –
How can I respect an institution
That is responsible for the destitution
Of societal morality?
It is the court’s stated responsibility
To maintain order and propagate
Fairness and equality for all,
To scrutinise and investigate
Not just crimes committed
By men and women struggling to make ends meet,
Putting their heads together so they can eat,
But those
Who hide behind banks and get to foreclose
Not just our homes but also, our dreams and hopes.

If you want me to respect the court,
I want the court to enforce laws justly.
If you want me to respect the authorities,
I want the authorities to stop lying to us so abruptly.
If we are to have authorities and laws
I want sensible, sustainable laws, to be upheld everywhere
Not to be iron-****** with some,
A velvet glove with another.

If I ever see
A banker sentenced to jail
My respect for the court I shall hail;
If I ever see
A politician swallowing his lies,
Forced to live like us, and realise
The extent of the damage that they wreaked
If I ever see
An abusive or corrupt judge
On the other side of the gallows,
Locked up and told when to exist like a drudge
Then
Only then
Will I shed this contempt
Only then
Will I be content.

In my dreams,
I saw a grove;
Farm animals walked around in a drove.
Birds fluttered and chirped;
To me, it was strange,
For these animals seemed unusually free.
The sky seemed eternally blue,
The blades of grass a vivid hue -
As I lay to rest beneath a tree,
I heard an enchanting voice,
A chorus of sentience vibrating in harmony.

Given the choice
To sit there
Or walk towards this mystical source,
This musical, human recourse,
A cry for help perhaps, sounding like a tune of despair,
I felt moved.

So, for what felt like days,
I walked.
As the enchanting voice got clearer,
I approached the figure of a woman.
This sonorous presence
Heard my feet crunch on a bed of leaves;
Her body was coated in this essence,
Life itself
Seemed to flow out of her robes.

As soon as she turned to look at me,
A slack-jawed mortal, in disbelief,
I found myself flooded with relief
When she stopped singing,
And said:
“Welcome home, son.”

I finally understood
This grove that smelled like pine and wood
Was home to someone ethereal.
“Mother?”
I asked, the anticipation and the confusion
Being too much.

“I am not the Mother
Who brought you to Earth.
I am Mother Earth, your home and life-giver.
I am the air that you breathe
The earth that you walk upon
The water that you drink
And the fire that you misuse.”

Upon this stately declaration,
I felt this manifestation
Of shame and sadness.
“What ails you, my child?”
She gently asked,
Sensing my emotions.
Steadying myself, I said:
“For years, I’ve held these notions
That as humans,
We should be guardians of all,
Both the great and the small,
Creating life and mourning death
Not wasting a single breath
Until our children
Inherit a world that is better
Fixed by solutions that were deemed the most clever.

Instead, I failed you;
We all did.
Instead of respecting you,
We abused you.
Taking you for granted,
Our plans we mercilessly supplanted.
To our species
You were a conquest
Another addition to the dominion.
I am sorry,
Forgive me.”

Her immortal hands
Reached out to hold mine;
A kaleidoscopic ecstasy of visions
Gripped my very soul,
Suddenly, in tune with life as a whole.
As I felt this blissful connection,
This divine intervention
Of the infinite briefly meeting the finite,
She said:

**“Son,
Don’t let your apology weigh on your heart.
It isn’t Mother Earth you should worry about;
It’s your future that is in doubt,
Not mine.
When the rivers run dry,
When the air becomes sickly,
When the earth is scorched
And fire its master,
When you are all destroying each other,
I will survive, you will not.
I will find a way to thrive
As your cities crumble and rot.”

Why?
Why does the homeless man starve?
Why am I stuck, hungry and alone
In this niche I’m trying to carve?

Why?
Why does the world avoid acknowledging reason?
Why is the thinker ostracised,
Nay, persecuted, like a rebel hung for treason?

Why?
Why does the neurotic partner abuse the other?
Why do we lose our ****
And become violent like a wife-beating, drunken father?

Why?
Why do we poison ourselves?
Why do we smoke, snort, shoot up and drink?
Why do we abuse our temple,
Like a supernova’s collapse, on the brink
Of wiping out us
And everything around us.

If I had to answer
All of these burning questions
I could do so with one stroke,
No concessions;
We are purposeless and disconnected.
We are infected,
A sickness that eats one on the inside
Like an ingestion of bisulphide –
This sickness I speak of
Is a sickness of the mind and the heart;
It is the reason for dying art
The reason everything feels
Like we’re on our way to hell on an express cart.

This greed, this marauder of souls
Swallowing us all, we become
Sentient, wandering, black holes
Destined
To consume everything.
Trying to fill up the void
The one on the inside,
The one that has destroyed
Our sense of communal love.

This anxiety, this harbinger of malevolence
Even in benevolence
It finds a way to ruin things.
It can befall even the greatest of all,
No one is immune, not even kings.
Anxiety
Is the culmination of our fears
It is a beast that will leave you in tears
It is rooted
In our fear of the unknown
This terror
Of setting out, alone.

Alone, we are afraid.
Greed
Is easier to fulfil
It is far easier
To harbour ill will
To shoot and ****
To hunt down, to chase the thrill
Of feeling superior.

Together?
Together,
Our planet, our lives,
Everything can be better.