PART I – BORN TO CHAOS AND IMPRISONMENT

Imagine –
Being born in a decade of hate,
Of fear of being attacked, front and rear,
Of sleeping with one eye open,
A present reality that is far from golden –
It is a nightmare of self-perpetuating terror.
Welcome to Palestine;
The land where the dogs of war
Come to feast and dine.

70 years of violence;
70 years of resilience.
Millions killed or displaced,
Homes vacated but never replaced,
Not even by those who got out alive,
Scrambling to rebuild, desperate to survive.
For how can you not be enraged and stupefied
When your country’s being erased
And hopelessness is causing suicides?
How can you not throw stones and riot
When your own government kills you
And then proceeds to alter the story or deny it?

That is the reality
That Mohanad Younis was born into;
One of many, a broken generation,
Born with a noose around their neck,
Betrayed and forgotten as a nation.
Desperation was an eternal companion,
A sibling, practically,
Always with them like the Colorado River with the Grand Canyon.

Mohanad was a bright, industrious soul;
A voracious bookworm, with the hunger to swallow a library whole.
Dostoevsky, Dickens and Euripides,
Amongst many others;
A young man who wrote his own tales,
Perhaps keen to escape reality,
Or encapsulate it if all else fails.

When guillotines rain down from the sky,
When prayers are said but your god(s) don’t even reply,
No author, nor their best tales,
Can overcome the missile storms and the bullet hails.
This will be the story
Of Mohanad Younis,
The beloved writer who killed himself
Because all else really did fail.

Burning bridges.
Originally, defined as follows –
Intentionally cutting off one’s retreat.
In the words of the immortal Caesar,
As he crossed the Rubicon, unwilling to concede defeat -
Let the die be cast.
A bloodbath that built an Empire,
Stretching wide, impossibly vast.
Thus, later meaning –
To alienate former friends.

Is it an act to be reviled?
Is it an act to be condemned,
An instance of passions running wild?
Or is it an act to be emulated?
A last resort when hope for reconciliation
Has been all but desecrated?

We need connections, hope and love –
We crave Ishtar’s white dove,
A blessing from ‘the Queen of Heaven’.
Yet, by the time the night’s hour numbers eleven,
Many of us are collapsing, battered;
Relapsing in toxicity, our spirit tired and scattered.

When our soul is shared with others,
It goes one of two ways;
With the right influence, it grows and flutters.
With the wrong kind, it falters and stutters.
Trust your gut –
If you get a feeling that says, Run,
Do so as if you were an Olympic athlete
And you just heard the starting gun.

Do not compress yourself
To fit the boxed-in view of someone else.
Do not edit or trim out a single verse
From the poetry that is your life.
Live freely, choose wisely,
Wield a voice that is steely, treat yourself and others kindly,
Stand ALONE if you have to.

In other words, some bridges need to be burnt;
Some lessons need to be learnt.
For sometimes it is better to burn the bridge as you retreat
Than to keep on fighting just to avoid defeat.
Caesar might have violently conquered all his opponents,
But in the end did it matter
When his own kinsmen were his assassination’s proponents?

Rusted handcuffs leave their mark,
Your wrists are chafed, coarse and stained dark.
You are used to light sneaking in through your cage’s bars,
Knees bent in adulation for kings and tsars –
A prison built for us in our hollowed-out minds,
A life lived with shuttered doors and closed blinds.

The handcuffs are our perceived obligations,
Our possessions and designated work stations.
The cell’s cold bars
Are not made of steel and enforced laws,
But of fear and hate, our biggest flaws.
Fear of ostracisation,
Hatred of those from another nation,
Fear of being downtrodden,
Hatred over differences that weren’t chosen,
But were simply there.

We are afraid of making waves or changes,
Stuck to a routine like slaves throughout the ages.
Our way of life has broken our spirit –
We are drunk with luxury, and we’ve imbibed over the limit.
We are afraid of looking at the mirror sometimes;
Afraid of eyes that stare back blankly,
Terrified of looking at this world honestly and frankly.

Do you wish to be liberated?
Do you wish to stop suffering because of this hatred?
Would you like to see
A world full of people that are brave and free?
Then here’s the point that matters most;
If you wish to live without restriction and not like a ghost,
Then these mental chains you must break.
When you realise that freedom is the only thing that matters,
The illusion stops being real, the matrix shatters.

If you hold back because you’re afraid of prosecution,
What’s the point of going about your day,
When your right to speak freely has already had its day of execution?
If you do not work on what you feel is right,
What’s the point of dreaming of a future that is bright?
If you’re in a system where your ideas and desires are impossible,
Where dreams and aspirations are rendered implausible,
Then is it a life worth living?

Do you wish to die having lived for someone else’s greed?
Do you wish to spend your days watching the world around us bleed?
If that is not your wish, then do not forget;
The greatest power at their disposal is your fear and regret.
We are here for a very short time –
To attempt to unfuck humanity is a long, difficult, climb
But this is how we begin.
We must find strength from within,
Admit that our life is unsustainable,
Living for impossible standards that are unattainable.

We must search for our lost roots, our core;
You will not find happiness or peace in the next clothing store,
For it is a journey of letting things go.
It is a journey leading to a truth which you already know –
When you are no longer terrified,
When your faith in yourself you have solidified,
When these beliefs you have internalised,
Then you will suffer no longer.

Doubt and turmoil will cease,
For you are now carrying the flag of peace.
People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments;
Governments should be afraid of their people,
For a global awakening is happening
And we are sick to the core of all this evil.

If the unadulterated truth is on your side,
Although it may take years of swimming against the tide,
Your actions WILL bear fruit,
Maybe not in a month, maybe not even a decade,
But it’s a journey worth pursuing, a life as a renegade.
We are in this mess
Because old men sent young people to die for them in wars –
Now it’s time to reverse the course,
And learn how to think and fight on your own,
Before it’s too late and we’re all kneeling
In front of some *******’s throne.

Please, PLEASE -
Grant me this release.
From the burdens of this reality
I would like to be freed.
These lines are something I want you to read
Before it's too late.
To your hearts, I capitulate,
To your minds, I delegate,
To your souls, I supplicate -
LISTEN.

Not all of us can cry it out loud,
Or effortlessly open up.
Not all of us are gifted
With an endlessly-flowing cup.
Many of us
Struggle to survive;
If you're lucky, you might have a 9-to-5
Maybe even have time to be alive,
And not just exist.

But, that is not enough -
We have a world that is rough,
Where millions die every year,
Where people hold bodies that were once dear.
Look at ourselves;
Those who are sheltered from the storm
Lie in its deceitful eye,
Incapable of understanding beyond their norm.

We are wearing blinders,
And have plugged out the noise, too;
If I were you,
The next time someone needs help,
I would listen to everything,
Through and through.

This one is for the broken, the beaten and the ******;
All the people that were persecuted and attacked.
All the slaves and migrants
Lining the floor of the sea.
All the men, women and children
Who died trying to be free.
This one
Is for those who toil and hustle
Without any hope for improvement -
Fragmented we are powerless,
Together we are a movement.

This violent sadness,
A self-devouring source of madness.
It is an Atlantean endeavour,
It is pure, jaw-dropping terror.
It is this dense weight that I carry -
Snap out of it, hurry, do not tarry,
For my shoulders quiver
And my nerves grow tired and bitter.

Please, hurry;
Wake the **** up.
We don’t have much time,
And up to the mountain’s peak
I wish to climb.
Do not delay;
Every moment wasted
Is an inch further towards necrotic decay.

Why could you never understand?
Why did you never want to cross into uncharted land?
Why the need to cocoon in one place?
Why did you resort to making me hate my own face?
This road, this journey that is life -
I will live it on the edge of a knife,
In between the worlds of peace and strife.
With the soles of my feet,
I shall run on burning coals, exposed to heat.
Within the corridors of my heart,
I will host freedom as my eternal mistress,
And make my life her work of art.

A sun that never quite rises,
After all this, I feel like a discoloured iris,
Like a struggling butterfly,
One that does not want to die,
But does not want to live, either.
I don’t know
Whether you’re lying to yourself or me,
But all I know is that of these hateful chains
I wish to be free.

I will now walk alone, towards the balcony,
Ready to jump and spread my wings;
I wish to fly alone,
For the skies have no queens nor kings.
I am who I am,
A soul, permanently on the lam
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A god –
Or ‘the’ God,
Or a whole plethora of gods;
Refer
To whichever of these nominations
Your perceptions prefer.

Entire cultures,
Cultivated in distant lands,
Some born to arid, desert sands
Some born in the cold, shivering,
Desperately clinging to warmth with trembling hands.
All of their scriptures mention
Beings deemed otherworldly,
Masters of the universe who would only address
Those who they deem worthy.

These gods were beyond reproach;
With deference one must approach,
On bended knee, offerings at the ready,
A stream of prayers and supplications,
Coming slowly, surely, steadily.

One God
Seemed to be hell-bent on conquering others.
According to religious leaders,
Responsible for pitting brothers against brothers,
This God, as we’ve been told,
To us his kingdom in heaven he has sold.
If we pay our dues in worship and obedience,
We will get to live happily, grow old,
And enjoy life in Heaven.

This God, apparently,
Wished for the attention of all –
Other temples must crumble and fall,
Differing cultures are simply wrong,
Their moral fibre is weak,
And we are strong.

The great lie, an illusion now ageless;
One God to rule all, a resolution that is baseless.
Really, God must be a corporate banker –
Spreading all over the world like a cancer.
Think about it;
War has been waged in the name of God, no?
Well, it might shock you to know
That wars generate insane amounts of debt
And guess who’s there to reap the benefits and collect?

Ah! The penny dramatically drops, the dots suddenly connect;
Who issues the money we depend on?
Who is responsible for economic castrations?
Fluctuating values and inflations?
Causing debt ceilings to collapse on top of entire nations?
Certainly not any God who loves living beings.
Clearly, bankers are now God;
Living in palaces of gold and ivory,
Pillaged, precious metals and gilded thrones,
Whilst people have to deal with austerity and loans.
Dictating policies, a niche of power,
Funding bloodshed, settling scores,
Sometimes both sides of the conflict,
Just look at the Napoleonic wars!

Things will be clear
Once the origins of this system you properly hear.
Those among us who are truly bright
Know that a free life is the true divine right,
Not an inherited claim to the world’s money supply,
Not being in a position or of the inclination
To bleed an entire planet dry –
Those people among us
Need to stand up and fight.