My life, my labour, my lineage;
My time - a favour, a privilege.
My very existence, up for sale;
Watch, as democracy gets impaled.

Sold off, bought by the highest bidder;
Out in the cold, caught in a blizzard.
Meanwhile, loyalties are on sale,
Lives are sabotaged, set up to fail.

Born, reared and raised inhaling dust,
Told to vote, to do so’s a must.
Led to the edge by the undead,
Fueled by secrets best left unsaid.
Sworn in, cheered on, values betrayed,
Victors portrayed, losers dismayed,
Our disillusionment displayed;
We’re in deep ****, be ready to wade.

There’s no lust, no zest for life;
There’s no trust, when there is strife.
I see strife aplenty enough;
I see many are acting tough.
Hardened hearts that have come apart,
Forced to live like this, playing a part.

Sold! The entire, impoverished lot;
Sold to the men of the black hand,
The string-pullers, crafting the whole plot.
The world is being auctioned off,
And you are the merchandise,
You are fuel for the enterprise.

You might not believe what I’ve just conceived;
Mark me as read, a fake ‘message received’.
You might look away, maybe take a day off;
I won’t, I can’t, I mustn’t.
There’s no time for going soft.

I demand to make my choices.
We are here to raise our voices.
These irreversible changes are locking us in cages;
These are real, life-or-death issues.
This is no show, and these lives are no Broadway stages.

Let's talk about decisions;
Let's put aside biased visions.
Let’s talk about who makes these decisions;
I’m looking at you, old white dudes in boardrooms.
Last time you took a class in ***-ed,
Gatsby and Daisy were just about this close to being bride and groom.

Let's talk about consent;
Let's use this space to vent.
Let’s talk about who has the right to judge;
I’m looking at you, anti-abortion crusaders.
Feeling threatened by strong women and their placards and posters,
Like they’ve got pistols in their uterine holsters,
Like they’re all daughters of the dark forces of Darth Vader.

Why do we insist on going to war with each other?
More importantly,
Why does our ****** education,
The root of this problem,
The rotten core of this issue -
Why does our ****** education **** so much?

Why do we talk about choice for a woman instead of the choice of men to respect a woman in the first place?

Why are we still debating?
Grown men telling women to listen,
It's absolutely infuriating!
Let's fight for rights and quit the hating.

Women are resorting to desperate measures,
Whilst men walk away with fulfilled pleasures.
I adopt this tone gravely;
Women are jeopardising their safety, daily.

Is a living woman worth less than an unborn baby?

I want to scream until I’m hoarse,
Until I can’t scream any more.
Then, when my voice box is bleeding,
When these demons are done feeding,
I’ll fall to my knees, in due course.

Clammy hands, high rate of respiration,
Fight or flight mode, in full activation.
Rough waves in the ocean of the stomach,
Enough to turn a dancer into a lummox.

The seduction of steady doses of self-destruction,
De-construction of the self, as if by court injunction.
Drink this bottled rage, distilled onto this safe, contained space;
Feel its unbridled power as it courses through your veins,
Unleash it onto those who have many ill-gotten gains.

I want to be free of this anxiety,
To do away with impropriety.
I want to stop feeling sick in my soul,
Whenever I analyse society.

Maybe, I’ve gone batshit insane;
A caged animal, crazed, in pain.
Maybe, all my cries are in vain;
But, I’ll be ****** if I die in chains.

__

Elbow-deep in *****;
Got nothing to lose.
An offer from hell;
I couldn’t refuse.

My brain’s out of happy chemicals;
A lifter with broken clavicles.
The air’s too thick, I can’t breathe;
Choked up by smoke and rage as it seethes.

The betrayal of our generation,
Born into destructive condemnation.
Born with a noose, tightly coiled round our necks,
Evil let loose, like a curse from a hex.

Stumbling into adulthood, dazed and confused.
Lesson number one -
If you’ve got a conscience, best leave it unused.
Binge-drinking, to refrain us from thinking.
A ship that’s sinking, eyes that are blinking,
Frantically keeping up with tear ducts,
But hey, at least you still feel something!
This heart has been seared, shut.

In fact, tears don’t fall down these cheeks, no more.
Crystallised pain; time to settle the score.
Time to take aim on those who came before,
Those who left us wastelands, a world forlorn.

No time to unwind, to let one’s guard down.
We must take back our homes, our streets, our towns,
It’s time to hang, draw and quarter these clowns.

Comrades, born with a guillotine over your head;
Step away from the edge towards which you’re being led,
Let us stop living like we’re the living dead.

Or, at least, let us die trying.
Like lifeless husks, slowly drying.
Our dreams, slowly fading away;
Scraping the bottom of the barrel,
Hoping to make it through the day.

_____

Brain-powered brutes; kings of intellectual pursuits,
Vastly superior, sadly divorced from our roots.
Propelled to be upheld as the peak of all life;
The human species, as sharp as a corsair’s knife.

There’s about 80 billion neurons in your noggin,
Networks, working all day until you lie in a coffin.
Brain and spine; co-ordination, perfection, divine.
Plainly sublime, an observation of gifts we’re assigned.

Whether it’s seeing a sunset in the arms of your new love,
Or hearing thunder as it claps from heavens above;
Whether it’s embracing a friend you haven’t seen for too long,
Or smelling and tasting street food, lost in a throng;
It’s all assembled in your organic computer,
Your decoder of reality, your trouble-shooter.

That’s precisely why I don’t trust the brain blindly.
Despite its marvels, we can be deceived, wildly,
In a manner that is grotesque and unsightly.
Use your senses, but administer them wisely,
Live in reflective harmony, speak forthrightly.

And, most importantly, listen to intuition,
For it’s basically like getting divine tuition.
We know of love when we feel it inside us,
When we hold one another defiantly, and say:
“You will not divide us!”
We’re awed by thunder when its loudness strikes our soul,
Hunger gets to us when we’ve felt it as a whole;
We know how much we miss one another upon going home.

We say we’ll know it when we see it –
No; we’ll know it for sure when we feel it.

Traffic, an artless moment for us all.
Static, unmoving; this is our downfall.
Manic, and frantic, in panic, anxious;
A nation that thrives on the unsanctioned.

Softly, we slip away, as the sun shines;
It’s time to make hay, ‘fore the planet dies.
Absorb the grey decay, smoke in our skies;
This ain’t a game, we don’t have several tries.

From the office, to your house, to the bar.
Fall in deep love, find a spouse, live on par;
Get a job, pay your taxes, buy a car.
Adhere to templates, forget who you are.

Don’t think about your disappearing rights.
Elected racketeering, sleepless nights,
Running on fumes, there’s one too many fights.
How we’ve fallen from those divine, sublime heights.
Angrier, sadder than we’ve ever been.
Top-tier madness, hating coloured skin.
Unforgiving badlands, dealt some bad hands;
No going to heaven, they won’t let us in.

Slowly slipping away, like time itself.
Pretending we are fine, we don’t need help.
You can almost feel your soul fragmenting.
The cries of your inner child, who died lamenting;
Stifle them.
Suffocate them.
Placate them.
This is our life; there is no happy ending.