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Oct 2019 · 331
Quicksand
Julian Delia Oct 2019
The more you struggle, the more you sink;
Cut down the divine, sever the link.
Lost in a forest with no clear way out,
Riddled with fear, crippled by doubt.

Your feet start to disappear;
They’ve never been so heavy,
You’ve never felt this kind of fear.
You pull and you kick and you scream,
You beg and you grovel and you plead,
But to no avail.
The weight of life’s burdens,
Sentenced to life in jail, no bail.

The sand is up to your knees.
You wish it was just a bad dream -
Your life flashes before your eyes.
You see the truths, the lies;
You see the pain, the falsehoods,
Those times you left your feelings disguised.

The hungry pit has now swallowed half of you.
Your hips start to get ****** in,
Like the earth itself just declared a coup.
At this point, you stopped moving,
Hoping to delay the inevitable.
You’re a living corpse in funereal grooming;
Hoping you’ve left a legacy,
A mark that’s indelible.

As the sand starts crushing your lower body,
You realise you didn’t do much, anyway.
You resign yourself to fate,
Realising you never did quite seize the day.
You feel like life slipped through your fingers;
Born to suffer, put through the wringer.
Your limbs are now submerged.
You hope your sins have been purged;
You hope you’ve done enough good in the world.
You savour your last breaths,
Realising you never really enjoyed fresh air;
You now await death,
Wishing you weren’t so alone and scared.

The sand fills up your mouth,
And clogs up your nostrils.
You face the golden meadows,
And find peace in rolling hills.
You never did feel good,
Except when you fell still.
Don't let the abyss drag you in.
Oct 2019 · 413
The Dictator's Grave
Julian Delia Oct 2019
As long as men die,
Liberty will never perish.

As long as there’s a sky,
Freedom will always be cherished.
Whenever men cajole and lie,
Oppression refills its chalice.

Mausoleums and refined cemeteries;
Hypogeums, perfectly aligned symmetry.
Resplendent medallions, ostentatious statues.
Dictators depict themselves as majestic stallions,
Doing everything to sensorily detach you,
Removing you from the frailty of reality.

A dictator will control discourse of all sorts;
They’ll hunt dissidents like it was a national sport.
They’ll turn the nation into their little fort,
And they’ll leave generations traumatised.
Opposition is demonised, criticism is stigmatised;
They’ll tell you that the enemy is everywhere,
And that entire communities should be marginalised.

A dictator will huff and puff until the house falls down.
Dictators **** entire countries, tearing sovereignty’s gown.
They’ll seize the population’s weaknesses,
Playing to your mind’s fears, its deepest recesses.

A dictator will convince you that he is a living god;
They’ll try to avoid you seeing through their fraud.
Remember that dictators are sacks of flesh,
Just like the rest of us;
They’ll rot in the ground when put to rest,
And their bones will return to dust.
Bonus points if you get the Charlie Chaplin reference. Inspired by a visit to Mussolini's grave.
Sep 2019 · 223
The Things I'd Do to You
Julian Delia Sep 2019
What would I do,
If you ever graced my arms?
Would I have a clue?
Would I raise your alarms?

Or would you behold my charms?
Would you leave me wholly disarmed?
Would we grow together like roses in an orchard,
Or would we be lucky to escape unharmed?

Speculative stanzas, all of the above;
Love is when it feels like the hand fit the glove.
Here’s what I would do to you;
I’d slowly and gently run my fingers through your hair,
Marveling at its sheen and shine, mastered through your care.
I’d overthink everything to the brink;
You’d have to hold me tight, as I let go of grief,
As I try to cry to find relief, struggling to not resort to drink.

I’d be a ******* mess, for most of the time;
I’d be unhinged and stressed like I’ve got all of the world’s anger bursting through my chest, for the rest of the time.
But, through the nightmares and the despair,
I’d skip and saunter through it all with a certain flair.

Plenty of demons in my head, that’s for sure.
We make for quite the squad, though;
About twenty of us getting drunk in the moor,
Ready to die free, obscene, and poor.

I’d lend my shoulder to you if you need to cry,
Whenever you feel like you just want to die.
I’d want to hold you like it’s our last night,
Like tomorrow morning’s first rays of light might not be there.


I’d absorb every glance or glare;
I’d wonder whether our future should have me giddy,
Or whether our future should have me scared.
I’d listen to you intently, like I was deciphering the code to your heart;
I’d sing my heart out to you and write down odes to your art,
I’d mark your soul like a bullseye, and strive to be the dart.

I’d make love to you, just like I should;
I’d worship those curves like nobody else could.
I’d want you to rest your head on my shoulder,
To stick your hands in my pockets when it gets colder.
I can’t promise that I’ll always know what to say;
Sometimes, all I will be able to do is try to brighten your day.

I can, however, promise you brutal honesty.
I’ve tasted dishonesty, and that’s a worse travesty.
Your parents might have issues with the lack of polite lies;
I’m sure that as soon as I mention I am an anarchist,
Your father will probably choke on his steak and fries.

I can promise you it’ll be a wild ride;
I can promise you that you won’t have to hide.
I want to see every shade of you,
Every mood and every bit of banter;
I want to share food, and drink to your success,
Or taste your disappointment and anger.

I guess what I would do, is love you until we’re ruined.
I’d love you like there was nothing else to it,
Until I’m empty of empathy and my heart breaks and I won’t have a clue as to how to glue it back together.
I’d love you like it meant nirvana was ‘round the corner, and that’s how to pursue it.

I will be the biggest paradox you’ll ever meet;
A master of whispering nothings that are bittersweet,
A master at being the flame that burns faster.
I will spread around your forests like a ******* disaster.

I hope you’re ready.
Sep 2019 · 223
Dreams
Julian Delia Sep 2019
Tekoşer studied for three years;
Shed tears, and tore hair,
Locked failure in a stare,
Pushed sleep down the stairs.

He grit his teeth and rolled up his sleeves;
He thought on his feet and took no leave.
Exams came around, and then went on their way.
He aced them, and could finally call it a day.

All he had to do was wait for the fateful morrow;
Marked ‘x’ on his calendar,
A day of great joy, or greater sorrow.
Everything banked on that one set of results.
He waited for whatever followed.


Amy was one night’s sleep away from Gustav -
6 months away from the one she loves!
She couldn’t believe he was coming back;
How painfully her heart had cracked.

But now, she’d finally get to see him!
It would really be him,
Not a text, or an image on her phone;
Asleep next to him, not crying alone.

Just one, more night of lonely sleep;
Just a few more thoughts of blades running deep,
Of red rivers or her haphazaradly slit wrists.
She was terrified of herself,
Of the unfettered abyss, of death’s kiss.
She waited for whatever followed.


Another day, another 14 hour shift.
Michael had it up to here with all this ****.
He was one shelf-stacking away from losing it,
From giving his boss a stabbing and calling it a day.

There is no place in the world worse than a supermarket.
When it came to work, he’d rather be a hornet’s target,
But this was all he could do, for the time being.
This was as far as he could go without hitting the glass ceiling.

But alas, his only breather was around the corner!
His one holiday, his one escape to Berghain;
Drugs and music, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.
Better to live recklessly than to die lame.
He waited for whatever followed.


Tomorrow never came.
It is pointless to build a life when the world around you burns.
Sep 2019 · 446
A Dying Breed
Julian Delia Sep 2019
Black Friday sales and Christmas deals;
Hot on the next bargain’s trail,
Itching to fill the void the heart feels.
Transactions and agreements,
Trappings, false achievements.
Welcome to the era of the shopping mall;
This is where your dreams hop off to die,
This is their final port of call.

Everything and everyone is a commodity;
Barcoded, plastic-wrapped merchandise,
Categorisation for you and your progeny.
If money doesn’t germinate from its seed,
If it does not clothe and feed,
Then it is not something we need.

We are a philistine’s *******.
We strive to achieve the American scheme;
Delusional and overworked, about to scream,
Believing all of us can be billionaires forever,
As the planet grows hungry and lean.

Or, believing some deserve yachts and limousines,
That some should starve,
Whilst others gorge themselves on fine cuisines.
Believing that society should be divided in layers,
Assuaging our guilt with thoughts and prayers,
When instead, we could have just refrained from leaving others behind.

When everything becomes a commodity,
Art for the sake of making it becomes an oddity.
Poets retire their pens,
And painters put down their brushes -
Apathy and despair fog the lands,
Like irradiated wind corrupting everything it touches.

Singers go quiet, actors go numb;
Musicians will riot, orators will be struck dumb.
When our own turn on us, tell us to get “a real job”,
When “job creators” are done calling us “lazy slobs”,
None of us will be around to point out the irony.

We will go extinct, a dying breed, finally gone;
Life will be succinct, the greedy will have won.
Slay your kings and queens, or remain a pawn.
Tell me I'm wrong.
Sep 2019 · 486
Vulnerable
Julian Delia Sep 2019
The tenderness of a reddened cheek;
The softness of puffy eyes.
The bitterness of a mind bereft of sleep;
The emptiness of forlorn skies.

A caress, gentle and sweet;
A teardrop, as it slides.
Kneeling at love’s feet,
Even though love lies.

Honest, to the point of self-sabotage.
The protégé of wild predecessors,
Those who see through the mirage.
Emotionally combustible;
Violently vulnerable.

The beautiful, passionate side of humanity -
The irrational point past this side of sanity.
The raw, tearful embrace;
The clenched jaw as voices shake.
Getting kissed all over your face.
Goodbyes, like falls from grace.

Fragile, scared, and susceptible to feelings.
Strike me with arduous candor,
Raise wolfish cries to the ceiling.
Whenever I feel like this,
I feel like I fully understand the idiom:
‘Deer in headlights.’

And yet, paradoxically, the moth flies towards the flame!
Quizzically, we reach into the fire,
And expect the heat to take the blame.

I’ve been taught that emotions are by-products;
Excessive excrement of the soul,
Ill-fitting of those of sober and good conduct.

Sometimes, I feel like I can’t cry anymore.
I feel like looking to the sky for answers means nothing,
Like God’s skiving off his chores,
Like he ran to his room, and just slammed the door.

You reminded me it’s okay to cry;
To run tear ducts dry first,
And then later figure out why.
I will always owe you a debt of gratitude;
I wish I could bestow you with love of a fitting magnitude.
In the mean time,
I’ll relish your inquisitive eyes,
I’ll crave hearing your ‘what’s wrong?’
Like a golden-era relic from better times,
Like one of those eternal songs -
You are divinity,
And you don’t even know it.
Real **** - I'm back.
Julian Delia Sep 2019
I will never have good financial standing.
My wallet must feel besieged,
Like the sacking of King’s Landing.
Money just flies through my fingers;
Like the angel of death,
Bankruptcy always looms and lingers.
I spend it on escapades and exuberance,
On journeys to escalate my studies of life,
To forbear nothing from its tutelage.

I will never have a peaceful, settled life;
No 2.3 kids, no doting, darling wife.
Neither will I have a Golden Retriever;
No picture-perfect moments,
No Instagram photo captioned ‘she’s a keeper.’
I will go the edges of the world;
I will unfurl hammocks, as the jungles get deeper,
As I hear the whispers of life,
And my ears strain to listen like receivers.

I don’t care about losing either of those prospects;
Uninteresting endeavours, uninspiring projects.
To me, only love deserves mourning;
It is the primer of all things,
The driver of all of nature’s calls,
The reason why the mockingbird sings.
That must be why my heart can’t stand the quiet,
Why I’m like a viral riot, an epidemic insurrection.
That must be why I’m mourning an unrequited connection.

You are everything I will never have.
I will have an empty heart, and empty hands.
If it never happens in this life,
I hope I’ll get to see you again in the next one.
This is the poem I wanted to be my hundredth one on this website. I love you, hello poetry community. Thank you for existing.
Sep 2019 · 211
L [II]
Julian Delia Sep 2019
I will always love you;
Stupidly, foolishly, recklessly.
Spiraling downward, endlessly.
A connection that spans the seas, the oceans;
One that ignores pleas or motions,
One that steamrolls over dismissals,
Ignoring any and all commotion.

Maybe it’s because you’re the closest I’ve been to love.
Maybe it’s because I felt whole with your head gently resting on my chest.
Seeing you again now makes me forget what happened back then.
Your smile is like a sunset, a warm caress that puts me to rest.
It makes me forget that we’d turned our relationship into a battleground,
A battlefield painted red with the innards of innocence for the brushstroke.
A place where hopes were grounded to dust,
And pain’s parasitic relationship with distrust was profoundly compounded.

It’s almost 5 in the morning;
I miss you, even though I saw you yesterday.
This irresolutely irrational passion of mine,
These two paths that just want to intertwine,
These glances and moments that send chills down my spine -
They shouldn’t be here anymore, but they are.

Maybe, it’s because I’m alone,
And you’re the only face that feels like home.
Maybe, yours is the only embrace I can hold;
Maybe, I’m just being foolishly bold.

They say find what you love,
And let it ruin you.
Here I am, like the remains of the Parthenon;
Here I am, standing ready, ready to be led on.
Ready, bracing myself to be destroyed once more;
Ready to burn like a lit match that met fuel that’s seeped into your pores.

That is what you and I are;
I am the lit match, and you are the fuel.
Together, we make ashes of kingdoms,
Petty serfs of kings.
And an absolute mess of ourselves.
I don’t care about being right or wrong, anymore;
I just want us to make sense of things,
And see what destiny’s got in store.
Sometimes, some threads of fate are longer than you expect them to be.
Aug 2019 · 491
Climate Grief
Julian Delia Aug 2019
Last July was the hottest month, ever.
That is, ever since we ‘officially’ started tracking weather.
The Earth is lying on the bathroom floor, wrists severed;
I wonder whether this is a storm we can weather,
Or whether we’ll all perish together.

Greenland lost 12.5 billion tonnes of ice sheets.
That is,
The island that was 80% ice is becoming one, giant, puddle.
The earth is about to be slain, a warrior conceding defeat;
Huddle up, give your loved ones a cuddle,
For we are so troubled that any aliens out there must be truly befuddled.

My generation was born with a guillotine looming over our heads.
An impending sense of dread,
As corporations put on their executioner’s hoods,
And reach for the lever.
A sordid reality in which to save the planet,
One must fight one’s own government;
A reality in which we may have done permanent damage,
A reality in which valour gets no monuments,
But only condemnation and incarceration.

Remember these names:

Julian Assange. Currently awaiting an 18-count indictment charge from the US.

Edward Snowden. Could face up to 30 years in prison if the US get their hands on him.

Chelsea Manning. Spent 7 years in prison.

Abdullah Öcalan. In prison since 1999.

Edem Bekirov. A man who has been dying in prison for the past year.

Benny Tai. Sentenced to over a year for fighting for what is right.

Nasser Zefzafi. In prison for the next 20 years.

Kerry Shakaboona Marshall. A man who received a life sentence aged 17 years old.

Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts, and Richard Loizou. Sentenced to over a year for fighting fracking.

Tim DeChristopher. 21 months for fighting oil and gas pipelines.

Stella Nyanzi. The raunchy Ugandan poetess who cannot be tamed, no matter how many times prison beckons.

This list is basically endless.
It is saturated in blood that drips from the corners of the page,
Soaked in the rage of brave men and women, living in a cage.

Depression. Exhaustion. Numbness.
Oppression and a lack of caution,
Leading us to this dumb mess.
This can no longer be the norm.
We can no longer conform,
Nor can we compromise or haggle;
We must reverse our own demise,
For this is our generation’s battle.
The pain of our extinction.
Jul 2019 · 389
The Idealist
Julian Delia Jul 2019
Interloping through your fields,
Hoping you’ve lowered your shields.
I hope I’ll get my point across.
Trepidation, nausea in my soul;
The revolution’s my only goal.
There’s no other point,
No other gig, no other role.

And yet, all you see is Utopian, impossible ideas.
Folded neatly, packed in boxes, and stowed away,
Like a discounted cabinet from IKEA.
My brain bubbles like a *** of stew;
Plenty of ideas, more than a few.
There’s my cue;
The room goes quiet.
Anxious like my rent is due,
Angry enough to start a riot.

Every time I speak about what could be,
I can hear brows furrowing, disbelief developing,
All in doubt as to what we would see.
It’s so frustrating, being dismissed;
I’m sorry, is there something I’ve missed?

They call people like me idealistic;
They say alternatives are unrealistic.
Idealism is what keeps us evolving,
What keeps us from dissolving,
From melting in a vat of redundancy,
From getting suffocated by incumbency.


Visionaries are what separates a living culture from a graveyard.
Stationary nation states, overseeing like unforgiving vultures -
But hey, at least you’ve got your promos and your saver cards.


If capitalism is the best we can do,
Then we really are ******* *******.
You might think I’m being rude,
But, you know that I’m just being shrewd,
That I’m spitting out the uncut truth.
You’re in my brain’s building complex now;
This poem’s going to be a rare beauty,
A collector’s item, get your cheques out.

Call me whatever you want.
I’ve got no riches to flaunt,
For the revolution requires empty hands.
Let go of the designers and the brands;
It’s time to face the music and fetch the popcorn,
For the end of the world is going to be grand.
'So what's your solution, then?'
'*******, that's my solution.'
Jul 2019 · 262
Too Late
Julian Delia Jul 2019
Disconsolate desolation.
Completely alone; gnawed to the bone,
Like a miserly master’s nation.
Like there’s austerity measures,
Safeguarding my heart’s limited treasures.

Too little, too late;
My courage was too fickle,
My fear was too great.
Now, somebody else will hold your hand.
Now, you’ve become forbidden territory,
An exotic fruit from a foreign land.

I am by no means a quixotic figure;
Sometimes, I can barely look at a mirror,
Let alone letting love come hither.
I feel like I should’ve been quicker;
Before loneliness makes me feel sicker,
Before my heart and mind continue to bicker,
I should have said:

‘Hey, you. You are a gorgeous human being, and I want to fall in love with you.’

I should have laid it out,
I shouldn’t have let fear overtake me.
I should have reached out,
Rather than just hope someone will just save me.

Now, someone else will be privy to your soul;
Someone else will support you and your goals.
I will obscurely fade away,
Not unlike a shadow;
Thugging through rainy days,
As empty as a meadow.
I now proclaim myself the King of Bad Timing & Lack of Self-Esteem
Jul 2019 · 198
Burnout
Julian Delia Jul 2019
Foggily, groggily spinning out.
Slowly slipping lowly,
Depths of hell calling out.

Stretched t h i n,
About to split my own skin.
Pedal to the metal,
All the ******* time;
Got to spot my slot,
Got to make a ******* dime.

Chasing the scream,
Losing the dream;
Spent and empty,
With a heart that’s hefty.

I blurt out this truth.
Turns out, it soothes.
I just found out -
It’s dangerous to let your heart air out.
Don’t let your hair down,
‘Cause we’ve got demons crawling around,
Like lice attacking your crown.

Exhausted.
                  Haunted.
                                    Stunted.
                                                   Hunted.
Bring it on, *****.
                              I haven’t got anything left to lose.
Different styles, it's been a while.
Julian Delia Jul 2019
Ġrieħi miftuħin,
Xejn ma jrid jingħalaq.
Suppost, il-ġnus maqgħuda,
Iżda lkoll qegħdin mifruxin,
Donnu, xejn ma jrid jiċċaqlaq.

Feriti ifferoċjati bil-melħ,
Kruċjati, bla ebda sens ta’ ferħ.
U l-imħabba għal proxxmu -
Dik x’sar minnha?
Issa sibna x-xoqqa f’moxta;
Ħlifna, bit-tarf ta’ din il-pinna,
Naslu għal verità, naraw x’insarrfu minnha.

Allura, x’inhi din il-verità?
Qiegħed nassumi li hekk qegħdin tistaqsu.
M’hemmx dibattitu, ir-realtà turik,
Kollox f’ħinu, kollox f’waqtu.
Ir-risposta tiegħi hija din;
Tlifna kull sens ta’ valur,
Tlifna kull sens ta’ twemmin.

M’għadniex nemmu fil-valur tal-ħajja ta’ kullħadd.
M’għadniex nemmnu li kull azzjoni għanda impatt.
Nemmu li aħna progressivi, u Ewropej;
Jekk vera nemmnu hekk,
Lesti nħallsu għall-eċċessi u d-dejn?
Mhux dejn fiskali, iżda dejn immortali,
Id-dejn tad-demm li xxerred,
Dejn is-sudditti, dejn l-iskjavi.

In fatti, is-superjorità materjali ġejja minn hekk;
Mill-gwerer tas-slaten, u l-gideb ta’ dawn tal-ġlekk.
Daħħalna xafra disa’ pulzieri ‘il ġewwa,
Biex imbagħad ħriġniha sitta ‘il barra;
Ta’ parsi għandna l-ugwaljanza,
Għax issa jsawtuk xorta, iżda b’aktar ħlewwa.

Qabel, kellna l-ktajjen u l-forza brutali.
Issa, għandna l-kuntratti, u l-kodiċi penali,
Bil-banek jirrenjaw,
Bil-gvernijiet korporazzjonijiet statali.
Mhux ha nitlobkom temmnuni -
Nitlobkom biss teżaminaw il-fatti.
M’għandix spag x’jiġbduli;
Il-kuxjenza nadifa,
U m’għandix gideb x’ngħatti.

_______

’Open wounds’

Open wounds;
They aren’t closing.
Nations should be united,
But we are far apart,
Seems like nothing wants to budge.

Wounds, seasoned with salt,
Crucibles, with no sense of joy.
And, about that love for one’s fellow man -
What happened to that?
Now, we’ve found the perfect moment;
We’ve sworn, with the tip of this pen,
(that) We’ll get to the truth,
See what we can make of it.

So; what is the truth?
I am assuming that’s what you’re asking.
There’s no debate, reality shows you,
In due time and place, in the right moment.
My answer is this -
We’ve lost all our sense of valour,
We’ve lost all our sense of belief.

We no longer believe in the value of everyone’s life.
We no longer believe every action impacts others.
We believe that we are progressive, and European;
If we do believe that,
Are we ready to pay back our excesses and debts?
This is not fiscal debt, but rather an immortal one,
The debt of the blood that has been shed,
The debt of subjects and slaves.

In fact, material superiority stems from this;
From the wars of lords and the lies of the suits.
We’ve pushed a blade nine inches inward,
And pushed it six inches outward;
Pretending we have equality,
Just because now, they’ll still beat you, but more sweetly, more subtly.

Before, we had chains and brute force.
Now, we have contracts, and the penal code,
With banks reigning supreme,
With governments who are now state corporations.
I am not asking you to believe me -
I am asking you to examine the facts.
I have no strings, none that can be pulled;
My conscience is clean,
And I have no lies to cover up.
Dedicated to a nation full of crooks and *******.
Jul 2019 · 514
*Melanie's Melody
Julian Delia Jul 2019
REAL NAME ALTERED TO SAFEGUARD IDENTITY*

I know what you’re going through.
Aged nineteen, I wanted to die, too.
I can offer no consolation;
The world is messed up,
A fact that needs no arbitration.

All I can tell you is that you are not alone.
Listen to my words, ‘cause they’re about to hit home.
You need do nothing but be, just breathe;
Let love into your heart, again.
The mightiest tree starts from the humblest seed;
Let love take root, build its little den.

It is always darkest before dawn.
Life feels like you’re facing a firing squad,
And they’ve all got their rifles drawn.
Ten barrels of steel, pointed right at you;
You’ve been running for so long.
Eventually, they finally catch you.

Darling, killing yourself doesn’t solve your problems.
You won’t be around to care, but others will,
And seeing you go will turn them into stone golems.
As such, you just pass on your grief to your people.
They’ll find no relief, like they’re sitting on steeples.

Maybe, you hate the people who love you, or they’re **** at it,
So it’s more harm than good being done to you.
Very few of us have managed to figure this **** out.
In fact, many of us are straight-up *******.

That doesn’t mean life can’t be beautiful.
That doesn’t mean love can’t be bountiful.
Everyone’s too scared, though;
Trust is a taut rope,
And there’s very little hope.
I know that love and beauty can be scarce;
I know discourse is sometimes trifling, sometimes terse.

But darling, you mustn’t ever give up.
You are not crazy, nor are you insane.
The world is run by people who actually are heartlessly insane,
And they’ve built a cage to **** with your brain.
But please, don’t give up.

I hope this gets to you in time;
I wish I could say it’ll all be okay,
That everything will be fine.
But, it won’t be.
We are doomed to a lifetime of fighting back,
Either that, or just getting attacked.
I will not stand to suffer any longer,
Not without retaliating in defense, in kind.
Take my hand, for together we are stronger.
It’s time to halt the daily grind.
I'm sorry I choked up. I wasn't strong enough to say this to you in person.
Jul 2019 · 193
Defiant
Julian Delia Jul 2019
I’ve experienced the fear of violence;
If fate holds us with a string,
Mine feels strained, like a violin’s.
I’ve felt the terror of speechless silence;
The pressure that life brings,
Like it’s 4:00am, and you’re still doing that assignment.
It shook me, but it didn’t break me.

I’ve read and studied about oppression;
There’s enough material to fill several skyscrapers,
Enough to slump anyone into a depression.
I’ve delved into accounts of sheer horror,
Enough to make your soul ache,
Stories of humans treated like fodder.
It’s heartbreaking; but, it didn’t break me.

Running rampant, unaccountable and irresponsible;
Stunning examples of corruption.
Criminals in command, hiding behind uniformed men,
Trapped in a den of thieves hiding behind constables.
You try every day; but, you won’t break me.

I’ve faced scrutiny and bigotry;
I call for mutiny, **** pleasantry.
I’ve seen hatred, and I’ve felt it;
If hate is a poisoned dagger,
It seeped through the hilt as I held it.
I’ve glared angrily at my own reflection;
I’ve put my brain through trauma,
And my soul died a bit from all the dejection.
I’ve come close, but I am not broken.

Every day is laborious;
It has to be in this world,
One that’s far from meritorious.
It would be so in a free world as well,
Except for the fact that your labour wouldn’t feel like hell,
Mostly because you will toil for a fair life for all,
And the future would be glorious.
It’s going to be the fight of our lives.
But it will not break me.
Dopest **** I wrote in a while, in my opinion
Jun 2019 · 477
The Coil
Julian Delia Jun 2019
Contorted like a torsion spring;
Tense, like a drawn bow string,
Like hell hath no greater fury to bring.
Energy, begging to be released;
Bearing the brunt of the mortal coil,
As the shuffling forth proceeds.
Brought to steam, a kettle about to boil,
Like a frying pan with too much oil.

Unable to stand down,
A stand-off of an existence;
The tables have turned, now,
Listen to the resistance’s insistence.

I feel like I can’t unwind,
Like life can be a party,
But I always leave my buzz behind.
Trying to find a place to fit,
A niche, a nook for the carving;
A hook for a song, a stitch in time,
Anything to feed a hungry soul,
To save myself from starving.

I can’t relax, nor lose my focus;
Pleasure is not happiness,
What you crave is probably bogus.
Distractions mean running away from reality;
Contraptions and lies,
Falsehoods draped in formality.
They say the flame that burns twice as bright,
Burns twice as quickly;
The hands that are twice as sleight,
Become twice as tired,
Twice as fragile and sickly.

Alas, I know that one day, I will lose my tempering.
I will become frail and exhausted,
Like a wanderer who’s lost his bearings.
My knees will become weak,
My arms will become heavy.
Time and the vicissitudes of fate -
They’ll swing by to collect their levy.

Let that day come.
Until then,
I shall march to the beat of my own drum.
Fun fact: I refer to Shakespeare and Snoop Dogg in this poem. Other than that, nothing is particularly fun about it.
Jun 2019 · 338
Trust, but verify
Julian Delia Jun 2019
Greet every person you meet;
Embrace warmly, enjoy the heat.
Savour their company, taste their flavour;
You’ll know if it’s golden or rotten,
If you’re holding a gold mine,
Or a poison ill-begotten.

Maybe, not at first;
It’s hard to tell, sometimes,
For some are like chameleons.
Blending in when they have to,
When their plan is to trap you.
Prepare to be encapsulated,
To have your energy castrated.

Eventually, though, things change;
We are able to tell, most times.
Even if we must go against the grain,
Feel the pain of the Milesians.
Your gut instinct will tell you,
Let you know you should change the tune,
Hell, maybe even change the venue.

It is an act of aggression to abuse someone’s affection.
There should be no digression here,
I shall not allow any concession, not in this lifetime, nor the next,
I will make sure of that, I need nor context nor pretext.
If you do feel abused, rejected and refused,
Then taken back to be re-used,
You might have a leech attached to you;
You might have to bleed to feed someone who’s attacked you.

If you feel like something’s wrong,
Stop, and reflect; what’s going on?
Inspect the nature of the relationship,
Critically analyse your companionship.

You must trust your fellow man;
But, in these times, you must also verify.
Make sure your mind’s gun doesn’t rust;
In these times, people hide behind their alibis.
Jun 2019 · 207
An Ode to Rejects
Julian Delia Jun 2019
What could have been;
What should have been done.
What could have been seen;
What should have been shunned.

I speak to you, my rejected friends.
Take the messages failure sends.
I speak for you, for I feel the sting, too.
Maybe I should take my own advice,
Instead of spilling my guts out to you.
But, failures linger, don’t they?
They stick around like glue,
Make you not want to see the next day.

I grieve with you, my fellow renounced outcasts.
Life sometimes crumbles like houses beneath blasts.
I grieve for my own woeful misadventures,
For all of life’s haunting spectres,
The ghosts of what could have been,
The paradise that won’t let us in.

This one is for us;
All those who failed to get into the Harvards and the Yales,
All of those who wish they’d gotten better grades,
But got burnt out, instead.
All of those who haven’t made it in sports,
But whose dreams were cut short.
All of those who wished to become actors,
But found no supporters nor benefactors.
All of those who wished to chase music,
Those who have talent but couldn’t use it.

All of those who died at sea,
Stranded on a boat, trying to be free.
All of those whose heart was broken,
Whose wounds are always open.
All of those whose ideas were trashed,
Only to then be copied and rehashed.

All of those whose minds were broken,
Who danced with demons and evil unspoken.
All of those who never met their parents,
To whom life was never readily apparent.
All of those who reached for the stars,
But found their arms were too short.

This one is for us.
Stay strong, for these nights can be long.
Sing your song.
PS:
**** whoever said ‘the sky’s the limit’.
Let’s go for ‘above and beyond.’
rejection -> pain -> problems -> overcoming them -> solving them ->
  ^_____________________________________________________|
Jun 2019 · 175
Heights and Hawks
Julian Delia Jun 2019
My pen feels dead in the water;
It’s got nobody to speak to,
Nobody reads during global slaughter.
I feel like we’re in a temple of evil,
To be sacrificed at an altar.

I don’t want to compete with anyone.
The fragility of the ego -
I find it far too cumbersome.
I don’t want to secure a home loan;
There’s a whole world out there,
Just waiting to be known!
I’ve got beautiful things to be shown,
Skills to hone, places where I want to go;
I wish to soar to the heights where the hawks have flown.

So, I write, and I think, and I dream;
I believe in my ideas, in the thoughts I conceive.
I try to bring my thoughts together,
To create links like a river’s streams.
I do not wish to have to adhere to schedules,
To meet deadlines on the factory floor;
I do not wish to be enslaved to generate revenues.

Freedom is the spontaneity of life,
To walk hand-in-hand with your inner demons,
Like a loving husband and doting wife.
It’s letting passion inflict its distinct fervour,
Letting emotions overload your servers.

I do not wish to be wealthy;
Because of this rat-race,
Our tomorrow looks sickly and unhealthy.
We’re all out here, chasing the next banknote,
Running away from the debt squeezing our throats.
We simply are, there shouldn’t be much more to it.
Everything else is superfluous,
So might as well just lose it.
Just lose it, AaAaAa
Go crazy, AaAaAa
Oh baby...
Jun 2019 · 140
Thunderstruck
Julian Delia Jun 2019
As soon as you glanced at me askance,
My heart jittered, it stood no chance.
If it were up to my heart,
It would already be on my sleeve;
Although it's been tort apart,
Somehow, it still believes.
Musings as told on the *******.
Jun 2019 · 221
Who am I?
Julian Delia Jun 2019
Questions swirl about in my mind’s pool;
The waters are sometimes hot, sometimes cool.
The answers always feel just out of reach,
Like life’s got plenty more lessons to teach.

Questions like: ‘Who in the hell am I?’
‘What happens after I die?’
‘Are we ever going to see world peace?
Or will we be lucky if we make it past July?’

No matter how hard I try to think,
It all feels like there’s no how or why,
Like it’s all a case of swim, or sink.
Random, chaotic determinations of fate;
What we make of it is where we can be great.
We have a say in whether our destiny meets us on time,
Or we decide to show up late.

There is no time to waste; I can hardly wait.
I have a curiosity which I can’t sate;
Unsettled and on edge is how I’d describe my mental state.
I don’t really know who I am, anymore;
I’m experiencing emotions I don’t want to explore.

I do know that I live and breathe;
I also know that I grieve and bleed,
That I have this inner drive to succeed.
I know that I care about human freedom;
I know that I’m plagued by more than a few demons.

Got skeletons in my closet,
A baggage trail that goes for miles;
Got no cash to make a deposit,
Yet I’ll never fail to make you smile,
To make you read my words like they were scripture,
Like sacred inheritance from ancient times.

I know I must be here for a reason;
My existence is just, no act of treason,
No malfeasance, no monsoon that’s out of season.
I am a node on the network, a rogue in a fugue state;
I shall oppose the nation state’s wetwork,
And I will make it disintegrate.
Either that, or I shall die trying;
For who am I,
If not a soul that’s done with crying?
Wrestling with complex emotions and existential questions. Sponsored by heaps of generational trauma, a desensitised existence and a need to understand this ****** up caricature of life we're going through.
Jun 2019 · 197
Darkness
Julian Delia Jun 2019
I don’t destroy people.
If I did,
It would be evil.
Broken, shattered pieces.
Little would be left;
Like Latin America,
After they met measles.

I could sling these words for a living;
I want to be merciful, forgiving,
But I’m failing, constant sinning.
I try to keep the poison away from my tongue,
But I am surrounded by it,
Another Hamlet, about to become undone.

I want to be evil, sometimes;
A thunderstorm.
A harbinger of troubled times,
A bringer of ominous signs.
Amid these blurred lines,
Among these endlessly steep climbs,
I feel death’s clock as it chimes.

Amid bouts of disappointment and rancour,
Of venomous, virulent anger,
Life feels like an unresolved cliffhanger.
I want to be evil, sometimes;
But I’m not.
My train of thought leads me to think life should be lived,
Not bought.
Evil buys you pleasures,
Pleasures I’ve sought before.
There’s nothing to them,
Let them be gone.

Don’t give me reasons to lay this nuke at your doorstep.
Don’t **** with my inflamed, ******* cerebral cortex.
My mind is now the ocean,
And you are in its vortex.
Welcome to the dark side, *****.
May 2019 · 364
Three Years [1]
Julian Delia May 2019
A wide-eyed kid, aged nineteen;
Bottled rage, a kind unseen.
Then, a sudden light beam burst forth;
Like it was a song of ice and fire,
And the Mad Queen met the ******* of the North.

I was killing myself with drugs and *****;
I still am. But, back then,
I was permanently binging.
I had nothing to lose;
I was a soul running loose,
With no clues about all these blues.
Short-fused and self-abused,
And extremely ******* confused.

But then, she showed up;
I hesitantly slowed down.
I was a mine about to blow up,
Whilst she upturned my frown.
At least, that’s what happened, for a while;
It wasn’t long before vitriol and bile.

We were living wild, all functional survival.
Sharing shelter with a woman who was vile;
A mother twisted and snarled up with hate,
A completely ****** up fate complementing a ****** up life.

Somehow, amid the *****, unwashed dishes,
The stench of alcoholism and all the hitches,
The sting of a mother ignoring a daughter’s wishes,
This was when we were the happiest together.
We had nobody, nothing, except for each other.

Bonding over an enemy in common;
Us against the world, baby.
I felt like an angel had been summoned;
I thought I’d won the golden ticket,
Until I realised the paper was laced with a tracer of poison,
And we were getting sickened.

But, during that first year, we were alright;
Hell was around us, but not inside us.
Walking through fire, but not set alight.
We held on; for each other, we went soft,
Like I was Indiana Jones, and you were Lara Croft.

We struggled, we survived, although we never thrived.
We lost everyone around us; remember how I cried?
Our friends, gone with the wind,
They dropped us, or we dropped them,
Like a benefit one rescinds.

We clawed our way out of that black hole,
Said goodbye to the drunk skunk on the couch,
A merry day to get away from that blackened soul.
We had no plans, no real goals;
We were just running away,
And starting anew on our own.

Filled with hope, so open to the world;
So naïve, believing we’d be able to cope.
We’d give it a whirl, we said, holding one another’s hand.
We were lost, like wayward, wind-strewn grains of sand.
But, somehow, we slept fondly in each other’s arms,
Disarmed wholly by each other’s charms.
I loved you, and never wished you any harm.
I gave you all I had and all I knew;
I wish it was enough to get us through.
May 2019 · 190
The Voice
Julian Delia May 2019
“Maybe, if you slipped and fell here...”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”
I walked on, one foot, then the other;
I killed the voice, left it smothered.

“You can get back up as much as you want.
I will come back, with a readied assault.”
“Get out of my head, you ******* psychopath.”
I left the spot I liked, off the beaten path.

As I walked, the dialogue quietened;
Guard down, senses still alert and heightened.
This calm scene is too serene,
And that’s got me frightened.
Permanently damaged, like a collapsed cliff side.
Crumbling down, dead on the inside.

“Aha, I’ve got you now, you weakling of a specimen.
I am your lord now, and misery’s your regimen.”
“I. SAID. I. WON’T. HEAR. IT.”
**** me, this is it, I can’t bear it;
I’m trying to run but my legs are giving out,
I’m trying to scream and shout but there’s no air,
Lungs are burning, blood’s getting sapped,
Can’t do anything, I’m completely trapped.

The only one who’s always there;
The voice from the void speaks viciously,
It whispers that I’m beyond repair.
Oh mother, where have I gone so wrong?
Oh father, why couldn’t I be strong?
Oh brother, why’d we never talk?
Like I was cheese, and he was chalk.

“Nobody will ever read this.
You can put your pen away.”
“Maybe they won’t read it;
But I’ll be ****** if I don’t write it.”
When you find this poem,
Or read it, or hear it from me,
Know that I died a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist,
Know that I died wanting to be free.

I clung to my past,
Glimpsed awkwardly towards the future.
I looked at the present,
Stitched together by sutures.
I can see why a few of us are scared;
Many more than a few.
Hoping to weather the apocalypse,
And watch it with a view.

“I’m done. Last straw, that’s it.
I don’t even want to wake up tomorrow.
You ******* ruined me.”
“No. I just point out the sorrow.
Nobody gives a **** about you;
Stop waiting for something to come through.
It won’t”.
“Not with you in charge, you sick ****.”

I ran out of kind-hearted dialogue a long time ago -
When I speak to myself,
I feel like there’s nothing good for me to find or show.
It’s just the voice from the void,
A conversation I wish I could avoid.

“Take me away.
I don’t want to see another day.
I’m done. **** me.”
“No, you must do it yourself.
Grab the knife, take your life.
Do it swiftly and you’ll die quickly,
If you do it right.”
Probably the most ****** up poem I have ever written. Suicidal ideation is not a ******* joke. Seek help if you need it.
May 2019 · 180
Sold
Julian Delia May 2019
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.
Getting really tired of this ******* life
May 2019 · 2.4k
An act of compassion
Julian Delia May 2019
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?
A poem I wrote with a comrade and a good friend, for an open mic event titled 'Verses for Choice'. The event was hosted and organised by the Pro-Choice Coalition in Malta.
May 2019 · 183
Angst
Julian Delia May 2019
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.

__
Self-explanatory.
May 2019 · 201
Bottom of the Barrel
Julian Delia May 2019
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.

_____
'When society has destroyed all adventure, the only adventure that is left is to destroy that society. Including the self...'
May 2019 · 225
I'll know it when I feel it
Julian Delia May 2019
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.
Do you feel anything?
Apr 2019 · 191
Slipping Away
Julian Delia Apr 2019
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.
R.I.P. Lassana Souleymane. 06/04/19, never to be forgotten.
Apr 2019 · 260
Someone's missing
Julian Delia Apr 2019
I am incomplete.
The great desolation.
Filthy desecration.
A heart’s laceration.

I dream of war, I wish for love.
Send a sign from heavens above;
What must I do?
Must I tear off the velvet glove?
Should I just give my heart a shove?
Just push it, onto life’s dance floor,
Act like I’ll live forevermore.
What must I do?
Must I willingly close that door?
Should I not think of love, anymore?

Someone’s missing, I can feel it.
Hearts must love, I can’t conceal it.
I wonder who that someone is;
In this world of state-run showbiz,
Are there any as angry as me?
Listen, hand each other the key,
Hear and understand to be free.

I hope she’s out there, somewhere.
I hope she’s running with her feet bare,
Freely, without a ******* care.

_____________
To be complete is to be alone and be kind to yourself. To be whole, the self and the other must be able to stand on their own...if we find someone like that, then nothing will stand in our way. Where is she? When will I get there?
Julian Delia Apr 2019
Li kieku jerġa jiġi Kristu,
Lanqas jilħaq jitma ruħ.
Tilħqu taqfluh ġo skola,
Imsallab mill-punt tat-tluq.
Jilħaq jitlef ruħu fi xmara dmugħ,
Hekk kif il-ħajja jduq.
Jerġa jħoss x’jiġifieri in-niket,
Kif jarana naħxu dak li nibet,
L-ambjent tagħna, b’passjoni neqirduh.

Swied il-qalb;
Mument ta’ skiet,
Mument ta’ talb.

Qalb mogħdiet miksija bil-konkrit,
Nesprimi dar-rabja u dan l-inkwiet,
Ngħix il-ħajja mingħajr irbit.
Ngħid dak li nħoss,
Noħroġ dan il-kliem mingħajr intopp,
Nidgħi, meta xi gvern ireddali xi żobb.

Ilni ma nikteb,
Għax b’dan il-kliem ma nafx x’ħa nikseb.
Dil-kuxjenza li xogħla tniggżek,
X’għamilniela biex tfejniha, tgħid?
Għax jien nġibilha skużi, ġieli;
Ġieli, tgħidx kemm nigdeb.

* *

Vera ilni nipprova;
Nipprova naċċetta li nagħmel dak li d-dinja ta’ madwari tapprova,
Sa għamilt kors, ma nafx kif, imma ggradwajt u krejt it-toga.
Tgħallimt, u sirt għalliem,
Ktibt poeżiji li jħalluk bla kliem.
Ippruvajt insib il-paċi u s-sliem,
Qtajt il-pastażati bl-addoċċ,
Iż-żiblata ta’ bla ħsieb.

Xejn ma ħadem;
Xejn, kull ma għamilt inqridt,
Sa ġieli dħalt fid-dejn.
Qisni mort ngħix fi sqaq l-infern.
Donnu, d-destin tiegħi qisu ħaddiem tal-gvern.
Dejjem għajjien u dejjem m’hu sejjer imkien,
Destinat li nolqot in-noti b’mod stunat,
Imwelled f’did-dinja b’ritmu sfrenat.

Min jaf kif jitbellah Kristu,
Jekk jerġa jiġi ħdejna;
Jara kif it-tagħlim insejna,
Kif ngħixu ġo gaġġa mżejna,
Kif mingħalina li sirna s-sidien ta’ dil-gżira ċkejkna.

L-ewwel, inwerwruh bl-injoranza grassa,
Bil-passivita’ ta dil-***** ċassa.
Imbagħad, ngħaxxquh b’kemm hawn minnha jmutu bil-ġuħ,
Biex ma ngħidux *** f’liema direzzjoni sejrin,
Kif ilna għaddejjin; ‘l-aqwa li jien minn ***!’

Ejja ngħidu li ma nsallbuhx, ħa;
Kristu probabbli jtiha għal isfel, li kieku.
Qabel ma jerġa jiġi, jiġġieled ma missieru;
Jgħidlu ‘le, ma rridx ninżel!’

Qalbna, il-qofol mikul bin-nekrożi, tinten,
Bil-mewt madwarna, tittanta u tiżfen.
X’saltna t’Alla; mhux li kien,
Mhux li kien nerġgħu niksbuha maż-żmien.

____________________________________________

‘If­ Christ Came Back’

If Christ came back, he wouldn’t even have the time to feed a single soul. You’d lock him up in a school, crucified from the get-go. He would drown in a river of his own tears, as soon as he tastes life. He would experience sorrow anew, witnessing us destroying that which has blossomed, the very environment which we passionately eradicate.

Blackened, sorrowful heart; a moment of silence, a moment of prayer.

Among pathways covered in concrete, I express this rage and this anxiety, living life with no attachments. I say what I feel, pulling out these words without any resistance, swearing whenever some government shoves its **** down my throat.

I haven’t written in a while, because I don’t really know what I’m going to achieve with these words. This conscience, whose job is to sting, what have we done to it to switch off? I give it excuses, mostly; sometimes, I really do lie to it, a lot.

* *

I’ve really been trying; trying to accept doing what the world around me approves of, I even finished a degree, I don’t know how, but I graduated and rented a toga. I learned, and I became a teacher, too; I wrote poems that leave you speechless. I tried to find peace and serenity, I cut out senseless debauchery, the mindless ******.

Nothing worked; nothing, all I did was destroy myself, going into debt, even. It’s like I started to live in hell’s alley. It seems my destiny is like a government employee; always tired and going nowhere. Destined to hit notes off-key, born in a world with a relentless rhythm.

Who knows how shocked Christ would be, if he ever came back. He’d see how we forgot all his teachings, how we live in decorated cages, how we think we’ve become the lords of this tiny island.

First, we’d terrify him with our crass ignorance, with the passivity of the dazed masses. Then, we’ll make him feel worse when he sees how many of us are starving to death, not to mention the direction we’ve taken, how long we’ve been going: ‘as long as I come out on top, eh!’

Let’s say we wouldn’t crucify him, maybe; Christ would probably jump off a cliff, if anything. Before coming back, he’d argued with his father, ‘no, I don’t want to go back there again!’ Our hearts are rotting in their core, necrotic, with death dancing around us, taunting us. God’s glory? Yeah, right; if only, if only we could find that again, in due time.
Happy Easter, a*sholes.
Apr 2019 · 717
No one ever
Julian Delia Apr 2019
No one ever told me it would get so lonely.
That there would be no one home, waiting to hold me.
Is there another way? Can someone please show me?
I look like I’m swimming, but I’m drowning, homie.

No one ever said that everything is a lie,
That wars should be waged without asking how or why,
That we all live in a corporate-sponsored pig-sty,
Where protesting nets you a Colombian necktie.

No one ever mentioned the predatory interests,
Nor the dimension of mandatory contingents;
Never thought I would hear of “peace-keeping” armies,
Nor of these deceitful, political parties.

What we were told as children was very different,
Like a testimony that’s too inconsistent.
I remember hearing about true liberty,
That the world aims to eliminate poverty.

We weren’t taught to understand, digest and think;
We follow the invisible hand to the brink.
We did hear that anyone who works hard, gets there;
Then why are we starving whilst working our bones bare?

No one ever prepared us for this **** right here.
No warning about how life hits like Everclear.
At least, now I know how ****** we are.
Drinks are on me; let’s **** up the bar.
'No one ever' - coming to a beat near you soon. I've found my flow, now it's time to find music to put to it.
Julian Delia Apr 2019
Ħadna buzz.
Fawra tespandi.
Jien u int.

*     *     *
(in English)

We had fun.
Steam, growing in size.
You and me.
Last line: Maltese inverts 'you and me' in English (so 'jien' is actually 'me', and 'int' is you).
Mar 2019 · 355
Rancour
Julian Delia Mar 2019
The bitterness of hate and disappointment.
The hollowness of state appointments,
The shallowness of reform,
Like an anti-aging ointment.

Hidden histories, systems built on blood –
Forbidden mysteries, bodies of martyrs,
Unmarked graves covered in mud.
I understand, now – fully self-aware,
To talk is not enough; to do, we must dare.

No government is better than the self-governed.
Remember; the betterment of society must happen now,
Before we ruin ourselves, to be later discovered.
Remember that the rich have always been afraid;
Remember their long-standing debt that is yet to be paid.

Retribution is within reach;
Landlords, puppets and their armed thugs,
Parasites with no contributions, akin to a leech.
Warlords and their muppets, ***** profiteers,
Genocidal crimes, no restitution, just greed.

You may have killed off most of us,
But you will never **** the black flag.
You will simply make more of us,
For surrender to your ill-will is never our plan.
For every ‘example’ you make out of us,
We’ll just keep on coming back.

We are the anarchists,
The nightmare you’ve tried to bury.
Down with rich masochists,
Let righteous fury tear apart their territory!
RANCOUR, RANCOUR, ENCORE!
Mar 2019 · 426
Heart & Soul
Julian Delia Mar 2019
The pen and the paper;
Like a pensieve for my memories,
So I can ponder them later.
For the thoughtful and the pensive,
For minds fraught full of traps and defences.

I pour my heart and soul into these lines,
With no goal except to make art that’s sublime.
I fiddle with rhythm with methodical precision,
I riddle your mind and meddle with it,
Like your doctor’s prescription.

All I want is for you to listen,
To digest my thoughts, to make an acquisition.
Reject it, hate it if you must,
Denigrate it, fulfil your bloodlust!

But, I implore you, do not ignore it.
Explore my mind forevermore if you wish,
Or store it for another day if you plan on giving it a miss.
Just acknowledge this:
I don’t want to be a poet who dies in obscurity.
I want to reach out now, to taste of human unity.
I don’t want to just die for what I stand for;
I want to live, so give me an encore.
Mar 2019 · 242
Burn the Vatican
Julian Delia Mar 2019
The world’s first, major corporation,
Architects of the enslavement of entire nations.
Shedding blood in the name of God;
Never has there been a greater fraud.

The Catholic church in Malta has held hegemony for more than 2,000 years.
They have nurtured moral subjugation in my country,
Even though the end of their shabby, crumbling reign nears.
Like us, there were many others;
Global sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers,
Ripped apart from each other and forced to suffer.

Who knows how many brilliant minds sizzled at a stake?
Who knows how many resilient cultures fizzled away?
Eradicated, dissolved like a stain –
The house of God, built on a sacrificial altar of pain.

Hidden hands seizing lands,
Forbidden acts, thieving bands,
Bands of God-awful sacks of ****,
The kind with souls so blackened with grit,
They wouldn’t even burn in their own version of Hell,
Mostly because Satan wouldn’t want to deal with that awful smell.

I hope you’re resting well,
Living swell in the Vatican –
We are going to burn it down,
Vengeful like an enslaved African.
I dare you to change my mind about them. Do you need proof?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/12/australia/cardinal-george-pell-sentencing-intl/index.html
Mar 2019 · 332
Rebuilding bridges
Julian Delia Mar 2019
The white flag has been raised.
The earth lies scorched and blazed;
Medals were pinned on chests,
Testament to the best murderers,
Killers being given glory and praise.

The war is finally over.
Go home, soldier.
Pick up the hammer and the nail,
For houses have been torn down –
Bombs have fallen like rain, explosive gales.

Now, the bridges must be rebuilt;
Lost hopes must be found,
Somewhere in the debris and guilt.
POWs must be returned safe and sound,
The world must continue to spin, at a tilt.

Bridges can be rebuilt, yes,
But imagine if we tried to not burn them down, at all.
Empty cups can be refilled,
But imagine if we never dried them out, how we’d all stand tall.

If we always choose war,
We shall never know peace.
If we always even the score,
We shall sire desperate pleas.
A poem that is (sort of) a sequel to 'Burning Bridges'.
Mar 2019 · 152
The Plight
Julian Delia Mar 2019
We sing,
But nobody truly listens.

We dance,
But nobody truly sees.

We recite,
But nobody truly understands.

We paint,
But nobody truly resonates.

We write,
But nobody really reads.

We act,
And everyone applauds,
Everyone says 'that's so true,'
And everyone moves on.

The plight of the artist.
Requiescat in pace.
Beginning of humanity - 2019.
Capitalism kills art.
Feb 2019 · 156
Backs against walls
Julian Delia Feb 2019
This is all I see.
The stump of a dead tree,
Murdered, in an enraged spree.
There seems to be nothing left for you or me.

What else can I do?
I make poetry to cry to,
For when there’s nothing left inside you.
All I see are backs against walls,
Hands behind heads, as liberty falls.

I don’t have a place here.
I serve no functional role.
It’s like I don’t even have a name,
It’s like death already took its toll.

Why am I like this?
Dangerous, like a snake’s hiss,
Lost, far from any kind of bliss.
An anarchist, and an artist,
Doomed, someone who history won’t miss.

Foretold to never die old,
But rather, alone and cold,
In a rash moment, probably defiantly bold.
I’d rather be so, than be bought and sold.
This might be the last one.
Feb 2019 · 222
Loss
Julian Delia Feb 2019
The wind whistled with wistful woe.
I saw my sins written in blood, on the wall;
Spilling gin like an alcoholic flood, in an empty hall.
Tortured by demons, just going at it toe-to-toe.
My faults, my bad calls –
All the catastrophic somersaults,
And all the many falls.

Sometimes, I’ll forget to eat or sleep,
To relax and unwind, fall back to a natural beat –
All I’m here to do is bring you heat,
This series of verses that echo and repeat,
The kind that take over your soul, ergo, it concedes defeat.
I chose to neglect my needs,
I smoke my ****, go berserk with this craft,
I hone my intellect like I’m scared of being daft.
Besides myself, I have nothing left.
Inept at fitting in, not even close to adept,
Stuck in red tape like I’m buried in applications I’m filling in,
Living in this world of endless theft.

This is all I’ve got,
So I give it all I’ve got.
One chance, one shot –
Taking a soldier’s stance,
Choosing a ******’s spot.
A verbal marksman,
A thousand-yard stare –
Swinging like Tarzan,
To dream is to dare.

Thing is, pretty words and tight rhymes don’t matter,
Not when you can’t fall asleep.
‘Tis a fitting curse, writing wise lines –
No matter how clever or steep,
Nothing helps with those terrors from the deep.

The heart ache I have;
I think it finally broke me.
This rat race we made;
I think it finally choked me.
I think I’m done;
Nothing can console me.
Poetry from my mental depository.
Feb 2019 · 217
The Electorate [02/06/17]
Julian Delia Feb 2019
A silence, saliently insisting on its one day of reign,
Reminding you to reflect before you act,
To think beyond what you could gain.

We look back at our ancestors,
Recalcitrant in the face of the British, the French;
We praise their heroics, remember them in feasts,
Yet still, we are divided, brawling like beasts.

Against the oppressor, we stood united;
A colonised nation, struggling for identity.
Master-less we finally became, celebrating independence;
Yet now, we have subverted to sadist deference.

Men in sharp suits and their slimy, convincing faces;
They like to think they hold all the aces,
That they can and will divide and conquer all of the planet’s open spaces.
They tell us what to think, what to feel, what to do, what to vote,
They’ll tell you when to swim or when to sink,
When to squeal and how to heal,
What is true when you don’t have a clue,
And what to quote when you want to sound profound.
They are snivelling, Rolex-wielding, aftershave-wearing ******* with an arrogant bearing,
And they have no issues with asking you about why the *******’re glaring.

So, I suppose, today there's not much choice;
There is a snarling wolf on one hand,
And an angry bear on the other.
When your choice is that bad,
Why should you even bother?

'By any means necessary', Malcolm X would say.
There seems to be no solution,
Excepting a call for armed revolution.
Anarchists and troublemakers, unite;
Time to take down the state,
Like cutting the line to a kite.
So I found this old, forgotten rant of a poem as I'm reviewing my folders, and I decided to give it a face lift, tighten up a few sloppy verses and upload it again. This was written right before the June 2017 election in Malta.
Feb 2019 · 340
Seems wrong, feels right
Julian Delia Feb 2019
Seems wrong, feels right;
Feels like longing, seems like it’s alright.
Like it’s alright to ignore sentiment,
Despite my heart being set alight,
Intensely bright, incandescent.

Rationality, grounded in reality –
In opposition,
Spirituality, grounded in alacrity.
When these two are bound together,
We drift through life peacefully, light as a feather.
When these two oppose each other,
Then we must compose ourselves, or otherwise suffer.

There is so much our two eyes cannot see;
It’s the third one that really sets you free.
When internal conflict arises,
When infernal flames contract your irises,
Know that on the inside,
Deep in your heart, where you cannot hide,
Know that you know what’s right.

It might seem irrational,
It might feel insane;
It might be unfashionable,
It might even sound lame –
Your decision is only limited by you,
The perspective which is your frame.

Listen to your heart’s hidden chambers;
Turn its volume up, like your annoying neighbours.
Let your soul speak;
For our lives are not long,
And the future seems rather bleak.
Following instinct = synchronicity.
Synchronicity = higher existence.
Higher existence = free drugs??
Feb 2019 · 481
Details
Julian Delia Feb 2019
I love how we could literally talk for hours –
Lighting a spark in each others’ hearts,
Figuratively glowing like meteor showers.
I love singing that one song with you;
You know the one,
The one we sang in the rain,
The one that always rings true.

I can’t stop myself from looking at you,
Not without this twinkle of wonder in my eyes.
Certainly not without this tingle that runs along my spine,
Not without a heartbeat so loud that it sounds like thunder.
You make me smile so much, my face hurts sometimes;
You take me high to places with better climes,
Spiritual spaces, elevation by design.

The signs are all there –
Lives running on parallel lines,
With no direction, no need to know where.
Unburdened, beautiful, loving care,
Sensations unheard of,
Dutifully calming like someone stroking your hair,
Hearts laid out to each other like we’ve got a spare.

I love how grateful we are for each other’s presence.
The word ‘hateful’ doesn’t even exist here,
It’s almost like you make me forget its essence.
Every second is a learning opportunity,
And you’ve helped me learn so many lessons already –
Maybe we should call our hang-outs ‘life sessions’.

I love how even a hug carries so much weight,
Momentous in its significance,
Enough to make my heart flutter like I’m late for a date.
I’m going to miss you so much when you leave.
Thank you for reminding me how to wear my heart on my sleeve.
Okay, this is probably the best poem I've ever written.
I wasn't joking when I used the title 'Smitten.'
Feb 2019 · 256
L
Julian Delia Feb 2019
L
I hope wherever you are,
Whatever you’ve done,
Know that I’m sorry I wasn’t the right one.
We almost killed each other,
Became hateful, when we were once lovers.

I don’t want to write this,
I don’t want you to read it;
Part of me still feels you don’t deserve it,
Yet here it is –
I’m sorry for making my issues yours,
For the forest’s worth of used tissues,
For the days of unrest, weeping on the floor.

I hope you’re happy,
Because I know you weren’t.
It was apparent and evident, I chose not to see it;
Selfish needs and the wrong words acted as intermediates,
I wasn’t really there, I shouldn’t have been.
I was recovering, and I was still weak and lean.
Silently uttering, when all I wanted was to scream.

Maybe one day we’ll forgive one another,
Until then, I think you know who this is.
I was passing by and I just wrote this,
Sorry for the bother.

* * *

This is not an attempt to rekindle a catastrophe,
This is quite simply an overdue apology.
I’m not accepting all the blame, either;
Excepting the shame I felt for letting you get into my head,
I have become stronger and wiser,
And I wish to use this wisdom to make the world brighter.

I’m in your street because I’m publishing a book,
Or at least trying to;
Not that poetry ever meant that much to you.
But, it has brought me and my thoughts here again,
To the times where our fights were not a matter of if,
But when.

I have found it very hard to love again;
After ‘You’, anxiety killed me, made me upend,
Upend everything, a bevvy of sick feelings,
Memories of every time we had each other begging and kneeling.
I’m still in the process of healing,
This is my way of doing that,
Coping and healing.
I hope you found yours.

_______________
Jan 2019 · 449
Restraint
Julian Delia Jan 2019
Held back, with a knack for spectacle,
A need to be, specifically, to be beheld.
A paradoxical existence –
An oxymoronic persistence,
An urge to merge unsuppressed emotion with the notion of defensive insistence.

There ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, indeed;
I paint these scenes with fine lines in my mind’s eye’s canvas,
The thought of you floats through like the haze of cannabis,
You are the source of that which I seek, thou art the seed.

I attempt to gaze deeply, as I love to do,
Yet I cannot do so unfazed, it is a price I pay steeply,
For sadness overwhelms me, leaving me blue.
Instead, I cast myself in a lifetime of debauchery,
Each and every night hoping it’ll be the one that does one in,
That one night it’ll be too much, too out of the ordinary.

Forgive me for making promises I can’t keep –
I guess I am a grown man when I can no longer weep,
When tears have dried out a long time ago,
When pain sears memories that died like an ember’s last glow.

I want to be able to just be inactive emotionally,
To respect boundaries reflective of love that is felt platonically.
I am capable of doing that just about as much as a bull is able to tip-toe around a china shop.
Self-explanatory ****, I don't know what else to say or do at this point
Jan 2019 · 364
Stranded
Julian Delia Jan 2019
Stricken-down, struggling and stranded,
Dealt a hand that was quite underhanded.
I am done with never settling down,
Always having to run –
I am standing my ground stubbornly,
I am a storm of sounds,
Discourteously curmudgeonly.

I will not accept defeat -
I feel naught except the beat,
The rhythm, the flow, the show –
The hurt dissipates as I let go.
On these two feet,
I fight the finite, finicky, fraudulent conmen of deceit.
It’ll serve you right when you get roasted by the roaring heat,
When mother death cometh with hungry babes at her ****.

Stranded or at ease, it doesn’t matter,
Landed like a breeze, serving poetry on a platter.
I’ve been feeling like my time is really up,
Like there’s the ceiling and all I can do is get numb.
That, or just ******* wander off and die;
Just like that, with no explanation as to how or why.

I can’t go on like this, I can’t blow off life’s bliss.
Thing is, if I knew I was going to die and live on somewhere else,
I can’t even think of what I’d actually miss.
I don't know what to do with my poetry to be honest...doesn't really seem like anyone wants to read it, anymore. Maybe it's time to let go.
Jan 2019 · 284
Smitten
Julian Delia Jan 2019
Smitten by her charms,
Driven by a desire to have her in my arms.
Here I am again, with a paper and a pen -
My thoughts are devouring each other,
Like walking into a crazed lions' den.

I don't know what else to do;
I have been wrong before,
I have been left wanting more -
But, I can't deny there's something true,
Something real and deep,
Beyond trivial, the stuff of dreams.

I wake up, and I see an imprint of that gorgeous face,
That bright smile that could illuminate the darkness of space.
It's killing me, knowing that this is not happening.
I'm willing to move on, I know I have to,
Yet I am too busy reeling from this crash landing,
From realising that all I want is to hug you,
And hold on for dear life.

I am yearning for you,
But life has deemed I must not;
Our journeys must take us where we are due,
And evidently, what I want is not what I got.
I wish I could explain this urgency -
It feels like a need greater than myself,
Like the call for help in a national emergency.
My thoughts call out for respite,
Yet you override them like an insurgency.

Please, don't get me wrong;
I don't want to stifle a spirit that's so free, so strong.
Just know that should I ever set foot in your sanctuary,
I will leave offerings and heap up blessings,
I will be there, even in the bitter cold of January.

I just wish you felt this as fully and fiercely,
I wish we were just dancing with destiny,
That our lives found a way to intertwine truly and sincerely.
But,
I guess they won't.
I'm back, at least for a while.
Nov 2018 · 428
The Language of Hate
Julian Delia Nov 2018
I am so ******* done.
I am now a loaded gun,
So you’d better ******* run.
I am hateful, like a forsaken son,
I am spiteful, like the blazing sun.

An appetite for self-destruction,
Akin to handling dynamite without any instructions.
The chaotic disorder that runs amok,
The scavenging hoarder pillaging dead schmucks.
This language is those dark corners left unilluminated by love,
A savage from unknown lands coming over the ridge,
That unsated, insane impulse that turns push into shove.

Throbbing veins and demonic thoughts,
Sobbing dames and manic frauds.
Your mental kingdom, your palace of peace –
It all falls apart, piece-by-piece.
Hate is like a saboteur, sneaking in,
It robs life of its grandeur, sinking its teeth in.

Rhythm just doesn’t happen,
You feel stricken, like you’re borderline bed-ridden,
Feeling as used as a ***** napkin.
You see hate in every pair of dead eyes,
In every new set of ******* lies,
Whenever another inner child dies,
Whenever another bomb-dropping jet flies.

We have two languages, in this life –
The language of love, and the language of hate.
Which one do you want to speak?
Which realm do you seek?
Choose wisely;
Mistakes are not taken very kindly.
I couldn't help myself - this is a counter-part to a previous poem, the Language of Love.
Julian Delia Nov 2018
PART III: THE LOCKED DOOR

The straw that broke the camel’s back.
The lethal blow that made his resilience crack.
Think, analyse the commensurate reaction to his fate;
Paralysed and desperate, in his own words.

‘Asphyxiated’ seems like such a clean word;
‘He died of asphyxiation,’ that’s what the articles wrote.
What about dying of starvation? Let me elaborate on this note –
I meant, dying from being starved of hope.
I hardly think one ‘asphyxiating’ does this justice.
How about ‘a sense of debilitating hopelessness’, instead?
Or maybe ‘hopelessness that feels like all-encompassing dread?’

Because that’s what all of Gaza feels right now.
How? How the **** did we get here?
Year after year, Palestinians die and suffer.
Fear after fear, they come alive, one after the other.
‘We’re dead, already’ –
How does reading something like that not make you feel unsteady?

So, what do you do after suffering like that?
Nothing, except for lying down flat on your bed,
Crying, watching everybody around you dying.
And then, when you can’t cry anymore,
When you realise your entire country was treated like an eye sore,
When you can’t take it anymore,
That’s when you lock the ******* door.
That’s when Asma broke through that door,
To find her prodigal son dead, collapsed on the floor.
I finished it; Mohanad, I hope I have done your soul justice.
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