whispers of sea
where the cold storm
gathers in the grey
sky, and the waves
pound the shore
running back
pushing down
arching like
fiery cats,
the ache of the storm
a tearful cloud
the song of
a poem.

The world is aging
It's years are increasing
Goodbye 2016
The year filled with
Doubts and bad choices
How can Britain exit?
How can America vote for trump?
How can Zambia re-elect Lungu?
Zuma and Rousseff are corrupt
Ali,Castro and King Adulyadej are dead
Is this not the Apocalypse of
The downfall of humanity
And good morals?
In a few days this world
Will be turning 2017 years old
On the first everybody will celebrate
But for the bad choices made
No body knows
What the year has for them
That's why I entitled
This poem untitled 2017.

The poem is either a confession or a rifle
It remains deadly regardless

The disorder, the struggle, the heartbreak; the criminal record, the tears, the drugs, the breakdown, the music, the suicide attempt, the riot, the midnight, the fire, the comedown and the uprising

The girl you spent nights awake over, writing poems you knew could never live up, who you were always afraid would ran like hell and never looked back if she ever saw through you,
The night you got arrested, trying to spray paint a manifesto on a red brick wall because you didn't know how else to make them hear you, and you couldn't wipe your own tears through the handcuffs so you had to let your face tell everyone that you weren't as brave as you thought you were,
The boy who died just months after his 18th birthday, who never wanted anything more than to disappear and finally got his wish except in your flashes of memory and dreams of a different life,
The day you first stood in the street with your fists clenched tight around a sign you held high as God and twice as loud, and you felt ignited for the first time in your life like you could burn up everything that held the world down with a Bic lighter and unshakable conviction

So this is where you find me,
Somewhere between the personal and the political,
From the needle in the groove to the back of the squad car
From the drunken night to the show of solidarity
From the "I can't go on anymore" to the "A luta continua"
From the relapse to the rise,
You'll find me in the poem, and I'll be fighting either way

There was a time, where I was all alone.
Shivering, depressed, afraid.
Always thought, I was destined.
Destined to face everything alone.

Until you came.
You showed me what it feels to be me.
How two is better than one.
And held my soul within your grasp, close to your heart.
Like two indestructible forces,
We tackled life's challenges.
With you by my side,
Nothing is ever impossible, only improbable.

But the day I feared,
The day I hoped never came,
came.

You left.
Like all the others who said won't leave.
I was crushed. Murdered.
Your soul, was the only suspect.

... why?
Why did you left me, with such bittersweet memories,
Only to take them away in the end?
Was it something I did?
Was it something I said?
... why?

Now all I'm left,
Are knifes through my heart.
Clinging onto a tattered soul.
And memories.

Memories we once shared, embraced, loved.
Gone. All. Gone.

she sees the world in layers
her subconscious is in control
her exterior is only but a temple
for she knows that the walls of her temple
will return to the soil while her sou
photosynthesises into the universe.

- t.m

Umaasa ako
Umaasa na may pag-asa tayo
Umaasa na nagbabakasakali
Umaasa na maging tayo

Mahirap umasa
Pero sa totoo lang
Aasa ako para sayo
Baka pwede...

Sa isang sulyap ng ngiti mo
Natutunaw ang puso ko
Pilit na itinatago ang nararamdaman
O tila manhid ka lamang

Ngunit nakakapagod
Nakakapagod na habulin ka
Na bigyang saysay ang mayroon tayo
Ano nga ba ang mayroon tayo?

Wenn wallende Wolken
Wie Wattebauschen
Den Himmel berauschen,
Die Sterblichen lauschen
Dem Klang der ewig unendlichen
Freiheit.

I.
This is just another bad poem
Just vomited-thoughts-left-on-paper poem
This is a collection of grammatical errors
This would surely make my English teacher cringe
But no worries, I didn’t write this for her

II.
This bad poem is for you

May my subject and verb disagreement
remind you of all those misunderstandings that lead to raised voices
and nights where I cried myself to sleep

Sentence construction was never my strength, it still isn’t, maybe that’s why you never truly understood me—
called me difficult and bipolar
You said that I was too much

Did it ever occur to you that you might just misread me, like homonyms,
same words but with different meanings
misread my jealousy with accusations,
my concern for excessive affection

You said that I loved you too much
but darling, did you even love me at all?

Did I put too much meaning on your words,
turned them into similes and metaphors?
Turned your literal statements into figures of speech
You told me that you liked me,
so I blissfully interpreted it as a hyperbolic expression— called it love when obviously it wasn’t

III.
I was never good at using punctuations
I put too much commas,
unnecessary, misused, I kept trying to hold on
Afraid of the inevitable end,

Switched to semi-colons in an attempt to make it a few words longer

Because despite all our grammatical errors
no matter how shameful our piece of literature was to the English language

It was beautiful to the untrained eye,
To those who read poetry as it is
To those who don’t dig deep in search of true meaning behind the metaphors
It was beautiful to me

But I eventually learned that infinitives and infinities are different,
in spite of sharing infinite as the root word
Like our love,

started with something so promising
but unlike most novels,
there’s no happy ending

So I accepted defeat,
accepted the inevitable and bitter end
No more committing the same mistakes over and over again,
the same words over and over again,

Accepted the fact that synonyms existed,
words with the same meaning but also entirely different
new and unfamiliar, foreign and peculiar

IV.
I accepted defeat
No more commas or semi-colons
We have reached the couplet of our free formed sonnet—

I was never good with endings, I don’t think I’ll ever be,
So darling I hand you the pen, set us both free.

On empty street  
As I pass by
My faith fades
As there is no shades
Just  fallen leaves
Just fallen leaves

Oh lé mother earth
Behold these greedy humans
Behold them exploiting you
Their eyes glows
with never ending thirst
Their hearts are darker then the dark
And a mind of hatred

On empty street  
As I pass by
My faith fades
As there is no shades
Just  fallen leaves
Just fallen leaves

They are on verge of destruction
After  every hurricane
They blame each others lands for climate change
Non of them really even bothered to ask their conscience
And know the devil within

They won't change
They think freedom is
To greed to exploit
And they term it as exploring the capability of mother nature
For nurturing their kids

Oh lé! mighty storm
Vanish their lands
Oh lé!  mighty storm
Wash away  their greed
Freeze their lands
For they won't change
For they won't change

On empty street  
As I pass by
My faith fades
As there is no shades
Just  fallen leaves
Just fallen leaves

~Naidu Chandra Pegu ~