there's no time for love
and no room for consolation

but

there's time for disappointment  
and room for failure

Mingħajr flus,
La tgħannaq u lanqas tbus –
Hekk qalulna l-imgħallma tal-passat.
Nesew javżawna *** is-serq sfaċċat;
Lanqas ħasbu *** kif il-moralita’ ta’ pajjiżna spiċċat.

Qawl li jiżvela realta’ kerha;
Messaġġ li tassew iġegħlek tħares lejn il-mera.
Mingħajr flus, aqbad u insa’ d-drittijiet!
Dak li qiegħed ngħid m’huwiex sigriet;
Għall-liberta’ tal-pajjiż,
Bkew l-ommijiet, u mietu l-missirijiet.

Issa, minflok, il-liberta’ tmur għand l-ogħla negozjant.
Sadanittant, tefawha ghal bejgħ, u gidbulek;
Qalulek li għal ġid tiegħek,
Huma u jidħku bik u jdeffsu idejhom ġo butek.

Bil-flus, mela, tagħmel triq fil-baħar!
Bil-flus, ibni torri ħalli jkollok biex tiftaħar!
Mingħajr il-flus, insa’ s-saqaf *** rasek,
Ara taħseb li xi ħadd ħa jagħti kasek!
Mingħajr il-flus, ara minn fejn ha ġġib l-ikel,
Kif ħa titma lill-uliedek mingħajr ma jkollok tfittex fiż-żibel.

Bil-flus, pero’, tħabbilx moħħok;
Mill-maġġoranza tal-poplu,
Tistħix tigi alabibżobbok.
Mistoqsija waħda għad fadalli:
Gheżież antenati li ġew qabilna, li messew xtutna –
Hawn x’għamilna lilna nfusna?

__________

(in English)

Without money,
You shall receive neither hugs, nor kisses -
That's what the wise men of old said.
They forgot to warn us about shameless theft;
They didn't think about our country's morality,
In decline.

A proverb that reveals an ugly truth;
A message that forces you to really look at a mirror.
Without money, forget your rights!
What I am now saying is no secret;
For this country's liberty,
Mothers have cried, fathers have died.

Nowadays, liberty goes to the highest bidder;
In the mean time, they put it up for sale, lying to you;
They told you it's for your own good,
As they laugh and dip their hands in your pockets.

With money, then, build a road in the sea!
With money, build a tower so you'll have plenty to boast about!
Without money, forget a roof over your head;
Don't even think someone will pay attention!
Without money, figure out where food is coming from,
How you're gonna feed your kids without dipping your hands in trash.

With money, however, don't fret;
As for the rest of the population,
Do not be embarrassed to admit you don't give a ****.
I only have one question left:
Dear ancestors who came before us, who touched our shores -
What have we done to ourselves?

“death everywhere, not age or ancient, just an infiltrated lack of life”

a puzzling, troubling line in a personal message,
instantly isolated for further review,
needy indeedy for a second medical opinion,
for it’s a description of two,
an actual place and a state of being

a place where death seems more commonplace,
not from agedness or honor,
but from a madness drunk from a special cocktail of
heat, guns and pseudo-rock stars, with beer chasers

imbibed by those who imagine themselves INRL  
in a movie genre of specialized urban cowboys,
subset horror flick,
self-appointed angels

part of a world view
so pervasive that it infiltrates the mental water supply
and modifies the pure children early on

demeaning existence, with a sense, a sendup,
life is unreal, cheap, so taking it-is ok,
justice delivered, for we angels,
are subset,
angels of death

in a country where
seven out of ten believe in angels,
and one in four confident that
the sun revolves around the Earth

look to blame
polluted water
the ever-overheated atmosphere,
bringing typhoon and storm,

I do not know

how be sun and water,
the essences, the originations of all life
today come to the planet days still
clear and warm,
yet can not infiltrate our personal mystery,
respire, re-spark the notion of the spirit,

the simple sanctity of life peculiarly human

Frozen in place I stood,
A deer caught in a hunter’s crosshair.
I never thought you would,
But you did; you killed me, right there.

I am angry at myself, most of all;
For staying when I should have left,
For not dodging the bullet and taking the fall.
Twice now, I found myself broken;
Carelessly adrift in life,
Like a raft on the ocean.
Too much pain this chest,
These monsters in my head
Feel like an obstacle I cannot best.

I don’t just want to be loved;
I want us all to love and understand one another.
‘It’s not possible, we’re too different,’
Those who wish to rebuttal will answer.
No, that is the distant path you chose,
I choose to keep my humanity close.

And yet, I cannot stop the terrifying flashbacks.
You made me feel like a train veering off its tracks.
Like a bridge that leads to a precipice,
Nothing but a cold, dark abyss.
Meet the millennials -
The most criticised generation,
Suffering from emotional stagnation,
Raised on a steady diet of instant gratification.

‘What do you want, then?’
I want us to feel the soil with our bare feet.
To associate freely with others we meet,
Not bow down to the pretension of the elite.
To embrace our soul,
Not shun it and drive it into a locked room;
To retrace our role,
Not simply run our life’s course to its doom.

We are being led astray,
Our hopes and dreams hidden away.
We have no room for thought, little to say,
For few want to go out of their way.
No criticism, no originality -
No witticism, no vitality.
We are criticised for criticising,
And we are ostracised when we act defying.

We are the paralysed;
Our fears leave us immobilised,
Anxiety and depression,
Killing variety of expression.
We languish in prisons
That we build for ourselves in our own head;
We have nightmarish visions,
Like a guild of the living dead.

Growing up my parents were always selfish. They'd rather subsidize tasteful cars than their own child's education so they could prove worthy of societal thinking.
They'd rather finance love through glamorous things instead of investing in actual intimacy.

Maybe if loneliness wasn't my parental figure then this existential adult life wouldn't be spent in monotonous cognitive states

My heart
Feels like a frostbitten cave nobody should ever go in.
My soul
Feels exhausted, drained and spread really thin.
My mind
Feels like its fighting battles it can never win.

I find my thoughts
Consumed with anger and despair,
Evil feelings who have created a lair –
A base of operations within my mind,
Staring at the world with a terrifying glare.

And yet, despite all this,
Nothing kills me more than being alone.
This need to experience humanity
Is not simply an act of vanity,
Or a call for attention,
But an attempt at reclaiming sanity.

We are the loneliest generation of all time;
Previous overlords used force to rule,
And whoever didn’t follow was lambasted,
Marked as a traitor and a base fool.
Now, force is merely a tool,
One in many of a lethal arsenal.

Social hierarchies are fake, sometimes downright farcical –
Now, we are divided and conquered.
Our communities have collided,
Our love for each other is drained and flustered.
We are armed with shields of prejudice,
Careening towards a perilous precipice
Of watching out only for ourselves,
With no room in our hearts for anyone else.

I just wish I could let go –
I wish I was an atom of boiling water,
About to break free and become steam,
I wish to taste of true freedom,
To at least get one, tiny gleam.
Yet,
I find myself weary, tired and trapped,
A torturous routine so well-travelled
That, at this point, I could say my brain has it mapped.

I close my eyes
And see visions of you I wish I could forget.
I wish I’d looked before I leapt,
Rather than live with this pain and regret.
I close my eyes, and see
Years of seeking somewhere I belong,
Brothers and sisters with whom I can stand strong.
Yet,
All I seem to find
Is people struggling with their daily grind,
Souls that are just as tired as mine, if not more.

And so, I find myself
Dealing with this constant craving,
Ranting and raving,
Hoping that this frosty cave is still open to reclaiming,
Hoping that my soul is still worth saving,
And that my mind still finds this battlefield worth braving.