The Invention Of Inhumanity

Every time there is a spectacle of cold-blooded cruelty —

guts pulled out,

genitals carved into warnings,

newborns torn apart while still latched

to their dead mothers, 

humans rush to call it inhuman.

I’ve always found that

exorbitantly hilarious.

As if cruelty arrived from elsewhere.

As if it trespassed.

As if it forgot it was home.

Civilisation begins here.

Religion begins here.

Inheritance, borders, lineage, gods, 

all drafted in the handwriting

of brothers slaughtering brothers,

sons and fathers spilling blood

over symbols 

they will later teach children 

to respect.

And we still pretend

this is not our most reliable instinct.

What is it,

if not comedy,

to name the most consistent human behaviour

after something 

we insist we are not?

“Inhuman” is not a judgement.

It’s a reflex.

A linguistic recoil.

The sound a species makes

when it catches its own reflection

mid-swing

and looks away.

No monsters.

No deviations.

No bad apples.

Just design.

Violence is not an invention.

It is a ceremony.

A ritual.

A christening.

We gift-wrap it.

Sanctify it.

Normalise it.

Teach it through uniforms, oaths,

and bullet-riddled ethics.

When it becomes uncomfortable,

we rename it.

Distance it.

Call it inhuman

and resume normal functioning.

“Inhuman” is not condemnation.

It’s hygiene.

A way to keep the hands clean

while the blood on the floor

learns to dry.

No other species does this.

No other species kills

and then negotiates vocabulary

to feel innocent again.

Only humans commit atrocity

and demand applause

for feeling conflicted about it.

That is the real evolution.

Empathy didn’t civilise us.

It refined the excuse.

Gave us grief convincing enough

to hold a knife

without our hands trembling.

This is not inhuman.

This is humanity

unedited.

No fall from grace.

No corruption.

No anomaly.

Just a species

doing exactly

what it was built to do, 

and inventing a word

to pretend

it had a choice.

Pea-Sized

Floccinaucinihilipilification. 

A rather audacious attempt

to describe the futility

of considering yourself inconsequential

of being too small to make a difference.

Makes me wonder, 

have they never heard of the amygdala?

The amygdala is tiny.

Pea-sized.

Which feels irresponsible,

considering it governs

most of human civilisation.

A soft biological switch

deciding when your shoulders drop,

when your voice apologises,

when your life narrows

and you call it realism.

One pea.

Running households.

Running marriages.

Running economies.

Running entire bloodlines

on fear-based logic.

Families are built around it.

Fathers who shout

because fear learned to speak loudly.

Mothers who stay

because fear memorised endurance.

Children who behave

because fear works better

than affection.

No one calls it fear.

They call it values.

Relationships follow.

We marry not out of love,

but out of timing.

Out of panic.

Out of the terror

of being the last one left

at the table of normalcy.

We mistake fear for compatibility.

Silence for peace.

Longevity for success.

Divorce is feared

more than decay.

Loneliness more than dishonesty.

A bad marriage is more respectable

than an amicable exit.

You wake up every day

to a job you hate

because a pea

told you starvation

is more frightening

than disappearance.

This is not cowardice.

This is conditioning.

In this country and every other,

fear is not an emotion.

It’s inheritance.

Passed down with surnames,

family honour,

wedding invitations,

and the unspoken rule

that happiness is optional

but stability is mandatory.

Religion perfects it.

Politics weaponises it.

Corporations monetise it.

And most people never notice.

Because when fear is shared,

it feels like culture.

Society even sings songs

about fearlessness.

They sell it as strength.

As rebellion.

As leadership.

They put it in films and fairytales.

They applaud it on stages.

They quote it to others like them

right before asking permission

to breathe.

But fearlessness isn’t strength.

It’s damage.

Which brings me

rather reluctantly, 

to myself.

My amygdala doesn’t work right.

Not absent.

Not heroic.

Just dysfunctional.

Fear doesn’t arrive

where it’s meant to.

It doesn’t respect hierarchy.

It doesn’t flinch on cue.

So I don’t fear authority.

I don’t fear elders.

I don’t fear institutions

that depend on silence

to survive.

That’s not courage.

That’s a malfunction.

I am not aspirational.

I am not enlightened.

I am the unsafe variable

fear failed to train.

Families don’t know

what to do with people like me.

Relationships exhaust themselves

trying to teach me caution.

Institutions label me unstable

because I don’t confuse survival

with loyalty.

Society loves fearless men

as long as they’re fictional,

historical,

or dead.

Living fearlessness?

That’s called deranged.

So yes.

Something is wrong with me.

In fact, a lot is wrong with me.

My amygdala doesn’t ring the bell

that tells you to kneel,

to settle,

to stay.

I don’t feel the fear

that keeps families intact,

marriages tolerable,

jobs respectable,

and lives, socially acceptable.

That doesn’t make me free.

It makes me dangerous, 

like a ticking time bomb.

Fear isn’t just an emotion.

It’s the leash.

And I am a rabid mad dog.

So, don’t romanticise this.

I am not the anomaly.

I am not the exception. 

I am the fallacy.

I am the malfunction

that proves how much of your life

runs on panic

pretending to be purpose.

If fear makes you human,

then you are perfectly assembled.

Me?

I’m what happens

when the glue fails,

the alarm stays silent,

and a pea-sized organ

forgets to tell a man

to be afraid.

I am the fabric nightmares are made of. 

Mixed Feelings

You wake up.

You don’t remember deciding to exist. 

You’re five. 

Someone has already picked your clothes.

They say, “Smile.” You comply. 

You learn familiarity assumes consent.

Your first memory is not love. 

It’s being told, “Don’t touch that.” 

Followed by touching it anyway. 

Followed by consequences. 

This is called learning.

School happens. 

You are taught alphabets, numbers, 

and how to stand in straight lines for reasons no one explains. 

You are rewarded for silence. 

You are punished for curiosity. 

You are told this will matter later.

You believe them.

You learn that good handwriting is a moral achievement. 

That colouring inside the lines is character. 

That stars on notebooks are early forms of currency.

Someone asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

You say, “Happy.” 

Everyone laughs. 

You learn truth has a funny side.

Years pass. 

Your backpack gets heavier. 

Your questions get quieter. 

You discover comparison. 

It moves in next door and never leaves.

You learn to raise your hand only if you’re sure. 

You learn that wrong answers linger longer than right ones. 

You learn that confidence often belongs to people who do not question.

Puberty arrives unannounced. 

Your biology mutates without permission. 

Your emotions crash without explanation. 

Everything feels personal. Nothing is.

You fall in love. 

Not with a person. 

With an idea. 

Mostly of yourself, reflected back with approval.

It ends. 

You call it character development. 

Your friends call it “part of life.” 

You realise life scribbles in ink

and all you have is an eraser.

You get a phone. 

Then a better phone. 

Then the anxiety of keeping it charged. 

Your Wi-Fi becomes your personality. 

Your algorithm knows you better than your parents ever tried to.

Your school says, “These are the most important years of your life.” 

You panic responsibly. 

You optimise stress. 

You learn to perform concern.

Adulthood arrives disguised as freedom. 

It comes with passwords. 

And meetings. 

And the slow realisation that weekends are just brief cooling periods before shit hits the ceiling.

You get a job. 

You introduce yourself with your designation. 

You laugh at jokes you don’t find funny because rent has opinions.

You learn new phrases: 

“Circle back.” 

“Let’s align.” 

“This is not personal.” 

You say them fluently. 

You stop asking what they mean.

You scroll past wars. 

You double-tap grief. 

You watch the world burn between two ads for shoes you don’t need but deserve, apparently.

Someone asks again, “What do you want to be?” 

You say, “Stable.” 

No one laughs. 

You realise honesty and humour are both subjective.

You start conversations with, “Back then…” 

You complain about kids these days. 

You forget you were once a complaint too.

One day, you stand on a stage, 

sit at a dinner table 

or wallow inside your own head and say, 

“Back in my day, things were different.”

The pigeons nod. 

They have heard this before.

From cavemen. 

From kings. 

From rebels. 

From people who genuinely believed they were the exception.

You wake up.

You hope it was a fever dream, 

that you could wish it all away

like how someone you once loved

told you they had.

Your phone is at 4%. 

Your brain is rebooting. 

Your Wi-Fi is trying to connect, 

because humans don't anymore, 

they vibe like dead wavelengths

bouncing off binaries stacked up as walls. 

Somewhere, the pigeons watch, absolutely certain 

this is going exactly as planned

nodding like mixed feelings

watching history repeat itself 

and wondering, if getting monkeys off trees and into SUVs was evolution's greatest heist.

Thy Kingdom Come

The chessboard breathes.

Squares pulse like veins — black and white pumping life into chaos.

Pawns march, tiny and screaming, teeth rattling in allegorical skulls.

Knights twist in arhythmic hallucinations,

vomiting entrails into geometric patterns

no human should survive.

Castles bleed towers of ambition, dripping ink, dust, and the smell of burned kingdoms.

Queens strangle diagonals, laughing.

Kings whimper under ceremonial robes that could never protect them.

The hands that move them all, at will, are not human.

They are monsters.

Symbiotic parasites of flesh, tendon, and conspiratorial laughter.

Two friends.

Fused with caffeine, cynicism, and cosmic malice.

They twist.

They gnaw.

They crush pawns.

They strangle knights.

They squash kings.

Enemies rage on the squares.

The hands laugh.

The friendship thrives.

History quivers in their joints:

Empires marched pawns like disposable meat.

Generals drew borders like rooks vomiting sand.

Politicians peddled war and peace like queens strangling civilizations diagonally.

Civilization is nothing.

And the hands know it all too well. 

The pawns scream in existential terror.

The knights twist their own skulls.

Castles collapse into mounds of metaphorical despair.

Kings hide under robes soaked in the tears of the world.

Queens dance on the corpses of their own absurdity.

And still, the hands gulps quelches of coffee, toast apocalypse, whisper hand-crafted prophecies:

“We survive. The board bleeds. Civilization obeys.”

The board convulses.

Squares bleed.

Pieces scream.

Fingers split like roots.

Palms hollowed into ceremonial bowls of friendship and malice.

Veins pump bile instead of blood.

Every move is a sermon.

Every capture is a ritual.

The game is a cathedral.

The pawns are sacrifices.

The kings are theatre.

The friendship is parasitic.

And deliciously unhinged.

Culture applauds the slaughter.

History canonizes fools.

Faith immortalizes checkmate.

Pieces suffer.

Hands feast.

Eyes flinch.

You think you see strategy.

You think you see morality.

You see nothing.

You are dust.

You are applause.

You are fodder for friendship masquerading as chaos.

And still, the hands laugh.

Twist.

Gnaw.

Sip.

Survive.

The war is theater.

The enemies are theater.

The pawns, rooks, knights, kings, queens — all theater.

The board feeds off your perception.

A joke for the ages lives to see another apocalypse:

Humans will fight, scream, strategize, die.

The hands will watch it all, laugh it off, survive.

The pieces are expendable.

The friendship is eternal.

Everything else? 

Ashes, applause, grotesque echoes bleeding into eternity.

Listen!

Hear the board convulse.

Feel the pawns scream.

See the kings hide.

Watch the queens dance.

Taste the coffee, bite into the apocalypse, inhale the cosmic malice.

Remember!

You are alive.

But the hands…

they are immortal.

A Sellout's Manual To Survive Art

Step One: Remove all mirrors.

Reflections cause rebellion.

They suggest, even for a second, that someone might be wrong about themselves.

Replace them with applause — foam-lined, ethically harvested, genetically engineered to nod at everything.

Step Two: Inscribe the Oath.

Nothing I make is wrong.

Nothing I make is finished.

Say it three times while drinking something bitter enough to sting the tongue.

Say it in the morning, at noon, and at night, or the walls will smell your doubt.

Step Three: Feed abstraction to the herd.

Meaning is outdated.

Effort is fascist.

Clarity is terrorism.

Teach them to nod like rocks.

Nods are cheaper than insights.

Step Four: Enforce pack behavior.

Because predators hunt alone, 

and the prey must flock for dear life.

Solitude is lethal.

Silence is criminal.

If anyone whispers truth, administer a gentle slap of political correctness

and a half-hour lecture on the importance of surface lies peddled as feelings.

Step Five: Handle accidents mercifully.

Sometimes something real slips through.

It bleeds.

It sweats.

It smells of work.

Do not comfort it.

Do not congratulate it.

Smother it in dismissive adjectives,

and politely call it a glitch

until it stops twitching.

Step Six: Incentivize chaos.

Reward confusion.

Confusion cannot be wrong.

Confusion cannot fail.

Confusion is delicious.

Confusion smells faintly of gluten-free snacks and pretend art.

Step Seven: Implement the reciprocity economy.

You clap for me.

I clap for you.

We call this community.

We call it healing.

We call it safety.

Never call it what it is:

cowardice for currency.

Step Eight: Polish the language.

Asshole is holy water.

Spray generously on anyone bringing light, honesty, or work.

It kills germs.

It kills conscience.

It keeps the herd intact.

Step Nine: Spot the artists.

They wander in occasionally.

They smell like effort and poor hygiene.

They limpingly carry unfinished things that hum with honesty.

Do not approach.

Do not clap.

Do not breathe in their direction.

Step Ten: Confess quietly.

I stayed too long once.

I clapped.

I nodded.

I smiled at mediocrity.

I even called it networking.

I almost called it art.

I almost forgot how teeth feel.

Step Eleven: Wait for the artists to leave.

They always do.

They carry their unfinished things.

They leave dust, not echoes.

They leave truth, not applause.

Step Twelve: Celebrate survival.

Exhale.

Nothing has been risked.

Nothing has been questioned.

Nothing has been hurt.

Step Thirteen: Maintain the autopsy room equilibrium.

Soft, padded, climate-controlled.

Where ideas never age

because the dead are forever young.

Where noise is mandatory

because silence is an excuse for the dead to speak up.

Step Fourteen: Begin again.

Reheat the lies.

Re-stack the cardboard crowns.

Turn the applause up to eleven.

Start a new panel.

Pretend enthusiasm is oxygen.

Smile at your own incompetence.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. 

Because boredom is illegal,

and death hasn’t arrived, just yet.

Step Fifteen: The finishing touch:

Laugh.

Laugh because you survived art.

Laugh because you aced the circus of fake it till you make it. 

Laugh because you convinced the herd you were a genius.

Laugh because art believes in democracy

and democracy belongs to the herds.

Bow. Clap. Smile.

You’ve not just survived art;

you’ve become the inseparable lie in the epidermis of its skin.

Parallax Error

Do ends exist because beginnings are compulsory,

or are beginnings just mathematical errors put to reason,

the perfect excuse

of an inevitable collapse?

Does the sun really rise in the east

and set in the west,

or is that just civilisation

demanding obedience

from a rock hurtling through nothing

so we don’t panic before breakfast?

Is life the truth of death,

or is death the only honest thing here

and life its timeless distraction;

a folklore we've told ourselves 

to keep the nightmares at an arm's length and sleep at a finger's,

because the silence in the darkness terrifies us?

Maybe it’s neither.

Maybe we’re just rabid philosophers,

foam at the mouth, faith in hand,

arguing over truths

that were never addressed to us.

Debating existence

like squatters in a house

we don’t own,

won’t inherit,

and will be evicted from,

without a word ever being uttered.

Maybe what actually matters

isn’t beginnings or ends,

not suns or directions,

not heaven, hell, or historical accuracy —

but what becomes of you

while you’re busy intellectualising extinction.

Who you sell yourself to.

What you learn to excuse.

How comfortably you rot.

Everything else, 

truth, meaning, destiny, god, freedom, 

is parallax error:

the lie birthed

when you mistake motion

for progress,

and proximity

for understanding.

Stand far enough away

from yourself

and suddenly

nothing you believed

was facing forward.

Lungs Of A Dying Dream

In a world where political correctness is the norm,

breathing revolution is antisocial first, illegal after.

My adult lungs —

stained by cigarettes, bruised by compromise,

cancered by the polite murders of my own outrage, 

don’t let me forget:

I’m surviving,

just surviving,

clinging to the hope

that one day surviving

will stare at living in the mirror,

inebriated enough

to blur the difference

into fog.