Tastes Like Rust

What did it feel like

when the first throat split open

and the warm, coppery scream

spilled over your fingers?

Did it shiver your bones,

or make them ache for more?

Whose laughter shredded first —

children ripped from the world like paper dolls?

Whose names were eaten by dust before they even knew themselves?

Did the silence claw at you,

or did it taste sweet in your mouth like iron?

What did the bones whisper

as they cracked beneath your boots?

Did the sound make your heart leap,

or did it gnaw at the edges of your soul

with teeth sharper than your own?

How many lives curl, wet and broken,

under the weight of your hands?

How many hearts spattered across walls,

how many faces ground into mud

before the taste of blood taught you pleasure?

Whose blood trickled into your pockets?

Whose eyes did you swallow with your greed?

Did the shadows watch,

did the walls tremble at the wet, sticky joy you claimed,

or did you think darkness belonged only to you?

Did you feel them —

the dead crawling in your spine,

their ice fingers carving knives into every rib,

their whispers splitting your chest

and laughing as it bled?

What did the hollow pit inside you taste like,

where shame used to writhe and scream?

Did it fill your mouth, your teeth, your stomach,

or only your dreams when the lights died?

When your eyes closed,

did you see them all?

The life crushed beneath your thumbs,

the screams you swallowed whole,

the coins ringing wet against skulls, 

or did you pretend innocence,

as if it were a cloak?

If the dead were counting,

if they were watching

every heartbeat, every gulp, every wet whisper of terror,

would you still lick the pleasures you thought were yours?

Would you still smile

while shadows dripped across your face,

clawing at the corners of your mind?

What happens

when the storm of eyes and whispers and laughter

floods your skull

and every bone, every coin, every wet crack of flesh

stares back at you,

and you are nothing but a stain

in the ledger of all they remember?

Will you taste it again,

and know it is not yours,

never yours, 

but theirs?

Do you even deserve it?

Does anyone?

And when the world sleeps,

and the dead lean closer,

will you still smile,

or will the storm finally swallow you whole,

gut you, skin you,

and leave only the echo of terror

ringing in the dark,

your own hands still wet,

your teeth still biting air,

and your mind,

your fragile, squirming mind,

trapped inside the carnival of the dead,

laughing at you

while you are nothing,

only carnage, only hunger, only guilt,

only the taste of blood that was never yours to take?

The Sum Of Us

In the beginning

there was not God.

There was counting.

Before prayer,

before sin,

before heaven was franchised, 

someone stacked stones

and realised

quantity could replace mystery.

That was the first betrayal.

One plus one is two.

Say it like a prayer.

Say it like a hammer

driving bone into bone.

It doesn’t care about children.

It doesn’t care about graves.

It doesn’t care about hunger,

or rage,

or how fear curls in your chest.

It balances.

Always balances.

Triangles were cleaner than prophets.

Ratios quieter than doubt.

Geometry cut the sky into obedient pieces.

Trigonometry whispered secrets like torturers.

Calculus measured your despair

before you felt it.

We invented zero.

A perfect circle.

A mouth open without a scream.

Assigned to people.

Zero value.

Zero mercy.

Zero hope.

A ledger of the flesh.

A census of the soul.

We say mathematics is neutral.

So was the cross.

So was the rope.

So was the bullet

before it was aimed.

Neutrality is a myth told by tools.

You don’t need faith when you have proof.

That’s the seduction.

Science, bureaucracy, mathematics —

all faith forms in different robes.

They bleed the same devotion.

One plus one is two.

Unless one is power

and one is fear.

Then one plus one is submission.

Unless one is hunger

and one is silence.

Then one plus one is famine.

Unless one is god

and one is insecurity.

Then one plus one is war.

You think genocide begins with hatred?

No.

It begins with enumeration.

List them.

Number them.

Classify them.

Reduce them.

Once a human becomes a number,

erasing them

is administrative.

Clerical.

Mundane.

Divine.

We count bones, we count votes,

we count dollars, we count followers.

We kneel to certainty.

We kneel to predictability.

We kneel to the illusion

that if it adds up, it must be truth.

But tell me —

One trauma plus one generation

equals what?

One lie plus one census

equals what?

One decree plus one orphan

equals what?

Not two.

Never two.

Always metastasis.

Parallel lines never meet.

Life never sums.

Life never balances.

Life never forgives arithmetic.

Repeat it until it feels like oxygen.

Repeat it until doubt sounds insane.

Repeat it until anyone who questions it

looks dangerous.

Because they are.

If one plus one

is not guaranteed, 

then nothing is.

Not borders.

Not hierarchies.

Not gods.

Not you.

And that is the real terror.

Not that mathematics lies.

But that it works

without conscience.

It works when you design a bridge.

It works when you design a bomb.

It works when you calculate interest

so precisely

a man dies owing money

to a number.

It works.

And because it works,

we mistake it for morality.

Obedience is written in ink.

Faith is counted in ledgers.

And the body trembles

under every summation.

Every calculation a blow,

every diagram a noose.

We measure love, measure suffering, measure grief.

We optimise obedience.

We classify dissent.

We ration hope.

We distribute terror.

We file souls under columns:

productive, neutral, disposable.

And in the end,

the equation closes.

Numbers do not confess.

They only conclude.

Life, however,

never adds up.

In the beginning

there was counting.

In the end

there will be counting still:

bodies, losses, regrets.

The sums remain cold.

The book of bones waits.

Indifferent.

Implacable.

Numbers do not plead.

They do not pause.

They do not forgive.

They only conclude.

And we are left

reckoning nothing.

Sheepskin Truths

I was born to a man who believed the government was a religion.

Not metaphorically. Religiously.

With faith.

With fear.

With rituals mistaken for values.

A god whose faces change like chameleons shift complexion.

A scripture written in circulars.

A morality that changed tone but never intent.

In a middle-class household,

a government job is not employment.

It is orgasm.

The kind that justifies the marriage.

The kind that forgives the compromises.

The kind that turns survival into honour,

wages of slavery into dignity,

and retirement into a vague promise of heaven.

Four decades of service.

Fixed timings.

Fixed morals.

Fixed spine; bent only when required,

then straightened again just enough

to be mistaken for integrity.

He believed service to his nation purified a man.

That proximity to authority was proof of virtue.

That obedience, practiced long enough,

matured into wisdom.

Vanity is a dangerous thing.

But vanity wrapped in patriotism

is a hereditary illness.

Passed down as discipline.

Diagnosed as values.

Everyone thinks they’re immune

because they say the right words

at the right volume

in the right posture —

because the job came with a chair,

a badge,

and relatives who finally spoke with pride.

Patriotism was never about love.

Love asks questions.

Patriotism hands you answers

and calls doubt disrespect.

It doesn’t change with time.

It morphs meaning.

My father thought serving the country made him permanent.

Like loyalty comes with tenure.

Like time converts into belonging.

Like obedience compounds interest.

He believed the system remembers.

That effort leaves residue.

That years become proof.

They don’t.

Belonging is never earned.

It is granted.

Temporarily.

And always revocable.

Here, existence is not guaranteed.

It is reviewed.

You can give your youth.

Your health.

Your silence.

Your spine.

Your children. 

You can pay your dues

in money,

in time,

in belief.

And yet, nothing, absolutely none of it, matters.

Not a shred. Not an inch.

Eventually, power gets bored.

And boredom is authority’s most honest emotion.

So it asks calmly, administratively:

“Prove you exist.”

Not prove you lived.

Not prove you served.

Not prove you complied.

Prove you exist.

Existence becomes paperwork.

A form.

A signature.

A stamp applied by someone who doesn’t know you

but controls your validity.

One error and you’re a footnote.

One correction and your past becomes negotiable.

One revision and your lineage turns suspicious.

And when, out of habit, or exhaustion, you ask

what was done with what you gave —

the labour,

the taxes,

the integrity shaved down to fit policy, 

they reassure you.

Nothing was taken.

Your integrity was never sold.

It was loaned.

Loaned to a permanent class of power

that survives every era

by changing accents, not instincts.

Men who mistake longevity for legitimacy.

Men who sit long enough

to believe the chair belongs to them.

They run the same structure everywhere.

Different flags.

Same factory.

A human sweatshop

where obedience is renewable

and dignity is not.

Where mediocrity rises because it doesn’t threaten.

Where ambition is corrected.

Where silence is rewarded

until it becomes tradition.

Patriotism, then, is not devotion.

It is resignation to a dysfunctional family.

Stand here.

Say this.

Look proud.

Forget later.

It is not love of country.

It is familiarity with captivity.

And the cruelest inheritance

is not poverty,

or fear,

or silence.

It is teaching your children

that the flocking obedience of sheep make them honourable, 

while the very shepherd entrusted to lead them,

reserves the right

to erase them, like specks of dust.

Cold Cut Culinary

Cannibalism is a matter of culinary taste

and moral appetite.

Drinks arrive first.

Not to soften the act, 

to rinse the mouth of hesitation.

You don’t begin with hunger.

That’s amateur psychology.

You begin with stillness.

The body is quiet.

Quiet makes everything efficient.

Skin parts

the way agreements do —

without ceremony,

without apology.

Blood shows up eager,

bright as a fresh opinion,

then learns its place.

It always does.

There is a towel.

There is time.

Urgency ruins flavour.

People think brutality is loud.

It isn’t.

It’s meticulous.

Knives and cuts are not emotional.

Emotion spoils texture.

Some muscles have spent decades

proving loyalty to useless systems.

They harden with pride.

You can taste the distaste.

The cuts don’t argue.

They remember being decided

long before they happen.

Hesitation introduces ethics.

Ethics introduce mess.

Waste is offensive;

not morally,

aesthetically.

The room smells of iron

and fresh obedience.

Heat behaves.

Metal listens.

Nothing theatrical.

Theatrics are for people

who still need forgiveness.

Everyone expects cannibalism

to feel forbidden.

That expectation is childish.

Like thinking blood should scream

instead of stain.

Flesh makes for a beautiful recipe.

It always does

when stripped of mythology.

Morality arrives late;

a thin aftertaste,

noticeable only if you’re waiting for it.

Choice of cutlery matters.

Presentation is the last lie

society still rewards.

There is no ecstasy.

No rupture.

No fall from grace.

Only confirmation.

Some people are ruined

by the idea of eating another human.

Others are ruined

by the realization of how easily it can be done.

The eating is slow.

Not for pleasure, 

for assessment.

And the conclusion doesn’t announce itself.

It seeps in.

The problem with cannibalism

is never violence.

It is how many people

have been doing it their entire lives

without ever learning

how to do it properly.

Gods.

Governments.

Guardians,

and 

Guillotine.

How Many Lines Make A Circle?

A circle is a straight line.

And no I won't be taking questions. 

Because today, I am your geometry.

A straight line is just an idea 

that still believes movement is progress. 

Straightness is impatience; 

a refusal to stay long enough to learn its own shape.

Civilisation loves straight lines. 

Roads. Borders. Spines. Deadlines. 

Anything that points forward so no one has to look down.

Arrows calm the anxious. 

Mirrors force them into cognition.

So we drew time straight — 

years marching, 

history advancing, 

tomorrow behaving. 

Anything to avoid noticing 

how often we return to the same damage 

wearing better grammar.

But we didn’t begin as straight lines.

We began curled. 

Warm. 

Circular. 

A question with no direction. 

A foetus is a circle;

no hierarchy, 

no ambition, 

just becoming 

without justification.

Then gravity arrived. 

And then, grammar. 

They pulled us upright and called it evolution.

Stand straight. 

Walk forward. 

Look ahead. 

Grow a spine. 

Pick a side.

The first violence was posture.

The first betrayal was obedience. 

A circle is not what time is. 

A circle is what we abandon to survive.

Time does not bend.

Time does not return.

Time does not care if you scream.

Time happens. 

Once. 

With the indifference of ancience. 

What repeats is behaviour. 

What circles is explanation.

They call it history

when patterns survive

because no one names them.

They call it tradition

when repetition feels safer 

than surviving obsoletion.

They call it progress

when the same mistake walks in

wearing a tie, a crown, a dress, a smile.

You don’t move through time. 

Time moves through you — 

a straight line forced through a mind 

that keeps folding itself back into comfort.

Capitalism understands this perfectly. 

That’s why it doesn’t sell endings. 

It sells continuity.

Desire. 

Acquisition. 

Disappointment. 

Upgrade.

Not a loop, 

a line you bend yourself around

until exhaustion whispers:

“This is destiny.”

They call it healing 

when pain becomes useful. 

They call it enlightenment 

when resistance gives up politely. 

They call it maturity 

when you stop asking who benefits.

Pause.

Breathe. 

Take a minute.

Now. Think about it.

Notice how none of this felt unfamiliar.

That’s because belief doesn’t arrive as truth. 

It arrives as recognition, spoken slowly, with good posture.

You didn’t argue when I said a circle is a line. 

Because I asked for obedience.

And, you obliged.

That is how conviction works:

not by proof,

not by reason,

but by exhaustion, by surrender,

by the slow accumulation of fear

draped in coherence.

A sentence repeated cleanly enough 

starts sounding ancient. 

A lie aligned neatly enough 

starts feeling earned.

Say it again. Inside.

A circle is a straight line.

It still holds. 

Not because it’s correct, 

but because it’s coherent.

And coherence is more dangerous than being right.

Time is not circular. 

Time does not care.

We are the ones who keep returning — 

to habits, 

to harm, 

to versions of ourselves 

that felt simpler 

when we were smaller and curled,

unsullied by gravity.

The circle is the shape we remember 

from before responsibility broke us upright.

A circle is a straight line.

Not because it’s the truth, 

but because 

standing still in a curve 

would mean admitting

we chose this posture, 

we chose this direction, 

when we could have remained otherwise.

And somewhere in you, 

something ancient, 

curled and quiet,

is still nodding.

Still counting fingers. 

Still bleeding.

When Sisters Swallow Spines

Behind every successful man,

there is a woman —

they said.

In the shadows.

Unpaid.

Uncredited.

Bleeding quietly.

Erasing herself for applause

that gnaws at teeth and gums

and tastes like dust.

History knelt.

Poetry inked love letters in blood.

Revolutions whispered thanks in crumbs.

Because when a woman bleeds quietly,

it’s virtue, 

it's discipline, 

it's edible.

Then the chairs shifted.

The woman stepped into money,

into rooms with microphones,

into a life that finally paid interest.

The man stayed back.

Held the children.

Held the house.

Held the scaffolding

that success pretends it doesn’t need.

Same labour.

Same erasure.

Different gender.

And suddenly, the story screamed different:

"What kind of a man

feeds off his wife?"

There it was.

The ancient sneer.

Polished.

Rebranded.

Delivered by a mouth

that once preached equality.

And instead of silence breaking, 

it multiplied.

Feminists didn’t flinch.

They sharpened language.

Folded it.

Explained it to death.

Until truth was dead, embalmed,

smiling politely at the corpse.

They didn’t ask why care became shame

the moment a man performed it.

They didn’t ask why sacrifice

lost its holiness

when it grew a beard.

Because truth is inconvenient

when it interrupts a good narrative.

Because calling out one of your own

is harder

than slaughtering an enemy on cue.

Convenience wore a crown.

Cause dressed it up.

Lies were whispered

until they sounded like commandments.

Equality, it turns out,

is optional.

Equality, apparently,

was aspirational.

Not literal.

Because real equality

is ugly.

It doesn’t flatter women.

It doesn’t castrate men.

It humiliates everyone evenly.

And feminism —

when equality finally showed up

without makeup,

without exemptions,

without emotional airbags —

didn’t recognise it.

Didn’t like it.

Power is intoxicating,

even when borrowed from the very people

it pretends to liberate.

Turns out, many didn’t want the end of hierarchy.

They wanted their turn at the gallows.

But dare they call it what it is, 

a betrayal by a movement

that forgot

it was supposed to interrogate power, 

not inherit it.

And in that convenient amnesia

rots the bones of feminism.

Because the fastest way

to rot a revolution

is not opposition.

It’s agreement

without spine.

And the one thing

feminism cannot survive

is its own reflection,

staring back and asking:

If roles are poison,

why does the vomit only spatter

when men swallow it whole?

A Brief History Of Nostalgia

Have you ever smelled nostalgia?

Not perfume.

Not memory sunk in jewellery.

A cold breeze at the edge of the nose.

The kind that carries ghosts

who still believe they mattered.

Vanity, fossilised.

Stories repeated so often

they forget they were once alive, 

pages drying into dust,

like leaves pretending they chose autumn.

Concrete. Mortar. Civilisation

slowly swallowed by moss and wild ferns.

Because the presence of life

has never been proof of progress.

Thirty summers ago,

nostalgia was introduced to me as inheritance.

Something sacred.

Something to defend.

Thirty autumns later,

it’s still nostalgia;

no new pages,

not even footnotes.

Just the same story

aged into reverence.

At what point does nostalgia

stop being memory

and start being archaeology?

At what point does living

become maintenance?

Loss, here, is hereditary.

It sleeps well.

Wakes late.

Outlives intention.

The future keeps arriving

like a delayed train —

always announced,

never present.

And the present?

Already filing itself

under “past.”

And yes it feels like thinking

for a brief moment in time, 

because it smells all so familiar,

and we were brought up 

to mistake familiarity for longing.

It's not.

It’s rot, 

aged carefully,

labelled heritage,

and handed down

with the mandate

to call it meaning.

And, that is the story of the city I come from, 

or as I call, a brief history of nostalgia.