Who's Killing Democracy?

For years and years now

The artists and the poets, the philosophers and the intellectuals have lamented

Over and over again

Screamed and mourned the death of democracy

And I find that rather funny

Because it's the artists and the poets, the philosophers and the intellectuals, who've been killing democracy, slowly poisoning it bit by bit, each inch of it's wrinkled skin

You see democracy is a binary concept

And the thing with binaries is, there's no middle ground for minorities

In a sea of a billion zeroes, what are a thousand ones but a meagre minority

A fast-perishing minority that can only hope to stay afloat at best

It's ludicrous of them to even think of something as ridiculous as dictating the terms of the sea

The artists and the poets, the philosophers and the intellectuals, they are all ones

And then there are the regular and the mundane and the ordinary, the zeros that make up the sea, or as the artists and the poets, the philosophers and the intellectuals like to call them: mediocre

As the ones gloat in their assumed supremacy, the zeros seek pride in their imagined normalcy

But then, you see democracy is a binary concept

And in a world of binaries, it's all about either/or, no ifs, no buts, no ands

If either wins, or loses, and that is democracy

Questioning democracy in the name of democracy isn't democracy, it is the death of democracy

Life As We Know It

I ask you, how's life

A question we all are wired to answer somewhat similarly to people we meet once in six weeks: all good, what about you

But because I am a friend, or so I assume your your apparent perceptions of me are

You tell me over a night and two bottles of whiskey, how life's not fair, how life's fucked you over

Life's not fucked you over

Your ideas of what life would be like, have fucked over your actualities of what life is

Your pre-conceived notions and your hopeful overambitious optimism have fucked you over

The weight of the obese expectations of your dead parents and their dead parents have fucked you over

The fact that you were supposed to live life and yet all you've managed to do is live it in defined moments mapped to checkboxes like you were shopping life off a fucking grocery list, has fucked you over

But then, I don't tell you any of it

Because, no whiskey in this world is smooth enough to ease gulping down a truth tablet

Especially when your truth is on the pole opposite mine

Birth Of A Cynic

You think you matter

You think you are a rebel

You think you can make a difference

You think you are the beginning of a revolution

Well you're cute

Not the kinda cute that tingles teenage hormones

But you're cute

You know how they call dumbfucks cute these days because being straightforward hurts egos apparently

Yeah you're that kinda cute

You're cute to think you are anything but a product of your consequences and your conveniences

Years and decades and centuries of human evolution

People have thought they mattered

But then again, you know who else thought they mattered

Dinosaurs and mammoths. Look at them now

You think you matter

Because you're relatively important in your dingy circles

But so are fishes in a 4 by 4 aquarium

You're nothing but a fucking frog in a goddamn well

You think you are a rebel

Because your ways of life are outlier to the myopic roads of your acquaintances

But so is a donkey in a goddamn race course

You're nothing but a mad dog in a dingy alley

You think you can make a difference

Because you have what it takes to be the change you want to see

But so did Martin Luther King and a hundred thousand more before him

You're nothing but a momentary distraction at your very peak

You think you are the beginning of a revolution

Because your carry fire in your breath, raging to cleanse all the filth and dirt around

But so did all the volcanoes who lie dead in their frozen lava today

You're nothing but a paper dragon in a world of corrupt desires wrapped in flesh

You're no one and you'll be no one

You're a singular decibel drowned in the deafening noise of concrete skies

You're just another dumbfuck selling souls to the walking dead

I am a cynic today, for I was you once

Dear Mother

Every Mother's Day, I see three thousand random people posing with their mothers

A must-have, for the three hundred word essays they write, starting with the most unnecessarily obvious hashtag this world has ever known: #longpostalert

And each of them has a singular story to tell really, which is why the sheer waste of that many words, hurt my literary ego

Hundreds and hundreds of words, and a planned candid photo, which honestly should be called forced candid at best, and hundreds of kilobytes of data wasted for what

For one sentence, which in all sincerity, isn't even a sentence, more like a seven-word advertisement to sum up the greatness of each of the three hundred random strangers

A billboard that reads: EAST OR WEST, MY MOM'S THE BEST

Mother's Day posts, birthday posts, random motivational posts out of context, Oscar acceptance speeches: mothers have made their way everywhere there's light, there's good, there's hope

And yet somehow been conveniently left out of divorce notices and suicide letters and rehabilitation centres, because that's bad advertisement

I know what you're thinking: what an ungrateful bastard of a son to speak such of their mother

You know what? I wish I was, for that would at the least explain three decades of a cycle that not only never ends but continually adds on to itself, kilos of trauma, every year, until it turns cancer and fucking kills every last hope you ever had in humanity

For years and years, the world has told tales and sung songs of the magic that mothers are, the miracle that motherhood is

You know the one thing common about miracles and magic is, they're both nothing but illusions, imagined water in dead dry sand

You make believe a make-belief story and it's just another make-belief story

You start believing a make-belief story and that's the same delusion that bred religion: the story of an infallible all-powerful whose theory and reality are more distant than a distantly faint reality

And once that happens, there's nothing short of godliness, for that's where delusion peaks at: gods

And once delusion has peaked, you worship mortal mothers and clay gods, often on the same goddamn pedestal

Where are the stories of the mothers who smothered their living sons and choked their breathing dreams until both lay dead still

Where are the stories of the mothers who in the name of motherhood burned and slaughtered childhoods to suit the sadist narcissists within

Where are the stories of the mothers who assumed they were gods and pledged blind faith in the name of obedience and denounced their children every time they were questioned

Where are the stories of the mothers who were audacious enough to manipulate their children into believing motherhood wasn't a choice but a sacrifice, a sacrifice that demands blood, soul and skin, of the very ones they mothered

Where are the real stories of the real mothers and the real trauma that has been passed down generations in the name of tradition

There aren't any, you know why, because motherhood doesn't approve of bad advertising

And so every time, another god of a mother emerges

I throw up a little, as flashbacks of a vivid past I want to blur so badly I wish I could drink them to oblivion, blur my teary-eyed vision instead

Dear God and Dear Mother belong to the same pedestal for me

They are two phrases I don't remember uttering, writing, or even believing in, in a long long time

Diss-integrity

For some, success tastes of shit and cum

Commode for a mouth is a great skill set to have apparently

For some, success tastes of fresh soles of the latest brands of footwear in fashion

Wet rag for a mouth makes you a worthy professional apparently

As for the rest

Success is a struggle they'll die fighting for

Success is a rather underwhelming outcome not worth the effort

Success is a series of endless mind-fucks they end up losing the appetite for

Success is relative, but then, so is integrity

It's funny how quickly integrity becomes the shield for some who couldn't seduce success

It's funny how no one gives a singular fuck about the integrity of the successful

It's funny how a sellout society keeps judging relative truths in the name of objectivity but can't stand the same thing happening to it

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Have you ever felt a warm breath on your tender adolescent breasts

Like a gush of warmth as if cloaked in the blanket of familiarity

While your bare immature feet froze cold in the veins

Nails grown out of a habitual neglect, outlining your skin

As your soft spine shivers and shudders

Quite much like the first time he had breathed down your neck for the very first time

Shattering the walls of a rented innocence long lost

"Dad, not today" you beg

The warm breath draws itself closer, as the sweaty stench of his aging perversion clouds the vision of your teary eyes

The desire to live piles up some more rust, as your death wish watches on, like a lusty voyeur

Confessions Of A Misanthrope

I despise people

I despise people for who they are 

A bunch of literate morons 

Who can't tell the difference between literate and educated

A bunch of dumbfucks 

Who keep telling themselves they are wise desperately hoping it were true

They crave, desire, and show off intelligence, like it was some showpiece

That they could flaunt through the shallow glass of their shallower cupboards

Somewhat like a desperate man reeking of patriarchy, showing off his newly acquired wife

As if to say, patriarchy had won, and he was the flagbearer of this newly found win

For years and years and years

Stupid people in their ignorant existences have heralded intelligence like it were a gift

As if it was the Midas' touch that could solve every existential crisis there ever was

For years and years and years

Stupid people in their delusional perceptions have thought intelligence is the key to success

As if it was the one thing that stood between them and their imagined glory

Had they been intelligent

They'd have known, the intelligent despise intelligence like the stupids despise mediocrity

Had they been intelligent

They'd have known, the intelligent's barrier to success is more often than not the intelligent's intelligence

Had they been intelligent

They'd have known, intelligence is a cancer to the intelligent, while mediocrity is merely syphilis: it doesn't kill you, but it's rather contagious though

You know what's funnier

The stupids despise mediocrity and yet rejoice mediocrity, only of a different kind

And the stupids think that's what makes them seem intelligent

Putting on plastic faces of apparent intelligence

The lesser stupid ones think no one will ever notice their actual skin

The more stupid ones believe if they live the lie long enough it will be their truth

And all this while, the intelligent look at them, jealous of how simple their shallow existences are

And wish, they hadn't had the intelligence they had, so they could be a bunch of blind followers too

And wish, they hadn't had the thousand demons inside their heads telling them they'll never be enough

And, continue to wallow in their miserable, nuanced existences, struggling to put on plastic faces of pretended stupidity

I despise people

I despise people for who they are

I despise people

I despise people because I cannot be people

Dichotomy

It's always bewildered me people asking me

As much as it has bewildered the people asking me apparently

The question in actuality is simpler than it seems on the surface

How is it that I make jokes and poetry in the same breath of a rather measured existence?

I find it rather amusing that

It amuses you to not realise the similarities as obvious as they are

What are we but pimps

Of measured words and loaned silences

The poet and the comedian are quite the same recipe really

Sprinkled in sarcasm and laced in caustic cynicism that burns you with a nagging aftertaste

I tell a poem

And people listen, because poetry is for the polite

And as words fight their way into the dead weight of sheepish souls

Their clattering claps and behaved beings with their pretended sophistications nod in nicety

I tell a joke

And people listen, because jokes are a legitimate excuse to take offense

And as some lips rupture and the stained teeth show up in sadistic laughters 

Many more assholes clench hard, tighter than the grip of reluctance, their sweaty pretenses and rusty beliefs scared they would be rattled

And you see, I am, what they call a greedy motherfucker

I want the subtle and the whiplash, the tickles and the punches, the bruises and the bloodshed

Watch it all burn as the pretentious mascara of agreement falls off the dark circles of dissent

The dichotomy of comforting the uncomfortable and discomforting the comfortable, all at the distance of a few words

And as the curses and the abuses line up higher than a stack of match-sticks waiting to be lit in the hopes they would burn my words to the ground

I smile, a wide wild grin, from ear to ear, because, guess who really won?

The Bastards' Tale

Have you ever wondered

The gods you kneel and pray to

The gods you call the omnipresent invincibles

What are they really

If not a bunch of self-obsessed narcissistic megalomaniacs

Who you claim are immortals

All powerful and all forgiving

Why do they keep feeding off the faiths and beliefs of mere mortals

The mere mortals who provide for these apparent immortals

And yet, are nothing but meandering puppets to the wishes of their god's flaws

Why is it that

Your gods look like everything you've ever wanted to be but never could be

And yet they look up to your lesser selves like a clueless infant to a watchful parent

When did immortality become so fragile?

For I know crawling mortals without a spine

Who could outlive nuclear bombs and raging wars

But your gods with their spines of religion can't even outlive questions

Your definitions of godliness look like make-believe stories of a fucking lunatic

How is it that

Your gods have colours in pastel shades from a child's crayons

And yet, the audacity of someone who could upturn worlds

For thousands and thousands of years

The mere mortals have killed each other and spilled blood like wine off a cannibal's chalice

And while the whole of humanity danced butt-naked in the mayhem and chaos they called religion

The so called immortals have sat back and watched it all with a grinning smile like wasted stoners watching a dogfight

An all forgiving God and yet all it reminds of, is nothing more than a god-damned parasite, thirsty for some blood and some more

But the mere mortals who made gods of Frankenstein's monsters

And worshipped them in blind faith

Their eyes scraped off their sockets and served as offerings of belief

Their brains splattered across the plastered walls of temples and mosques and churches

Those invertebrate shitheads who needed to cling on to faith because that was all they had

Because accountability, you see comes at a heavy price

It often costs you your larger-than-thou ego, and accept that you're a fucking mess

It takes you to acknowledge your vulnerability that you know little or nothing of anything out there

It needs you to be okay being lost, in an attempt to figure yourself out in this life of randoms and uncertainties

But then, religion is so much easier, so much more convenient

And so, the faithful bastards of the faithless gods sing the bastards' tale

And so, the living bastards of the faceless gods sing the bastards' tale

So many bastards, so many gods, so many tales

And yet, all it takes to watch them tremble in their knees and shiver in theirs spines, is an inch of a doubt born off a single moment of reason