But I Love You

It starts soft.

Of course it does.

Like all disasters —

with a beautiful morning

and someone who calls you

interesting.

You say things like

“I’ve never felt this before,”

and they smile —

not because it’s true,

but because they’ve heard that line

enough times to know

they still got it.

Love begins in the stomach,

not the heart.

In the chemicals.

In the lies your brain tells

so your hunger feels holy.

You bond over trauma,

quote dead poets like scripture,

and call your damage depth.

You think

loving broken people

makes you whole.

You call it chemistry.

It’s just matching scars for tattoos.

They show you

their best angle,

best story,

best self —

curated, cropped,

washed in the filter of want.

You fall for

the version they invented

just for you.

And they fall

for how falling makes them feel.

You mistake attention

for affection.

Intensity

for intimacy.

Late-night confessions?

That’s not love.

That’s loneliness in duet.

You trade futures

like promises —

children’s names,

shared shelves,

a house with a window

that frames the sea.

It all feels inevitable.

But love built in the clouds

always forgets

that gravity exists.

Then comes the rot —

slow, quiet, polite at first.

They forget how you like your tea.

You start correcting their stories.

The music feels off.

The silences feel louder.

You read

so you don’t have to talk.

You schedule touch

like laundry.

You say “love you”

like brushing your teeth

or locking the gate.

You mistake routine for safety.

You think

this is just how it goes.

You call your slow suffocation

compromise.

You call losing yourself

maturity.

But some part of you knows —

the magic’s gone.

And you’re just holding hands

with a habit.

This is when

the screaming gets quieter.

When sighs

speak louder than slurs.

You resent them

for the parts of you

they never agreed to fix.

They still breathe

the way they used to —

and now,

that’s enough

to piss you off.

You fight

over the dishes.

But it’s never about the dishes.

You flirt

with strangers.

But it’s never about the strangers.

You hate

how much they know you —

how they can predict your excuses,

quote your old apologies,

read your moods

like menus.

So you start

rewriting history.

Suddenly,

the way they touched your back

was possessive.

The poems they wrote

were performances.

The comfort they gave

was control.

You go full lawyer

on your own memories —

filing evidence

to justify the exit

you haven’t taken yet.

It doesn’t explode.

It evaporates.

One unanswered glance at a time.

One untouched shoulder.

One postponed visit.

You leave

like a thief

stealing your own baggage back.

You blame timing,

growth,

the stars,

anything but the truth:

you outgrew the illusion

you both agreed to pretend.

You cry —

not for the person,

but for the dream

you can’t recycle.

You chase new bodies

just to forget your own.

You call it healing.

It’s just distraction

in daylight.

In the quiet,

you wonder:

Was any of it real?

The laughter?

The long walks?

The always?

Yes.

Real —

like dreams in comas.

Real —

like echoes in empty rooms.

Real —

but only while it lasted.

You tell your friends

you’ve changed.

You haven’t.

You’ve just

found better grammar

to lie to yourself with.

You swear next time

you’ll choose better.

You won’t.

You’ll just fall for

a similar sadness

in different shoes.

Because that’s the curse

of people like you —

the ones who love

like hurricanes,

and hate

like history books:

obsessed with what happened,

never learning why it did.

But I can’t give you

any of that.

Because I love you

like I hate you —

fiercely,

messily,

with enough passion

to burn cities,

but not enough patience

to plant gardens.

And if that doesn’t sound

like love to you —

maybe that’s because

you’re still hallucinating

your fairy tale.

The fairy tale

that convinced you

hate was the antonym of love

when they really were siblings

bad blood, but blood nevertheless

and if it had to choose, 

love would pick hate over you

every day of the week.

Standard Of Living

Every morning,

you are gifted a death sentence in installments —

nearly a hundred thousand seconds

wired into your bloodstream

like time is a loan shark

and breath, borrowed collateral.

You inject it

into conversations that echo back nothing

but rehearsed pleasantries

from people fluent in pretending.

You waste it

on rituals called routines,

on altar clocks,

on surviving —

as if being were a crime.

You call it a life.

It calls your bluff.

You grind your spine into gravel

for jobs that devour your name,

mortgages that inherit you,

titles that forget you,

names you answer to

that were never yours to begin with.

You auction your purpose

to systems built to collapse.

You chase divinity

in polished accents and inflated paychecks.

You pray to Mondays

and resurrect for rent.

You don’t run out of time.

You hemorrhage it —

through obligations dressed as duty,

through distractions sold as pleasure,

through the hollow between

what you wanted

and what they told you to want.

You drown

in decisions made by dead men.

You confuse exhaustion for meaning,

sedation for peace,

repetition for identity.

You honeymoon with delusion,

divorce your reflection,

raise a family

of what-ifs and should-have-beens.

And still,

you set alarms

for mornings you dread,

call decay discipline,

call obedience ambition.

You don’t wake up.

You reset.

You repaint the cage.

You sync yourself to the scream

you’ve forgotten how to voice.

No angels.

No ascension.

Just another withdrawal

from the only account

you never check —

while you hoard currency

you can save,

and spend time

you never get back.

Because once you’re bankrupt of breath,

your savings aren’t yours.

Just loose change

in someone else’s eulogy.

User Manual For Dummies

I heard someone say the other day —

they’ve become a strong believer

in something.

Because they read somewhere that

that something meant something.

And when you believe in somethings,

that has to mean quite something,

isn’t it?

Didn’t even matter what.

A belief.

A blueprint.

A borrowed compass

from strangers with clean hands

and curated pain.

People who write from desks,

not detours.

Who preach stillness

but never had to sit

in a storm they didn’t choose.

They speak with conviction

like conviction can be copied.

Like breathing needs citations.

Like living should come

with instructions.

They want life

with subtitles.

Grief

with disclaimers.

Joy

with a table of contents.

Imagine trading your instincts

for someone else’s vocabulary.

Quoting people

you wouldn’t bleed next to.

Worshipping voices

you’ve never had to look in the eye.

You call it wisdom —

but it’s caution in costume.

Detachment in drag.

Sanitized philosophy

sold as salvation.

You highlight paragraphs,

but haven’t underlined

your own spine.

You collect quotes —

but still ghost your own voice.

God forbid

you move without method.

That you feel something

you can’t fact-check.

That you break

without applause.

There’s no sacred verse

for what you’ve buried.

No ritual

to reverse it.

No manual

that makes the mess mean something.

And if you dared —

if you really dared —

to sit with the raw,

the wreckage,

the you beneath the curated you...

No mantras.

No chants.

No ancient words

to baptize the damage.

Just you —

untranslated.

Uncurated.

Unfiltered.

The version that glitches

when told to be calm.

That chokes

on affirmations.

That fractures

without framing it as growth.

But no —

you won’t go there.

You’d rather rent philosophies

than own your ruin.

You’d rather echo

than exist.

Imagine living so programmed,

even rebellion needs a manual.

Even silence checks for approval.

And the thing you keep calling your “soul”?

It’s not missing.

It doesn’t quite exist.

Never did. Never will.

All it ever was —

was a missed call

from a wrong number

you mistook

for meaning.

You are not human.

You’re not even alive.

You're a breathing prop

from that infamous book —

User Manual for Dummies.

And even that might be a stretch.

Because dummies,

at least,

are self-aware.

I Exist In Epilogues, Vanish In Verses

I was never born.

I just emerged —

like regret after climax,

a stain on sheets no one claims.

Raised by mirrors

that spat back

versions of me I never authored,

I wore humility like disguise,

called it grace —

but it was just

cowardice in couture.

I don’t self-deprecate.

I self-obliterate —

in cascading tercets,

with enough enjambment

to make therapists flinch.

I’ve mastered the syntax

of slow suicide —

elegant punctuation

between a childhood missed

and a purpose misplaced.

Each semicolon: hesitation.

Each stanza: held breath.

This poem? A slow leak.

They say,

“You’re so self-aware.”

No.

I’m paranoid with a thesaurus.

I sandpaper my ego

with your praise.

Applause is a trigger.

Silence — home.

I bleed in similes:

like a man

who mistook mirrors for manuscripts

and edits his face

when the prose doesn’t land.

I dress despair in metaphors

so you won’t call it begging.

I don’t need validation.

I crave it —

like addicts crave overdose.

Not the high,

just the end.

My humility is weaponized —

a publicity stunt

to distract from the fact

that I peaked

in an unread draft.

They ask,

“If you hate yourself so much,

why write?”

Because grief doesn’t need

permission to perform.

Because this pain

has better stage presence

than I do.

I’m freelancing

for the voice in my head —

she’s eloquent, persistent,

and wants me dead —

but only in lowercase.

I post poems

like missing person flyers.

If you find me,

don’t return me.

I know I’m a nobody.

I made peace with it.

Then made art from it.

Then burned the art

for warmth —

and clapped along

with the flames.

No,

I wasn’t forgotten.

I was written —

but someone ran out of ink

mid-sentence.

And no one noticed,

because I kept reciting the ellipsis

like it was scripture.

I’m not lost.

I was never catalogued.

And still —

some days,

even the void

misspells my name.

The Ghost In The Cradle

I was birthed

and brought up

by a strong woman —

a woman of virtues,

of opinions and principles.

A woman

who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

A woman with an impeccable vocabulary

and an erudite’s ego.

A woman who matched her sarees

with the gravity of the occasion

and how she felt about it.

A woman who spoke like an orator

and debated like Parliament was in session.

A woman who inspired ambition

and instilled fear in the same breath,

without a word ever being said.

A woman who gave up paychecks

for parenting.

I was birthed

and brought up

by a strong woman —

of preconceived notions

and rigid faith systems.

A woman

who taught logic and rationale

but preached God and religion

like her existence depended on it.

A woman

so stubborn and preoccupied

with her ideas of what was acceptable and what wasn’t

for her children —

that she would rather sacrifice them

than watch them disappoint her.

A woman who taught

that conversations at home

meant monologues —

hers.

With silent nods

and loud apologies

as the only viable responses.

A woman who taught

that trauma and abuse

don’t count

if it comes from a mother.

A woman who excused

every inch of otherwise questionable behaviour

with her favourite catchphrase:

“Parenting.”

A woman so strong

she couldn’t imagine

being human enough to err.

A woman who raised her children

to believe

she was nothing short of godly —

and that wasn’t narcissism,

but a humble observation,

at best.

I was raised by a woman so strong,

I almost forgot

I was raised by a man, too.

A man who existed mostly in the fringes.

A man who was barely — rarely — home,

so much so,

he was a visitor in the house

built with his blood and sweat.

A man who didn’t speak much,

unless it was a post-mortem

of my report cards.

A man who never taught,

but passed on the quiet rebellion

of questioning what’s told

instead of believing it.

A man who didn’t fit

any textbook definition

of “strong.”

A man who stuttered often.

Who smoked to think.

Who held poetry too close.

A man who wasn’t threatened

by the idea of marrying a strong woman

or playing the bad cop

so she could be the adored one.

A man who didn’t reek of testosterone —

only contradictions

held loosely together.

When you grow up in a family

that anomalous —

or as they call it now, progressive —

how do you expect me to believe,

let alone endorse,

that women are fragile, helpless creatures

grasping at sunlight

under the shadow of men?

How do I believe

women don’t get a say in their lives —

when I haven’t spoken to a woman in years

because she wanted more say in mine

than I ever could?

When the woman who birthed me

towered over my life so completely,

I barely got to know

the man who raised me too.

And that —

is just the story of my father.

Where are the stories

of those hundreds of thousands of fathers —

men whose sacrifices and silences

were systemically erased

because parenting

could only afford

a pedestal for one?

A woman carries life within.

A man?

He only gets to be a witness.

A journey she’s part of.

And he —

the taxi driver at best.

Except no one ever asks

what it feels like

to carry a traveller with you —

every day,

every hour,

every minute.

No visual cues. No user manuals.

Hormones and emotional wreckage

in more varieties

than ice cream brands.

Nine months of that —

and that’s just the beginning.

Where are the stories

of men who burnt their notebooks

so women could write history

in their own ink?

Nowhere.

And nowhere they’ll ever be —

not while fiction parades

as conditioned memory.

Because revolutions

don’t make history.

Narratives do.

Especially the ones

edited with mirrors —

angled just right

to hide the men

who disappeared behind them.

How To Build A Boy

Begin with —

sperm and signature,

a sonogram and sighs.

Stamp him male —

not with celebration,

but with silent expectation:

here comes the provider,

the protector,

the prison.

Dress his cradle in blue —

not for calm,

but for camouflage.

Do not name him.

Define him.

Carve his worth from inheritance,

his purpose from pressure.

Mould his spine to carry

generations of debt and duty.

Teach him silence

before speech.

Teach him shame

before softness.

Teach him survival

before selfhood.

Hand him a rib

and call it home.

Hand him a sword

and call it love.

Then blame him

when the garden burns.

Tell him to lead

but never dominate.

Tell him to cry

but never weep.

Tell him to fight

but never rage.

Tell him to feel

but not too much,

not too loudly,

not too soon.

When he loves —

call it obsession.

When he leaves —

call it abandonment.

When he stays —

call it convenience.

If he dares to ask,

"What about me?" —

remind him:

the world does not weep

for its default setting.

Now begin the sermons.

Let prophets of pain

borrow bruises like accessories.

Let poets write elegies

on wounds that weren’t theirs,

and perform them

for applause.

Let empowered victims sell

grief in small batches,

wrapped in recycled rage

and ribbons of borrowed trauma.

Let them forget —

this system devours its kings

long before it poisons its queens.

Because this was never

about men or women —

it was always about cages

furnished with mirrors

so no one sees the bars.

Make him the villain.

Because revolutions

require shadows

to throw fists at.

And nuance

kills margins.

Yes —

Men have failed.

Often. Loudly.

Historically.

Systemically.

But women are not born virtuous either.

Not all, anyway.

But enough —

to deserve statutory warning

in the anthologies of pain

you only publish in pink.

Don’t heal.

Just advertise.

Don’t ask.

Just accuse.

Don’t understand.

Just edit him out of the narrative.

Set fire to the man —

not for his crimes,

but for being inconvenient

to the best-selling plot twist.

Say it loud:

"Men built the patriarchy."

Maybe they did.

But if it is a prison —

why do so many

volunteer to be jailors?

Why did feminism

need fathers, brothers, sons

to first survive,

before it could breathe —

why wasn't it forgotten

in the dusty desert of time

before it could breathe, 

like the girl child

whose lungs were crushed

under the weight

of inherited shame?

Erase the men

who were allies

long before allying was fashionable.

Forget the ones

who broke so their daughters wouldn’t.

Silence the ones

who never asked to be born

into an identity

you now burn

to stay warm.

Because every movement

needs martyrs.

And intricacies

don’t sell candles.

So yes —

tire him out.

Of carrying history

he never authored.

Of apologising

for chromosomes.

Of being strong

with broken scaffolding.

Of being blamed

for the fire

he too was burned by.

Not all.

But enough —

to be statistically erased.

And when you chant,

"Burn the patriarchy!"

make sure

your matchstick

is pointed

at someone

already in flames.

Because,

a cis-gendered heterosexual man 

isn't just a demographic anymore. 

He is the filthiest swear word 

in a world sponsored by radicalists 

of a thriving hate economy.

Fiction In Flesh

How many biography writers do you applaud

when discussing literature?

Let me guess —

none.

And you shouldn’t either.

Because what is someone’s non-fiction lifetime

is their fiction sold in paperbacks.

Do you celebrate the writer,

or the person who happens

to be the subject and the content

of the book?

Then why this blinding hypocrisy

when a poet tells tales

of lives lost in translation

like they were theirs —

you’re so awestruck,

you can’t move a bone

to even question yourself?

Why celebrate someone

selling someone else’s life

as their capitalist fiction,

spread across words so moving

you’d almost forget

it’s fiction?

Don’t mistake their fiction for their truth.

It just tells me

how gullible you all are —

fucking knapsacks

stuffed with borrowed grief,

worshipping storytellers

who never paid rent

to the stories they stole.

Burn After Reading / Bathe After Hearing

I. The Gathering of Gods’ Ghostwriters

Once every thousand years,

three stoner-writers meet

on a forgotten bench

at the edge of collective amnesia.

Not poets.

Not prophets.

Just bored men

who once mistook hallucination for inspiration.

Their ink?

A cocktail of fermented verses

and poorly measured paranoia.

Their paper?

Whatever parchment survived

the ash of disbelief.

Their names are lost —

but you know their work as:

Old Testament. Bhagavad Gita. Quran.

Or as they call it:

Three Very Long Jokes That Got Out of Hand.

II. The First to Speak — The Old One

"In the beginning," he snorts,

“was boredom.”

I wrote Genesis on a three-day weed bender,

high enough to believe

snakes could talk

and women were ribcage origami.

Eden? A stoner's dream really.

The apple? A ridiculous joke.

Original sin?

Just the price of narcotic curiosity.

I wrote it for the laughs.

But they believed it.

They built kingdoms with it.

Used my punchlines as law,

my sarcasm as sanctity.

I made a flood a metaphor —

they made it a genocide.

I made commandments for house pets —

they carved them in stone,

killed over commas.

III. The Brown One Grins

I lit up under a fig tree

and imagined a war,

so dramatic

it needed a thousand verses

and seventeen different gods.

Krishna?

Just a celestial life coach

with boundary issues.

Arjuna?

A metaphor for that friend

who asks you for career advice

during your existential crisis.

And yet —

they memorized it.

Worshipped it.

Tattooed my punchlines on their souls

and called it moksha.

I gave them my joke book,

they turned it into caste.

I gave them poetry,

they turned it into massacres.

I laughed.

They folded hands.

Now temples drip with blood

while statues smirk in marble silence.

IV. The Desert Scribe Speaks

They say I wrote the Quran.

Truth be told, I was hallucinating

on desert solitude

and leftover wine

from a camel trader’s wedding.

Every verse was a fever,

every revelation

a badly translated dream.

Jibril?

Might’ve been indigestion.

Jannat?

A fairytale.

I thought they would get the idea 

when I gave them faceless for a face

I mean, I thought the joke was obvious

And yet now they've made me unquotable 

without consequences.

I wrote fire as fiction —

they lit a thousand real ones.

I said submit to the mystery,

they heard slaughter the questioners.

V. They Laugh. And Then They Cry.

“Imagine,” says the old one,

“jokes taken so seriously

they outlive the punchline.”

“Imagine,” says the brown one,

“wars fought

over spelling mistakes I never corrected.”

“Imagine,” says the desert scribe,

“beheading the metaphor

because the metaphor made you feel seen.”

They light one more joint,

roll it in old scripture.

The ashes look like prayer.

The smoke smells like genocide.

VI. And Then… A Warning

Here’s the truth:

Your gods were drunk drafts.

Your holy books,

the side effects of insomnia, unadulterated drugs, and, a lot of time to kill.

---

VII. Final Lines (Mic Drop)

So when you quote them

with trembling lips

and bloodied hands,

ask yourself —

Were you enlightened?

Or just high on secondhand fiction

written by men

who mistook madness for meaning?

Because satire, my friend,

doesn’t need a statutory warning —

unless you plan

to decimate the author.

Theatrics Of A Well-Fed Ache

Is your life

so immaculately unscarred,

so coddled by comfort

you had to counterfeit wounds

just to be heard?

Did the absence of suffering

feel so loud,

you borrowed someone else's silence

and called it art?

Because if you can’t be pitied,

you can’t poetry —

is that it?

You mourn wars you never fought.

Write of hunger

like skipping breakfast

was starvation.

Invoke grief

like it’s a costume

you drape over metaphors

to look profound.

You wear pain

like perfume —

just enough to linger

but never stain.

You don’t write from the wound.

You etch your verse

on borrowed gravestones,

drafting poems on tragedies

you witnessed only in headlines.

You don’t want truth.

You want attention dressed as empathy.

You want applause

for pretending you bled.

You sing of storms

without knowing rain,

romanticize ruin

like it’s a backdrop

for your aesthetic despair.

You perform ache

like it’s theatre,

curate anguish

like museum exhibits —

unfelt, untouched,

just on display.

But some of us

don’t write pain.

We leak it.

Unedited.

Unshared.

Some of us

don’t rhyme trauma.

We survive it

in footnotes and hospital lights.

We don’t need pity

because we never had the luxury

to want it.

So the next time

you carve someone else's scar

into your verse,

ask yourself:

Is that your blood

on the parchment —

or did you steal a corpse

and call it a muse?

Because poetry isn’t pity.

It’s plague.

And you?

You’re just a eulogy

with an affordable internet connection.

Mic dropped. Page closed. Stay dead.

Because Even Trigger Warnings Can't Sell Sadness

“I’m sad.”

Once, that meant something.

As a child, it opened arms,

drew curtains,

paused the world

for your tears.

Now?

Say it with an adult mouth

and the room flinches.

Sadness becomes

a performance issue.

A flaw in the factory settings.

They say: “Grow up.”

As if aging is anesthesia.

As if grief has a sell-by date.

As if maturity means

learning to bleed without stains.

“Grow up,” they repeat —

to people already eroding

from trying.

They hand you prescriptions

for silence,

yoga for grief,

self-love for loneliness,

pretend ointments

for your pain.

Because adult sadness

must be quiet,

efficient,

palatable.

You used to be allowed to cry.

Now you’re expected

to “cope attractively.”

Back then, sadness was human.

Now it’s unprofessional.

Unstable.

Unwelcome.

And those who say “grow up”

are the most undone of all —

ruins wrapped in résumé words,

too terrified to admit

their own ache.

They don’t want truth.

They want performance.

So we learn

to disguise grief as humour,

despair as content,

silence as strength.

We cry

with straight spines.

We scream

through our teeth.

We ache

only in metaphors.

Because somewhere along the way,

we stopped asking what hurts —

and started asking

how well you’re hiding it.

But I won’t grow up

if it means killing

what still feels.

I won’t amputate honesty

to wear your comfort.

I’ll say “I’m sad”

like it’s protest.

Like it’s holy.

Like it’s still allowed.

Because feeling —

raw, feral, inconvenient feeling —

isn’t weakness.

It’s the last honest rebellion

in a world

addicted to pretending.

Elegy To All The Things I Couldn't Elegise

I've seen and heard

people write elegies

to their undead sofas

and whimsical washing machines

and defrosting frozen chicken in drunken stupor

and lizards and cockroaches like flies on the wall.

So I decided, why not.

But then I have attachment issues

and reptilian skin

and rot iron bones

are too cold for my appetite

to commit.

And as I am about to lose

my last few focussed brain cells

before they scatter like particles —

as if it wasn't neural networks

but quantum physics —

all thanks to my short-circuited wirings,

or as science nerds call it: neurodivergence,

or as the neurotypicals,

popularly known as normal people, call it:

weird, intense,

weirdly intense, intensely weird —

because words, like people,

have wirings too.

But coming back to the point,

I thought of things broken and damaged to talk about

and yet all I could remember

was my broken sanity.

Because apparently

sanity is science

and only art can be objective.

And clearly mine is broken —

because how else do you define

a cognitive reluctance to norms and definitions,

an incorrigible habit

of philosophising the fuck out of everything?

Because grey only matters

when it comes to matter —

but otherwise,

it better be black and white.

Because how do you make peace

with admitting you get thoughts —

flashes of them, often and on —

thoughts that question

every last skin tissue

of everything you've been brought up to believe as facts?

Because if you were to admit

order is us gaslighting ourselves

into self-assigned boundaries,

how would you still call yourselves liberal?

Because if you were to admit

chaos is the only objective truth —

because if you were to accept

you believe in definitions

so you have answers

to questions you don't know —

Because if you were to surrender

to the idea of being

as a random outcome

of cumulative coexistences,

how would you ever convince anyone

you were sane?

I, on the other hand —

who can't make sense of borders and descriptions,

who can't tell sanity from pretence —

I will wake up another day

to things I wish I could write elegies to,

if only obedience was acceptable

to my audacious nerves.

The Anatomy Of Love: A Three Act Tragicomedy

I. Genesis of the Delusion

You mistook descent for devotion —

“She must’ve fallen from heaven,” you said,

as if gravity were a compliment

and poetry began

where observation ended.

I hope her spine is steel,

her hips, tempered iron —

because one day she’ll realize

your interior is emptier

than a priest’s promise:

hollow, echoing,

sanctified only by your own voice.

II. The Great Vomiting of Verse

You write sonnets about her eyes —

constellations, oceans, galaxies —

as if vocabulary could substitute

for emotional literacy.

You’d kill for her smile?

Try surviving her silence.

You think love is butterflies?

That’s your gut decomposing

under the rot of recycled metaphors

you dared to call feelings.

Hope your ribs are malleable —

love will bend them backwards,

not out of passion,

but beneath the weight

of expectations you never asked

if she even shared.

III. The Temple and the Farce

You call it making love,

but what you really make

is a recurring deposit

of insecurity,

into a temple

that demands reverence

you’ve never learned.

She seeks worship.

You offer routine.

Foreplay, to you,

is an ancient dialect —

dead, ignored,

buried beneath grunts

and the missionary position

of your imagination.

Her body becomes scripture

you never read

but quote liberally.

Orgasms become sacrifice.

And faith, like a rash,

spreads —

until it burns.

I hope the day she slices through the incense,

walks past the altar,

and declares your worship void,

you finally taste the bitterness

of every fantasy

you never earned —

And may your diary of love diarrhea

have enough empty pages

to mop up the blood and tears

from entries and exits

torn so violently

you couldn't tell one from another.

Because love 

in it's bared out bones, 

isn’t ballads or stars.

It’s war,

waged in quiet kitchens.

It’s silence thick enough

to drown both the poet

and the poetry.

It’s the slow erosion of fantasy

until only the bland, basic truth remains.

And truth be told:

You’ve never been loved.

Only imagined.

In borrowed verses.

And illusions for reflections.

Equal Nothings, Equals Nothing

You speak of equality

like you're a fucking prophet.

You want equality?

Let’s start by stripping you naked —

of every privilege stitched into your skin

like birthright was merit

and comfort was consequence.

Let’s peel off

your education, inheritance,

your assumed greatness 

in your unnecessary last name

and the obnoxious accent you throw around

in your vail attempts of holding stead 

in an invisible societal high ground.

You want equality?

Let’s begin with your hypocrisies.

The way you pedestal your parents

while decoding your trauma

in therapy receipts.

The family tree you frame on walls

but prune of its cruelty.

Let’s talk about legacy —

the autocracy you choose to call tradition.

You want equality?

Let logic and reason be the only currencies.

Don’t shove paper wealth down my throat

while I collect my pay

in clinking change

and swallowed rage.

You want equality?

Then words must be our only weapon.

But don’t stand in court

as the defendant

when the judge, the jury,

and the executioner

all sign your paychecks.

You want equality?

Then don’t hold me at gunpoint

and ask me to speak softer.

Don’t start as god

and ask me to pray louder.

Don’t chain me to history

and call it culture.

Don’t name your privilege peace

and call my defiance war.

You want equality?

Then don’t give me a mic

in a world you’ve already muted.

Don’t hand me rights

wrapped in choices

with expiry dates.

You want equality?

Let’s start

as equal nothings.

No gods.

No gold.

No guilt.

Just two throats,

same volume.

Same stage,

same storm.

And if we burn —

we burn the whole fucking throne.

Together.

Until then, equality is an abomination

You can't draw straight lines with crooked spirals.

Tombstones Of Cannibals Anonymous

Throughout the history of life,

species have gone to war

with other species —

a primal, bloody ballet

of hunger and hierarchy.

But humans?

Humans declared war

on themselves.

We are the only species

that hunts its own reflection —

that builds armies

not for survival,

but for ego management.

We turn mirrors into targets.

Neighbors into threats.

Differences into doctrines.

From cavemen with clubs

to kings with crowns,

from imagined superiorities

to bureaucratic democracies,

the only thing we’ve ever measured

is how far delusion can march

before someone bleeds.

Spoiler alert:

The biggest dick never wins.

The one holding the trigger does.

We wrote epics —

good vs evil,

light vs dark,

heroes vs villains.

But there were no heroes.

There never were.

Heroism is just

murder in costume.

A bloodstained script

performed for applause

and permission slips from memory.

We dressed war

in hymns and history books.

We made violence sacred

by putting it in verse.

Sounds familiar?

Sounds…

like religion.

But of course it does.

Your gods were no different.

How could they be?

They all looked

suspiciously like

you.

The Cult Of Second Chances

January isn’t a month.

It’s a ritual.

A cult ceremony held

in the name of second chances

that never survived the first.

It doesn’t walk in —

it cleans up the blood,

names it detox,

and sells you the mop.

It arrives not to heal,

but to repaint the crime scene.

The victim?

Last year’s promises.

The weapon?

Hope — blunt, reused, unsterile.

The killer?

Still you.

New look, new year, new gloves.

January is not rebirth.

It’s taxidermy.

You stuff your old self

with better intentions

and mount it over your conscience

like achievement.

It gives you diaries

to confess into,

calendars to pretend with,

mirrors that flatter more than reflect.

It’s the month where discipline is cosplay,

healing is branding,

and every gym membership

is an exorcism that expires in 3 weeks.

It forgives you

before you’ve even sinned again.

It lets you rename guilt

as growth

so you don’t have to change —

just resell in better wrapping.

January is the high priest

of the church of make-believe,

where sinners get sainthood

for making wishlists

and deleting their convenient cuckoldery for a week.

It tells you

you’re a phoenix,

but you’ve just rearranged the ashes

into motivational quotes.

It lets you mourn

without accountability,

hope without history,

and plan like a god

while living like a glitch.

Because January isn’t a door.

It’s a loop.

A Möbius strip of self-deceit

folded into a handshake

between your regret and your ego.

It won’t judge you.

It doesn’t have the memory.

It’s too busy resetting the crime scene

for next year.

So don’t call it a beginning.

Call it what it is —

A serial killer with amnesia

and perfect handwriting.

Forged In Frost & Feign

I was born in December —

the season of nostalgia

packaged as celebration,

where people wrap regrets in ribbons

and call them resolutions.

They say winter babies feel less cold.

Maybe.

Or maybe, 

they learn early on

that frostbite is foreplay.

While others were cradled in lullabies,

I was breastfed on cold shoulders.

Weaned off expectations

and onto disclaimers.

You see, my birthday

fell on the same shelf

as Christmas sales and final deadlines —

a polite footnote

in a month too tired to care.

And they wonder why

I don’t flinch when people leave,

why my smiles expire quickly,

why silence suits me like second skin.

They say I’m cold-blooded.

But I’m just winter-born.

My warmth was a luxury

the calendar forgot to deliver.

Every December, the world remembers joy

in a language I was never taught.

Thermostats set to survival.

Hands held only

when they needed heat,

not history.

But I’m not alone, am I?

There’s a whole generation

of frost-forged children

wearing sarcasm like scarves,

burning not to stay warm —

but to remind them

what cold really was.

We’re the ones who

celebrate quietly,

love recklessly,

and vanish before

you notice we never belonged.

We don’t decorate trees.

We name them after people

who forgot we existed.

We don’t wish.

We witness.

So no, I don’t feel cold.

Not anymore.

Why feel when you can become?

Exit Wounds

Bombardier beetles

are curious little creatures —

bugs barely an inch long

with enemies ten times their size.

You see,

they don’t believe in warnings,

only litmus tests for justice.

They exhale acid

straight from their asses

whenever they feel threatened.

No press release.

No moral debate.

Just combustion —

biochemical honesty

fired like punctuation.

It’s grotesque.

But it’s genius.

Because it works like a charm.

And yet,

here we are —

a species with evolved language

and unevolved integrity,

speaking from the same exit

we pretend is sacred on Sundays

and deny is an entrance the rest of the week.

We spew opinions —

half-formed, over-shared,

drenched in projection

and disguised as defense.

We parade our half-digested logic,

stitched into grammatically correct flatulence,

and call it conversation.

We call it advice.

We call it therapy.

We call it art.

So much noise

from a hole built for exit.

Because somewhere between

the tailbone and the tongue,

we forgot

that just because something leaves your body

doesn’t mean it deserves an audience.

Because unlike the beetle,

we don’t defend.

We declare.

We don’t warn.

We whine.

We don’t protect.

We posture.

And for all our thrones, microphones, and metaphors —

at the end of the day,

we’re just shaved apes

pretending our exhaust

is insight.

Two cheeks.

One sphincter.

And a world of noise.

Tell me again

how free speech is sacred

when most of it smells like

it skipped the brain

and took the back exit.

The Kingdom Of Mirrors

In an age long after

gods had choked on their worship,

there rose a kingdom

not ruled by crowns or creeds —

but by mirrors.

No kings.

No prophets.

No laws.

Only reflections:

handcrafted illusions

mass-produced

to hush the conscience

and flatter the soul.

Every newborn was given one:

Polished on one side —

to behold their curated kindness.

Blacked on the other —

to absorb the sins of others.

They called it balance.

They called it mercy.

They called it everything

but what it was:

blindness with publicity paid for in faith.

So they grew,

fluent in the art

of selective reflection.

A thief mourned betrayal.

A liar cursed infidelity.

A coward praised sacrifice.

A gossip lit candles for truth.

They twisted sin into perfume.

Labelled flaws as trauma.

Sold apologies as virtue.

Packaged rot with ribbons.

Until one child was born

without a mirror.

No shine.

No shadow.

Just sight.

He wandered their alleys

and saw things not meant to be seen:

A priest fasting for peace

while baptizing blood.

A mother preaching compassion

while disowning her daughter’s desire.

Lovers who pledged forever

but planted knives mid-embrace.

Artists who painted rebellion

only when it was fundable.

He saw monsters in halos

and saints with fangs.

When he spoke,

they gasped.

“He has no mirror.

How can he know what’s right?”

So they called him broken.

Blasphemous.

Uncivilized.

He left —

not in rage,

but in relief.

He vanished into the forests

where wolves bite without outrage,

and grief isn’t bought off in pretenses.

Where blood was still blood —

not a scarlet metaphor.

Years passed.

The kingdom bloated.

Then cracked.

The mirrors split.

The polish peeled.

The blackened glass reflected back.

And people died —

not by war,

not by plague,

but by panic.

By the horror

of seeing themselves whole

for the first time.

They called it reckoning.

But no gods came.

No prophets returned.

No saviors arrived.

Only the mirrorless man,

now grown,

now grinning without grace,

walked through the ruins.

Where temples smelled of rot,

where prayers hung like cobwebs,

where justice had become

just another censored word.

He picked up a shard

and carved into the city gates:

“You weren’t holy. Just lit well.

You weren’t moral. Just better paraphrased.

Truth was never hidden — only unwelcome.

The mirror didn’t lie. You did — through its teeth.”

And then he walked

into the silence,

into the soil,

into the wild —

where things kill because they must,

and bleed without writing poems about it.

All Hail Homo Narcissus

When a black widow spider

devours the source of her last orgasm

and the seed of her future spawn,

no cobweb carries a protest,

no spider scrawls petitions in silk,

no flickering march through candle-lit corners

chanting equity, equality,

or equinoxes —

whatever they're calling fairness these days.

When two seahorses

exchange pouches in briny lust,

and she leaves with the orgasms

while he births the babies,

no ripple holds regret,

no tide seeks therapy.

No seahorse wakes

to sweat through nightmares

of misunderstood roles

and accidental consequences.

A hundred thousand species,

on land, beneath waves, in air —

each living

without apology or revision,

without the ache to rewrite

what simply is.

And then,

there’s Homo sapiens —

a species drunk on mirrors,

obsessed with its own exception.

They sue instincts.

They argue chromosomes.

They drag nature to court,

and legislate their discomfort

with the blueprint they were built from.

They chant, they cancel,

they curate suffering into identity,

carving their grievances

into gods, genders, and guilt.

They write manifestos

against the tide,

and call it progress.

And as they debate

whether truth should be censored

or anatomy redesigned,

a flying cockroach —

nature’s ugliest survivor,

immune to all their noise —

zigzags through their symposium

and dies mid-flight,

laughing at the tragedy

of a species

too ignorant, too arrogant to accept their inconspicuity.

Debris Of Deluded Divinity

For centuries,

you begged the skies

for signs you’re not alone.

You pointed telescopes at the void,

called it wonder.

Wrote fiction about aliens,

then denied their possibility

in your textbooks.

Turns out,

truth was falling through your atmosphere

in plain sight.

Not angels.

Not messages.

Just your blueprints—

RNA. DNA.

Every fucking alphabet

that ever spelled “life”

was carved

on space debris

older than your myths.

You are not beings of soil.

You are crash-landed consequences.

Cosmic errors

that survived impact.

You colonized a planet

before you even knew

what gravity was.

Then drew borders,

waged wars,

sang anthems

on a land

you never had permission to touch.

And now you talk of legacy.

Of purpose.

Of being destined.

You worship gods

etched in collective delusions

who’d piss themselves

if a real meteor walked in.

Because meteors don’t do sermons.

They don’t need disciples.

They show up,

shatter realities,

and exit —

leaving no room for second comings.

So the next time

you whisper sweet nothings to your ego,

I dare you to remind yourself:

You are not divine.

You are not chosen.

You are not even important.

You are a biological anomaly

on a rock borrowed from chaos,

a meteorite mutation

having a midlife crisis,

inventing languages and faiths to justify its existence.

You are the extraterrestrial

you were busy priding your genius in the hopeful discovery of.

The Redemption Act

They want redemption

like it’s owed.

Like ruin must end in song.

Like pain earns purpose

if endured long enough,

loud enough,

with enough witnesses to clap.

They want suffering

to be currency —

spent toward a cleaner ending.

They want to bleed,

but only if the blood can be painted into halos.

They want mercy

without the math.

They believe in arcs —

in plotlines,

in gods that make sense,

in climaxes that justify the carnage.

But life isn’t a scroll.

It doesn’t fold back into itself.

There is no midpoint,

no redemption waiting

in the last act.

Only echoes.

Only dust where your scream was.

They whisper of forgiveness

as if the wound cares.

As if the knife regrets.

As if the fire you set

can forget the forest.

There are no heroes.

Just survivors

with slightly better posture.

There is no rise.

Just gravity

paused mid-sentence.

They need redemption

because the thought of a fall

without flight

terrifies them.

Because if you don’t get yours,

they won’t get theirs —

and they’re not ready

to admit

they’ve been digging graves

and calling them mirrors.

They want a story

where monsters become men,

and men become monuments.

But monuments erode.

Men decompose.

Monsters remember.

And the only arc you’re owed —

is the arc of a shovel

splitting the skull of your delusion.

Heal Thy Verse

Self-acclaimed poetry pundits of the world —

Critics. Panels. Publications.

And softcore sellouts disguised as revered prophets.

You orgasm to imagined redemptions so violently,

it’s hard to tell what’s more fictional —

your intellect or your self-awareness.

Frail little bitches

with dildos for egos

and the vision of a blind bat.

Pimps of synthetic realities,

chasing closure

like dogs chasing car wheels.

While you’re busy judging

whose poetry poetrys like “great poetry” should —

why not read yours aloud to the world?

All of it.

No pseudonyms.

No context.

No curated captions.

Just your unhinged, bared bones.

And if that thought scares the shit out of you —

shove your syllables and standards

up your unwiped metaphors.

Because here’s the truth:

You don’t read to feel.

You read to belong.

Your reviews are masturbatory rituals

in velvet-lined echo chambers,

where the only thing louder than your praise

is your terror of being unread.

You don’t love poetry.

You love the sound of your own taste.

So before you seek redemption in verses,

redeem your poetic sense —

or better still,

write one poem

that doesn’t sound like a eulogy

delivered at the funeral

of your own relevance —

attended by no one,

except your insecurities,

reciting stanzas

they never understood —

and never will.

Doctor's Prescription For The Asymptomatic Blind

I can’t write of hope

in a world —

that sells drugs to the sober

and democracy to the clinically insane,

that peddles art as escape

to the artist,

the muse,

and the bemused,

that rewards delusion

in the denial of the failed

and the failing.

I can’t write of revolution

in a world —

that trades the many

to entertain the few,

where the few string together

“fair” and “nice”

like puppets of convenience,

that births voices

breathing fire and rage

until rebellion is

bought off in cash

and kind.

I can’t.

But I must.

So I write —

not of rescue,

but of rot.

Of the ugly,

and the filth,

because hope won’t cure,

and revolution won’t change.

But behaviour is basic —

and basics don’t mutate.

And if you believe otherwise,

perhaps

you and I inhabit different worlds.

But if you insist it’s the same,

tell me —

do you see the death and the decay

as much as I do?

And if you don’t,

would you consider

changing your ophthalmologist?

The Mercy Of Not Caring

If you ever see me poker-faced,

don’t you worry —

it’s not you.

It’s me.

I’m in the sinking stages

of a rather terminal illness

popularly known as:

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think.

And —

When I tell you

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think —

know this:

it isn’t malice speaking.

It’s mercy choosing silence

over the slow crucifixion

of truth wrapped in politeness.

It’s what honesty sounds like

before it’s gagged

by the sacred compulsion

to comfort your discomfort

with sugar-coated nothings.

When I tell you

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think —

it means I’ve watched

legions of hollow men parade

their noise as nuance,

their cowardice as clarity,

their need to be seen

as a substitute for substance.

And I —

I’ve run out of claps

for performances I didn’t buy a ticket for.

So no, I won’t cheer.

And no, I won’t rage.

I’ll just respectfully

not give a fuck.

When I tell you

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think —

it means I’ve been bruised

by too many slogans,

betrayed by too many banners,

bored by too many borrowed beliefs

masquerading as identity.

And I have no space left

in my pockets of patience

to house another false god

disguised as opinion.

I’ve spent too many years

shapeshifting to make you comfortable.

That season has ended.

Interpret it as you will.

I’ll still

not give a fuck.

When I say

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think —

it is not metaphor.

Metaphors are bone china —

offered to guests

you actually wish to host.

I am not accepting visitors.

And if any of this

offends your delicate myth

of mattering —

you are welcome to your perceptions,

your projections,

your self-appointed damnations.

I —

I don’t give a fuck

about what you think,

or what your thoughts of me

do to your sense of self.

Just like how

you don't give a fuck

about everything uncomfortable

to your furnished ideas of convenience.

You and I are almost identical

The only difference is,

only one of us has their femurs intact.

Here, don't forget your crutches!

Ribs & Rust

What is stopping you

from giving it all up?

Why do you still breathe —

as if your absence

might dislodge the moon

or un-write a single obituary?

Where do you find

this cocaine of delusion —

that you’re cosmic,

not just a condom-break

that outlived abortion

and became someone’s

annual tax deduction?

How do you move

when even your shadow

refuses to follow

on darker days?

You were never more

than soft tissue

on a ticking clock —

just another organism

crawling through routine,

praying today’s not your last,

hallucinating purpose

in concrete spines

and paper money.

The only difference is:

their hopes are humble —

to not die in the rain.

You write centuries

that won’t remember your name.

What you call wisdom

is auctioned ignorance.

What you call progress

is suicide in uniform.

What you call evolution

is bedtime folklore

told to calm

a terrified ape in denial.

If tomorrow greets you

with no hope,

no meaning,

no myth left to cling to —

pick up a rusted knife,

let it argue with your ribs

until one of you gives in.

And in that final,

exquisite silence,

you’ll learn:

everything they ever told you

was a beautiful lie —

so they could believe

a little longer.

Living Like Lizards

Life is a lizard

on the wall of time —

It never sees the whole wall.

Just scuttles

square inches at a time,

shifting skins, loyalties, 

and lizard-gods,

for a shot at surviving

today.

Lizards come.

Lizards go.

Tails snapped off

to buy an hour.

Tongues flicked

at prayers dressed as flies.

They live

in brief, borrowed verbs.

But the wall —

the wall just watches.

It doesn't chase.

It doesn't flinch.

It just outlasts

everything pretending

to belong.

Once white,

now a patchwork of dust,

cracks, blood,

and forgotten names

scratched in dying chalk.

The first lizard met the wall

like it was discovery.

The last lizard

will die thinking it was demise.

The wall is the beginning and the end —

even if the lizards

want to believe

it’s all about them.

The Geometry Of Truth

The more you grey —

in hair, in hormones,

in that decaying illusion called certainty —

You realise:

law and justice

aren’t siblings.

not even distant cousins.

they’re strangers who once

masturbated in adjacent bathrooms

during a citywide blackout.

Coincidence isn’t familial.

Proximity isn’t purpose.

and justice isn’t late —

she’s just overworked,

overdressed in ideals,

and underpaid in consequence.

She reads crime like horoscopes —

only when it suits the stars

or the state.

At some nameless crossroad —

unmapped, but carved into you —

you pause.

And it hits you:

truth

isn’t singular.

it’s a spectrum of silences,

traumas, timestamps,

and whose version finds an audience.

And yet you preach it.

Sermons of “truth”

like a shopkeeper selling

shoddy stationery:

pencil morals,

eraser memories,

rulers that don’t measure pain.

You call it principle.

I call it inventory.

A clearance sale

masquerading as gospel.

If your truth’s a compass

and mine’s a sundial in eclipse,

If your justice wears robes

and mine wears wounds,

how far are we

from agreement,

or from war?

Truth doesn’t wear blindfolds.

she squints —

at whoever sells the electricity and the illumination.

And in that squint,

we all fit

just long enough

to call ourselves

right.

Inheritance Of Almosts

Growing up, I was told

following the footsteps of your elders

is the best thing you could do.

Except —

when you’ve descended

from two failed generations of poets.

Because life’s random and all that,

but patterns don’t lie.

They may be dressed in accidents,

but they’re rarely without intention.

And reasons?

Reasons are for those who survive the pattern.

My Communist grandfather

worked for the Soviet Consulate —

long before Communism split the Soviet

from its own ribs.

And long after.

He stayed a lifelong Communist, nevertheless.

Poetry was the only place he was agnostic.

He held on to Communism like it was his religion.

So what if religion wasn't allowed in Communism?

That’s what half-baked revolutionaries do right:

take what something is against

and turn it into everything.

He bled like a Marxist by day

and an anarchist by night.

But poetry never bled for him.

And as peers made headlines,

debts, and premature deaths,

he vanished —

a shadow of a poet

long before he became

the shadow of a man.

My father was different.

When you've watched a lifelong poet

and a lifelong Communist

collapse face-first

on unfurnished flooring,

rough in the edges,

you learn better.

He mastered the art of subtleties —

a closet Communist

and a closet poet.

He didn’t swear by Marx or Lenin,

but he slept to dreams of revolution —

because dreams don’t raise alarms.

Dreams get to hide

in broad daylight

under the quilt of selective amnesia.

He didn’t swear by poetry either —

poetry had failed inheritance.

So he chose rhyme —

a safer, dumber island

far away from the waves of blank verse.

He made his science his muse —

wrote rhymes

on the affordable innocence of elephants

and the fine-tuned profanity

of drongos and herons.

When you’ve blanketed your bones

with pretence for flesh,

you don’t fail.

You just never succeed.

And here I am —

more than a century

into this heirloom of almosts.

I inherited both Communism and poetry —

and like all things passed down,

some inherit wealth,

some inherit trauma,

some inherit nothing but memory

of what could’ve been.

And poetry, like politics,

is just trauma

that found a voice, 

but seldom, a spine.

And I’ve seen too many

die inside both —

long before they actually died.

So I refuse the inheritance.

I write, yes —

but I don’t seek verses.

I burn them and bleed them dry.

I don’t believe in ideologies

for they are far too ideal to be logical

in inherited systems of coerced dysfunction.

I am the anti-climax

to poetry and to politics.

Let poetry keep my sarcasm.

Let politics keep my satire.

Even I mistook poetry for redemption

until I realised rhyme doesn’t raise the dead.

I’d rather come

all over the margins

and leave the obituary blank.

Departed & Digested

36 times out of 100,

a twin —

in the warmth of the womb

and comfort

of their very own skin,

their very own sibling,

their very own twin —

doesn't make it.

It’s called

Vanishing Twin Syndrome.

You’d think I’m here

to write a lament,

mourn a death,

eulogize the little one lost.

But if you thought that,

you clearly haven’t read me before.

I don’t write elegies.

I don’t romanticize death.

Death is just the natural course

for those born at the wrong time,

and there's no right time to be born. 

What is unsettling

at least 

to acceptable human conscience

is not the dying.

It’s what happens

to what’s left behind.

Because the truth rots

not just in graves —

it festers

in wombs.

And if you believe science —

because let’s be honest,

God pulling a child out of your womb

as tariff for your carnal indulgences

is as audaciously idiotic

as it is poetic —

then here's what happens:

The mother

feeds on the dead child.

Her body

absorbs it back.

So does the surviving twin.

In a world of 8 billion,

there are 250 million twins.

Which means:

90 million vanished twins.

Ninety million.

That’s 9

followed by 7 zeroes.

That many dead children.

That many siblings

who grew up

eating their own 

flesh and skin

before they even

learned to crawl.

And you stand here

telling me

cannibalism isn’t human?

Scripture For The Damned

I decoded theology.

God is fiction.

Religion is fan fiction —

written in fear,

edited in conquest,

proofread by men who mistook power for purpose.

I asked too many questions in temples,

so they rewrote the scriptures

with disclaimers in red.

They said faith moves mountains.

So they built shrines on landslides

and called it destiny.

They wore suffering like school uniforms —

stitched with silence,

badge of blind obedience.

They called their deaths sacrifices.

But sacrifice needs consent.

Most of them were just collateral.

I watched a prophet burn his doubts

to warm the same crowd

that lit the pyre.

Martyrs are never volunteers.

Just tired people

who stopped running.

I prayed once —

not out of faith,

but fatigue.

Sometimes, hope is just a prettier suicide note.

They told me to surrender.

I asked, “To whom?”

They handed me mirrors

and called it god.

Turns out, their deities

looked just like them —

angry, entitled,

and allergic to dissent.

Their scriptures promised fire.

Their priests sent invoices.

Sin became a one-way toll road

with traffic in both directions.

They said: love thy neighbour —

unless he eats the wrong meat,

loves the wrong gender,

or spells god with a lowercase g.

They said salvation.

I said: I’d rather rot with questions

than rise with answers

written by tyrants.

They asked me to repent.

I asked them to read.

I don’t kneel anymore.

I don’t fold hands —

except when I clap back.

I don’t chant.

I howl.

Let me burn like scripture —

banned,

blasphemous,

quoted in whispers.

You don’t become a wildfire.

You spark.

And the gods choke on smoke.

Thursday Mourning

Ever walked into a hospital

at 11:30 on a Thursday morning?

You should try it sometime —

right after brushing your teeth

but before brushing off mortality.

They say hospitals are places of healing.

That’s a lie.

Hospitals are where hope goes to wheeze.

I used to think of them as synonyms for death.

But this time,

death wasn’t the problem.

Love was.

Sometimes,

you drag the house to the hospital

so the hospital doesn’t become home.

That Thursday was one of those days —

clouds in mourning,

light trying to peek in

like a timid apology.

Hospitals are just temples

where gods wear stethoscopes

and no one bows —

they just wait,

quietly,

desperately,

on plastic chairs

that have seen more heartbreak

than generations of poets put together.

In temples, people are restless.

In hospitals, they’re frozen.

Nobody trades time here.

Time is the disease.

And we’re all terminal.

You won’t find complaints here.

No gossips. No gripes.

Just strangers

holding hands with absence.

The sick don’t argue.

Only the comfortable have that luxury.

Here, rage is a memory

and ego is irrelevant.

This isn’t a battlefield.

It’s a casino.

Everyone’s betting on breath.

Everywhere you look —

saline drips, oxygen masks,

the soft hum of beeping machines

pretending they’re still fighting for you.

And the silence?

It isn’t peace.

It’s a scream that ran out of voice.

Hospitals are where poetry dies.

Language becomes clinical.

Manners become redundant.

The body becomes

an attendance register of failing systems.

All gods become one here.

No colour, no caste, no flags,

no rituals.

Just one shared religion

called “Please, not today.”

Old people, children,

young lovers holding onto each other

like the drip might leak prayers

instead of paracetamol.

There’s a scent to these corridors.

Not antiseptic.

Not death either.

Something in between —

like hope rotting in a sealed jar,

forgotten in a fridge

no one opens anymore.

You don't leave a hospital.

You carry it home —

in your prescriptions,

your silences,

your inability to cry at movie deaths anymore.

Because once you've watched a loved one

negotiate with breath —

every god, every poem, and every promise

starts to sound like

an arrogant sales pitch

for a product that never worked.

I Found God In A Bucket

In a world torn apart by wings —

left vs right,

woke vs washed,

progress vs propaganda —

I too believe in wing supremacy.

But not your limp metaphors,

your identity pissing contests,

or your sad little echo chambers

masquerading as revolutions.

I believe in chicken wings.

Selfless little bastards

that sacrifice themselves

without a goddamn bard

singing odes to their suffering. 

Chicken wings don’t sell you fear.

They don’t say:

“Believe in me or burn forever.”

They burn themselves

so you don’t have to.

They don’t care

if you pray before eating them,

or if you say grace

with your mouth full of meat and delusion.

They don’t ask

who you voted for,

what your pronouns are,

or if you align with the ideology of the plate.

They just arrive.

Hot. Greasy. Honest.

Like truth with a side of masala.

Chicken wings don’t cancel you

if you like turkey thighs.

They don’t riot

because you dipped them in the wrong sauce.

They don’t accuse you of betrayal

for chewing slow.

Because chicken wings aren’t insecure.

They’re not screaming,

“Respect all wings or you’re wing-phobic!”

They die quietly

and taste like dignity.

Try finding that in politics.

They don’t ask to be worshipped.

They don’t need bullshit stories for advertising.

No statues. No temples.

Just your hunger.

They don’t come with holy books

full of loopholes and land disputes.

They don’t call themselves sacred

and then molest your morality.

Chicken wings never said

they were the only path to salvation.

But let’s be honest —

they’re the only damn thing that comes close.

Your gods guilt you.

Your governments gaslight you.

Your activists exhaust you.

But chicken wings?

They just ask:

“How spicy?”

Chicken wings don’t perform oppression.

They don’t cry foul

while selling you overpriced tickets to their trauma.

They don’t sell flash fiction

about how hard it is to be fried and fabulous.

They just arrive.

Crisp. Quiet. No metaphor attached.

And if you bite wrong,

they don’t sue.

They stain your shirt.

And that’s your punishment.

That’s justice.

True justice.

Tandoori justice.

I’ve read your scriptures.

I’ve heard your slogans.

I’ve seen your saviors.

None fed me.

Most bored me.

Some robbed me.

But chicken wings?

They gave.

Every time.

So no, I don’t believe in ideologies.

I believe in a bucket full of wings,

and a brief moment

where nothing else fucking matters.

Because chicken wings are everything

you wish your gods,

your politics,

and your poetry were:

Unpretentious. Unafraid. Unapologetic.

And gone too soon.

Wing Supremacy

In a world torn apart between wings —

the rigid right and the leaning left —

I believe in wing supremacy too.

Except,

my faith is chicken wings.

Selfless wings

that serve not themselves

but a hundred thousand hungry souls

day in, day out.

Not once do they pull out a victim card

that says,

"Look what you did to me."

They never ask me

if I believe in other wings.

Never tell me

there’s only one true wing.

Never insist

I’m worthless because I questioned their authority.

Never sell me bullshit origin stories —

as if Stan Lee hadn’t sold enough.

Chicken wings don’t care

if I believe in all chicken wings equally,

or if I love turkey wings slightly less,

or if ostrich wings weird me out a bit —

because chicken wings

aren’t insecure little pieces of shit.

Chicken wings keep your belly full

and your head sane.

They don’t preach,

they feed.

Chicken wings

are everything

you wish your gods

and governments were.

The Joker's Ace

I have never believed in stars

and yet we crossed paths

like shooting stars —

crashing across the skies

and onto the ground

as if we were hope for love.

Except, we weren’t shooting stars.

You and I — we were comets.

Fire in the belly, rage in the entrails,

and glitter on the face.

Because, apparently,

you only matter

if you're photogenic —

or at least your sob story is.

You and I —

we didn’t have sob stories.

We were survivors.

Of dysfunctional parents,

broken families,

poisoned affections,

and all the poetries in between.

You — a volatile wife

to a reckless husband.

And I — an infamous wife-stealer.

That’s the kind of math

you learn long before calculus.

High school chemistry

would call it an anomalous equation —

not because the equation was wrong,

but because the elements were.

Love that blooms

at the grave of a dead love

doesn’t take long

to achieve full bloom.

The bone dust of a love-lost yesterday

is great manure

for fresh love.

The thing with fresh love

and volatile people is —

they fuck like wrecking balls

and grow like tornadoes.

You and I weren’t the exception.

For a change.

Someone’s wife.

Someone else’s woman.

A hard gamble to bet on.

You don’t escape it.

It comes crashing

like a house of cards.

She was the Queen.

I was the King.

He was the Joker.

After all —

this was our story to tell.

But jokers

have often changed

the course of history.

And this was still a marriage —

the ace of which

was the Joker’s to pull and push.

And he did push.

And just like that —

a burnt house found its refuge.

And the fire in our bellies

burnt us both,

as the rage in our entrails

died a mad dog’s death.

You were gone.

Clean cuts.

As if it was never there.

Back to the basics.

As if eighteen months

of cosmic corruption

was edited out

in the final audit.

Forgetting a man

outside a marriage is easy.

Call it a mistake.

An inevitable fallout

of a reckless husband's ignorance.

But forgetting a woman

in another man’s marriage —

now that’s hard.

Call it whatever you want to —

but the stench

and the stains

of your perverted intentions

stay

and

some sins

scream louder

than 

silence can bury.

Curtain Call For The Meaningless

They say

living is the point.

But if living means enduring,

collecting betrayals in the name of routine,

measuring time in unpaid debts

and unprocessed memories,

then perhaps

we misunderstood the assignment.

They call us wise

because we decorate despair

with metaphors

and call it clarity.

But what is wisdom

if not the art of sounding composed

while crumbling inward?

We crave life

as if it holds answers.

We fear death

as if it’s punishment

for asking too many questions.

And yet we dare to call ourselves

wise.

We built gods

from lightning, hunger,

and things we didn’t understand.

Then we bowed —

not from awe,

but from repetition.

We carved commandments into stone,

forgetting truth

was always liquid —

poured, spilled,

and evaporated

before anyone could bottle it.

We mistook survival

for progress.

Gave struggle a halo,

called suffering a syllabus.

As if the universe

were ever a teacher.

As if pain

ever handed out certificates.

We called it faith

when we meant muscle memory.

We called it hope

when we meant denial.

We wrapped our delusions in language,

perfumed our losses

with legacy.

And even the wise —

those artisans of ambiguity,

those architects of acceptable despair —

even they

are dragged off stage

mid-sentence,

mid-theory,

mid-thought.

So don’t speak to me

of purpose.

Speak of decay.

Of silence so vast

it unmakes meaning.

Of truths that never asked

to be worshipped.

Of questions that outlived

every one who dared ask them.

Because in the end,

all we ever do

is echo.

And even echoes,

eventually,

die.

And maybe that’s all we were —

noisy echoes in a collapsing cave,

chanting mantras to distract ourselves

from the sound of ceilings cracking.

Maybe the only wisdom left

is knowing the applause won’t last,

and neither will the ones clapping.

So we write,

not to be remembered,

but to make forgetting harder.

We perform,

not to be understood,

but to stain silence

with the aftertaste of our chaos.

And we live —

not because we figured it out,

but because

no one told us

when to stop.

— curtain.

no encore.

just echo.

A House Called Memory

Children grow up with lullabies and legacy.

I grew up with the hollow of both.

My parents were too busy raising my sister’s ailments

to raise a child who didn’t cough blood for attention.

And my grandmother —

a mother whose lesser son became my father —

didn’t exactly dream of a grandson like me.

She wasn’t cruel.

She was just unconvinced

that affection should be spent

on the wrong branches of the family tree.

And my grandfather?

The eldest of five brothers and a sister.

He wasn’t cold.

He was absent —

even while standing right there.

The kind of silence that doesn’t echo —

just hovers,

like smoke that refuses to leave.

He didn’t ignore you.

He erased you

by pretending you never existed.

But her —

the third brother’s wife —

she was the loophole in that bloodline.

Not grandmother by name,

but by everything else.

The kind of woman who wore warmth like a second skin,

even when the house reeked of cold silences

and doors that shut harder than they ever opened.

She made me cream biscuits

with more devotion than any religion could muster.

Double-egg omelettes that tasted like blessings.

Carrom on winter afternoons with her elderly neighbours —

as if joy could be summoned

with nothing more than striker, coin, and presence.

We didn’t have a language.

We had rituals.

While my parents outsourced affection

to injections and inhalers,

she gave me laughter in small plates.

Cartoons. Cinema. Companionship.

She didn’t just feed me —

she made the act of eating feel like love.

We became synonyms for each other —

I, growing out of childhood.

She, growing into grey.

Time sat there,

a quiet psychopath,

licking its lips,

waiting for the first one to break.

It broke her first.

Or maybe it broke me,

and called it her death

just to make it easier to write.

I didn’t cry.

Because no one teaches you

how to grieve someone

you never expected to lose.

How do you mourn a home

when your childhood was built from its bones?

I didn’t light a candle.

I lit cigarettes.

Smoked them like incense sticks

to a god who never showed up.

I didn’t fold my hands.

I clenched my fists.

Because no god deserves reverence

for snatching away

the only goddamn thing

that was ever sacred.

For eighteen years,

we were an ecosystem —

one part oxygen,

one part miracle.

And suddenly,

I was just breathless.

Capitalism gave me new gods —

Skyscrapers. Salaries. Sponsored slavery.

They said, “Grow up.”

And I did.

But I never grew past her.

I just leased my lungs

to boardrooms and burnout,

became another number

in a calendar of deadlines

that made no room for grief.

And now?

Now she only visits in metaphors.

Now she’s a shadow behind my punchlines.

A ghost that lingers

after the laughter dies.

They say death is closure.

But grief?

Grief is the open end

you forgot closure to —

it slows your being,

makes every sentence stutter.

She wasn’t just a woman.

She was the architecture of my becoming.

The brick and mortar

to the house called memory.

The wallpaper

of every good day I ever had.

And when she left,

I didn’t just lose her —

I lost the only version of me

who ever knew how to feel safe.

Since then,

I’ve been growing older

inside a body

she never got to see.

Some days,

I think I became a man

just to keep her ghost company.

Houseplants

The first plant was a rescue.

Cracked ceramic, bruised roots,

a spine like protest —

I saw myself in its stubborn lean.

I sang to it songs banned in five states,

quoted Audre Lorde and Ambedkar

like sunlight through smog.

I let it grow wild,

let its leaves fall where they pleased.

No pruning. No judgment.

It thrived on irreverence

till one day, it snapped —

out of sheer integrity.

Died of defiance,

some said.

Refused to be tamed,

said others.

I buried it in my compost of causes

and called it martyrdom.

The second one arrived already potted,

gift-wrapped in digestible aesthetics.

A brand-approved green.

Succulent enough to survive any neglect,

it needed no revolution —

just a routine.

I watered it on Tuesdays,

talked to it in marketable metaphors.

Called it Hope

in a tone soft enough

for workshops.

It grew,

predictably.

Framed itself against my bookshelf,

learnt how to pose for reels.

Became the backdrop

to my better self.

Guests adored it.

“Such poise,” they said.

“Such balance.”

It never once asked to be repotted.

Never once asked anything at all.

But I remember the first —

that cracked vessel of refusal.

How it bent away from applause

and toward its own collapse.

How it chose extinction

over assimilation.

And some nights,

when the second plant looks

a little too perfect —

I’m tempted to withhold water

just to see

if it remembers

what droughts can do

to the soul.

Instead,

I mist it gently,

rotate it for symmetry,

rename it Perseverance

so the platform features it.

The neighbors call it healing.

I call it

what they’ve always called surrender:

growth.

Decay In Chrome

She left her earrings

on the sink.

Not forgotten.

Left.

Like a trap.

Like something venomous with no visible fangs.

Polite. Polished. Surgical.

I didn’t touch them.

I brushed beside them for 137 days.

Counting. Not healing.

Each morning,

two perfect metal loops stared up at me

like tiny nooses

for men who loved wrong.

They weren’t jewelry.

They were landmines.

Memories with sharp edges

that didn’t bleed —

just cut a little deeper every time

I pretended they weren’t there.

You know how stillness gets loud

after a certain kind of woman leaves?

That’s what they did.

They hummed.

At 3 AM.

They rattled slightly when the window was open

like they were whispering:

“She’s not coming back.”

Not because she didn’t love me.

But because she did —

just enough to ruin me.

I tried to fuck it out of my system.

Different bodies.

Different colognes on the pillow.

But no one wore earrings.

Not by accident.

Like their earlobes knew

this was haunted territory.

The sink cracked.

Not from use —

from weight.

Memory has mass.

Regret does, too.

A plumber came.

Unaware he was walking into a tomb.

He tossed them out

while whistling a happy song.

I didn’t stop him.

I just watched.

Like a man watching his last evidence

get erased

by someone who didn't know

how wars end.

He left.

The pipe stopped leaking.

But I didn’t.

Now the mirror is clean.

The sink works.

And no one asks questions.

Except the silence.

It still wants to know

why I never wore gloves

to handle what she left behind.

Seasoning

You say white is good,

because there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.

But tell me this —

if white didn’t have black,

would it ever fascinate you?

If the tunnel wasn’t pitch dark,

would the light still feel holy?

I get it —

white’s easy on the eyes,

black makes you uncomfortable.

But put them through a prism,

and you’ll see —

white is just a frugal fraction of black.

So keep your whites.

I’ll keep the blacks.

And every time there’s too many of you,

I’ll drop by —

for seasoning.

God Of Heresy

Some people write

like obedient students of the language.

Some write

like nerds begging for praise.

Some write

like priests preaching in prose.

Some write

like lovers — soft, safe, sentimental.

I want to go down

as the heretic

who re-engineered its DNA.

Remember me or don’t —

I’ll still live

in your memory of the language.

User Manual To Self-Love

The next time

you feel like

indulging in self-love,

take a deep breath.

Shut the curtains.

Latch the doors.

Put out the loud lights.

Leave a few dim ones on — maybe.

Walk up to the biggest mirror

in the house.

Stand there — still and quiet.

Relish the look on your face

as your eyes dance around

the curves of your skin.

Peel off every last shred

of fabric on you.

Don't take off your eyes.

You dare not flinch.

And as you watch yourself

in all your stripped glory,

touch yourself —

and don’t stop

until the only noise in the house

is your moan,

and the only fragrance

is that of your pheromones

kissing your sweat.

And as you struggle

to catch your breath,

let it shudder

and wither

within you.

As you lie down

on your bed.

The next time

you feel like

indulging in self-love —

don’t dress up

and go screaming

at faceless names

to jerk your insecurities off to.

The next time

you feel like

indulging in self-love —

go fuck yourself

and drown your demons

in your orgasms.

It’s self-love.

Love yourself.

Shut the fuck up.

Move on.

Your Poetry, My Ass

An entire generation of poets

has been convinced

that Instagram shitposting

is poetry.

An entire generation of poets

has tried erasing the roots of poetry —

as if they were pencilled into

a neoliberal whiteboard.

An entire generation of poets

has been reciting heartbreak like prophecy,

as if a missing hip-girdle

wasn’t foretelling enough.

An entire generation of poets

has been bullshitting on page and in safe spaces —

as if selling cow dung

was fashionable for both

left-leaning saviours

and right-wrecking dimwits.

An entire generation of poets

has buried poetry six feet under

in the name of relatability —

as if blood

hasn’t tasted betrayal

enough.

I stand alongside a handful few —

pens for scalpels and papers for autopsies

bleeding these literary leeches dry

it's time poetry got its poetic justice.

Your Hope Is A Fine Lie

Hope isn’t a blindfold.

And optimistic isn’t a verb

to justify your fear

of calling the rot

by its name

in broad daylight.

To believe in the bright —

you must first believe in the dark.

To hope for tomorrow —

you must taste the decay of today.

You’re not an optimist.

You’re a misdiagnosed runaway.

Soothe Yourself

If you want it to soothe

take a tube of antiseptic

and shove it up your sensitized asshole

But don't ask me to write kind.

If you want it to feel good

take your hard-on of an assumed intellect

and push it down a gloryhole until your ego cums

But don't ask me to write pretty. 

If you want it to inspire hope

take a kilo of cocaine and hash, and every other narcotic

you need to live your illusion

But don't ask me to write affirmations.

I'm a poet for fuck's sake;

not a babysitter to your fragile faiths.