There's a reason you chose to hide
Behind the mask that you still wear
You hide all your pain and regret
These things you refuse to share
You feel it's unjust for you
To suffer this life that you live
For a day most would call normal
There's nothing you wouldn't give
Mistakes from a time long ago
Have twisted the hands of your fate
Now every day is suffering
In this life you try orchestrate
You were never shown mercy
Or graced with a second chance
Fate chose to ignore you
Never giving you another glance
Your own life now forces you
To carry a crippling weight
A depression that's so deep
It's impossible to medicate
It could all be over for good
Repeats the voices in your head
They promise nothing can hurt
Once you have become dead
they asked if I believed in the afterlife
I told them the jury was still out on the before life.
The heavy burdens of the waking mind
Dissolve as shadows stretch across the floor,
And leave the frantic pulse of life behind,
To quiet all the storms that raged before.
No longer anchored to a fading spark,
I watch the fragile threads of hope unbind,
And step into the vast and silent dark,
Where peace is all that’s left for me to find.
The universe is empty, cold, and vast,
Yet in this nothingness, I feel no fear,
For all my petty struggles fade at last,
And every drifting phantom disappears.
I shed the weight that held my soul employed,
And mindlessly walk to embrace the void.
Ash falls without sound,
Distant drums echo in dust
Peace hides in the smoke.
When children are the target,
We begin to write our horror stories,
For what will remain of us in this world we call home?
What will become of the echoes of soles and heels on the streets at dawn and twilight?
When children are the target,
Who will schools open their doors to?
Who will harmonise the voices of the instructors on the assembly ground?
Who will sit behind those desks with keen eyes, curious minds, and warm smiles?
Who will rush out of their classrooms at the sound of the bell to the awaiting embrace?
When children are the target,
Who will bring colour to our days at home?
Who will run joyfully through the sunlit fields, glowing with the leaves and petals?
Who will sit with us, gazing at the night sky, awed by its beauty?
When children are the target,
Grief will rise like smoke from our homes,
The graveyard will mourn for the trampled buds,
The universe will rage and fume,
The elements will be sorely displeased.
When children are the target,
The race we run will be futile,
The applause will not reverberate,
And the portrait of our society will remain perpetually blotched.
February 4, 2026.
A stilled moment.
As spelled the air
Intensified that felt of it:
Peace; the Saviour's.
With each touched-by-the-sacred grass
Twitches not in
Heard as what for whose praise, thereout
Grasshopper's, pours.
Time doesn’t pass.
It claims.
First, it gives you room.
Then it fills it without asking.
Days repeat until repetition feels like evidence.
You wait for meaning to announce itself.
Completion arrives quietly and keeps moving.
The future enters as obligation.
You move with it, the way gravity expects.
The past reorganizes itself without permission.
What remains is what went unattended.
Loss isn’t loud.
It sounds like continuity.
Nothing important vanishes outright.
It just stops calling your name.
Moments thin under daily pressure.
One day feels ordinary.
Later, it becomes everything.
You realize you’ve been living in the aftermath,
long before anything officially ended.
Time never takes everything.
It takes enough.
Water my love, matrix, mother, sustainer.
Slips easily through my fingers, unconstrained.
It flows softly, all believing and seeing.
A living fountain, so free, and uncontained.
It's the fountainhead, the pulse that feeds the earth.
It's the medium of every breath and birth.
Its touch sustains every essence of our days,
In a flowing hymn that time itself obeys.
Yet when water goes, a watermark remains.
The scar of its absence etched in salt and rust.
A crust of sediment from dark regret stains.
A bitter nit grit that settles into dust.
It's not water's hand, but time's corroding breath,
that brands the world with the memory of death—
Its silent scourge true evidence of decay,
Of what, just pure water could not wash away.
Families searching for their loved ones
After the mud has settled to the ground
And water is flowing at a normal pace
But all that left are the little memories
In forms of clothing, pearls or
In their decayed form as a skeleton
They all witnessed the horror with their eyes
While this poet was horrified from what I saw on TV
Families stuck between the flood water, holding each other close
Gets thrown off from the height like a rock falling from waterfall
How can that fool sleep at night after watching this?
Just a little message from him into local newspaper
And the story settles to the ground, never rising again
Until more atrocious scenes baffles the mankind
the town that once sat in the foothills
one night felt the terror of nature
someone was dancing with their lover
while someone was having dinner
and someone was playing with their kids
it all came down like the ruins of an empire
the rocks started to destroy the homes
then the water that followed swept away everything
The sound of breaking is late.
Thunder shatters gray clouds after
lightning strikes the damp soil.
When pieces of sky pierce flesh,
the scream is slow to rise—
The sound of breaking follows pain’s echo.
The sound of breaking is gentle.
Raindrops tiptoe on my eyelids—
each sting a secret pressed down.
Earth's unbridled tears fall for my dried irises
like a mother weeping for her daughter’s sorrow.
The sound of breaking soothes the broken.
The sound of breaking is silent.
Breaking is walking beside the light,
but too dim to cast a shadow.
I watch as the sun clears the post-rain sky,
dyes its silk blue with the arc of a rainbow—
the sound of breaking
mutes even the birdsong at dawn.
Could never predict,
In any way,
What would unfold,
Throughout each day.
Walking on eggshells,
Living in fear,
Stuck in survival,
Declining every year.
Constantly torn between,
Fight or flight,
Until it erupted,
Changing everything overnight.
Now or never,
Said the voice,
Without a doubt,
Knew my choice.
Didn't know how,
I'd ever cope,
But never once,
Gave up hope.
I battled alone,
Jumped through hoops,
Could never win,
Rotating in loops.
Assigned to support,
Instead got worse,
Weighing me down,
Like some curse.
Fed empty promises,
Hoping I'd believe,
Unlucky for them,
Wasn't that naive.
Reaching my limits,
Couldn't fight anymore,
Made them leave
Out my door.
Taking back control,
Standing my ground,
Was never lost,
Didn't need found.
Choosing to pave,
My own path,
By creating beauty,
In the aftermath.
Like old paint,
the discarded heart chips away
where it lay
in a hollow chest
not unlike my own breast.
In its prime,
untainted by sin
and made of sheepskin,
its candy apple hue
captivated everyone—especially the likes of you.
However, who now
could admire a color
so mottled by misuse and so drastically duller?
Verily, no unclouded eye could find merit
in such a sorry trinket.
The after
What happens after?
When what was loud is now silent
Where a place once filled with cameras go unnoticed
What once made history is now forgotten
Later
On TV they'll be a recap
The story will go
They'll manipulate the situation
Bonus if its told by a republican
They'll say
The police were peaceful, we'll be labelled as criminals
I guess it's opposite day
As in fact it was the other way
Those who will clean up
Will cry whilst they simultaneously wipe their eyes and wipe peoples blood up
Yes it was violent
No it wasn't us
But you'll never know
As the real story will be locked up
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