Amphan

Ashes to ashes, ashes to dust, I see buildings wrecked to a ruin.

Midst the scaffolding is a City of Joy that I no longer recognise.

Piled under this devastation, I see emerging, 

Humanity worth saving.

Against all odds, lingers a will to survive.

Now is when we bury all differences, for the tomorrow we want to rebuild.    

Repentance

I.  Ruin

I remember it like it was yesterday,

How the dominoes started falling.  

You knocked one out

And that was enough, 

To set them all collapsing. 

Like a ticking bomb,

You started the clock, 

Put a target on my back.   
And all of a sudden, 

It was open season, 

And I was theirs to attack. 

II. Outcast  

The seasons changed,

But the memories remained.  

Unwelcome, unwanted, 

In every room, I walk into.  

I saw the heads as they turned,

And the hatred in them that burned, 

I heard the laughter fade, 

Every time they saw my face. 

Rumors buried truths,

Their words, sharp as knives.
Your worth kept being glorified

While my story stays misconstrued. 
When they took over the script, 

My privacy was violated,  

And my identity, reduced,   

To how you let them define it.

III. Havoc 

I’m still desperately, trying to keep, 

These dominoes from crushing me. 

I’m still trying not to bleed, 

On people who never cut me. 

But no matter what I do,

This mess keeps on multiplying. 

My dignity shattered like broken glass,

Remains scattered on the floor.

I’ve dawned every mask, 

Played every role 

So all I ask, 

All I can hope, 

Is that I never end up  

As someone like,

You. 

IV. Ambivalence

Your audacity, 
It angers me, it annoys me. 

How you show up unannounced.  

How you never stop to consider, 

The repercussions you might trigger. 
Your apology, 

Shallow. 

Full of holes that filter,

Any kind of sincerity. 

You say you’ve changed,

But your actions beg to differ.  

Even after all this time, 

I can see still right through you,

When you call yourself a victim 

Of your circumstances.  

When you’re nothing but a coward,

For not taking responsibility. 
You probably have forgotten,

When push came to shove,

How you abandoned me with your mess. 
And now you want an easy way out,
Without putting in the work,
Dealing with the inconvenience, 
Of your so-called newfound conscience.

But my forgiveness won’t make any sense, 

Without your repentance.  

I want your guilt to consume you, 

Have your inner voices collude with you.

Until your mind is a labyrinth,

You can’t ever escape out of.  

I want the skeletons in your closet to come alive, 

To taunt you and haunt you.

Until they replace,

Everyone you ever cared about. 

I want your shame to materialize,

Everywhere you go. 

Every place, every person,

Will remind you of me. 

Even in your nightmares, 
You'll be trapped,
In your own regret and guilt. 

You’ll see me as I lay down my corpse,

The ghost of my Past, 
You had me kill.

She wasn’t good enough for you, was she?
And she never will be. 

And if all that doesn't keep you, from sleeping peacefully,

I hope you wake up in the middle of the night,

To the sound of me screaming.

And as you rush to the sink,

To wash the blood from your hands, 

That has seeped into your skin, 

May you drown in your regret, 

And doubt to recognize yourself.

You had dug my grave before, 

But now it’s my turn to bury you. 

So once you’re overflowing, 

With shame and self-loathing.  

Still mulling over your self-worth,

If you feel yourself unraveling, 

Your guilt is finally manifesting, 

For setting me up to take your blame.

If it’s my forgiveness you really want, 

I want your sanity in exchange, 

To replace the one I lost,
All these years I spent wasting,  
Regretting and believing, 

That I had done you wrong. 

V. Nascence  

These poems I write 

Are flowers to adorn,

Our grave of a past. 

Set in stone, 

Smeared in blood,
Laid to rest, at last. 

I used to believe that closure, 

Is a thing cowards chased. 

But all this anger that I’ve harbored, 

The longer I store, 

Poisons more than it cures.  

All this sorrow that I cling onto,

Like battle armor,

Weighs me down, 

From my glory that awaits.

I’ve felt my grief in its immensity, 
I’ve lived in spite and in fear. 

But I feel it’s time, to let the bitterness go. 

The healing hurts like heartbreak,

But I will persevere.
My progress is my legacy,
My identity is my becoming. 

So, I’ll let you go easy,

You’ve always had it easy.

I might regret it someday, but not today. 

Maybe I too can forgive myself for forgiving you,

Little man, may this mean everything to you,

Cause it means nothing to me. 

And if our paths would happen to cross again in the future,

I’ll approach you like a stranger, 

Like the inconsequential entity, you've grown into.

I’ve found my peace.

I hope you will find it too. 

Damaged Goods

I wear loss like a widow adorns her veil 

I reek of regret like every drunkard's last breath

I hope like saints who trust in omens

But I know love like abandoned orphans 

I cry in silence like stars twinkling in the daytime

Still, I’ll keep my head up high like a wide-eyed child 

But I’m as brave as a coward off to war 

So I keep pretending like sinners at church

Like the deranged crave sanity,

I‘m a weed yearning to bloom,

I’m martyr walking to their doom,  

There’s still so much I want to do 

I’m ready to die,

But the Devil won’t let me 

No, I haven’t been dealt a winning hand

I’m a reckless gambler with nothing to lose 

All my life I’ve been labeled as damaged goods

I’m Pandora's box, 

My veins are filled with nothing but chaos 

you should heed the warning

Still, you find my paradoxes enticing.

Like a pirate, you’re hungry 

for my myths, legends, and fantasies

But you keep believing

That I’m that lucky message in a bottle

When I’m actually nothing but trouble  

I’m not the sign you were looking for 

I’m no blessing in disguise  

I ruin everything I touch

I’m a sinking ship that’s burning

You’ll burn while you drown

Everyone’s echoing my insecurities 

That you could do so much better than me 

But the blush in your cheek, 

Makes me believe you bleed like me,

I’m not afraid to look my Demons in eye

But I’m more afraid that you could be everything I was denied 

Hold My Hand

If I told you, 

To hold my hand. 

Tell me, would you?

Hold it the way, the world would know you’re not ashamed of me 

To be seen with me 

To be with me

Hold it the way oysters guard pearls

The way waves line the beach with shells

And how children seek secrets 

And stars shine through the darkness

You can hold my hand just to let it go

I won’t mind 

It’s really okay

We hold to let go

We love to grow apart

We try to fail 

We leave to come home

But if you were to hold my hand

I’d probably never let it slip

Like children believe in magic 

I’d hold on to it, with all my lost innocence 

5 languages of love

I am so used to abuse 

I know the consequences when I refuse 

I know what lies after I say “no”

Never straying from the script, the events unfold, 

A hand around my throat 

Knotted like a rope

A struggle for power

I fake a fight for show.

So tell me how

can Touch be a language of love?

When I think of "touch" 

I think of a tug, a push, and a pull,

I think of a shove, a crash, and a thud

I think of a strike, so blindingly fast. 

I think of bright violet bruises

And dripping red blood that oozes 

Onto shattered shards of mirror glass 

From touches that signal kneeling 

To touches forcing unrequited pleasing 

Mechanical and objectified 

Pinned down and paralyzed

As locker room talks 

Turns to lewd gawks 

Prolonged glances 

Estimating chances 

Brick by brick they lay,

Forming bridges with their gifts, time and compliments,

Employing whichever strategy responds the best,

closer and closer they think they get, 

To winning the bet

Who will be the winner who takes me to bed?

They leave no expense 

To sound their sincerest 

To act with chivalry.

When I bait them with lust,

I watch as their pretension turns to dust.

There is no warmth in their touch.

There is no heart in my ruse,

We’re all liars with a common pursuit. 

But no one will call out my bluff,

When I condemn the different languages of love. 

Tell Me

Tell me, have you ever felt so betrayed 

That you never learnt to trust again?

Tell me, have you ever felt so disgusted by your own reflection 

That you wished to never face a confrontation?

Tell me, have you ever felt so poisoned 

That you were afraid to ruin anything you held?

Tell me, have you ever felt so forgotten 

that you were convinced your presence made no real difference?

Tell me have you ever felt so replaceable 

That you no more bother to sit at the table?

Tell me, have you ever felt so used to being abused 

that you don’t even flinch on impulse to untoward touches?

Tell me have you ever felt so helpless    

That you condemned consent as a weapon reserved for the privileged

Tell me, have you ever felt so broken 

that you’ve lost count of the pieces that were stolen?

Tell me, have you ever felt so exhausted

That you wished that you would not need to wake up again?

Tell me, have you ever felt so hurt 

That you can say you’re used to it?

Tell me, have you ever felt so afraid 

That you felt that there were not enough walls to keep you safe?

Have you ever felt so numb

That you all you wanted, was a way to make it all stop?

Tell me, have you ever felt so defeated 

that you knighted Death as your savior?

So don’t tell me to fix myself 

As if the thought never occurred to me. 

Don’t remind me of all the times that I didn’t get rescued 

As I if I enjoy bleeding on those who didn’t cut me. 

Don’t tell me that I’m making oceans out of puddles

If you won’t throw me a rope from your boat, don’t tie me to another anchor. 

But most of all don’t pretend to care, you’re not that good an actor. 

For I’ll pretend to believe you and pull you into the shallow 

And if you somehow don’t drown, then maybe I’ll think about hearing you out. 

Pride and Ego

Unlike most people who get the devil and the angel,
I was bestowed with guardians, a little more two-faced.
Ego and Pride are not anything like the head and the heart,
They're both dressed in black, just one wears a shade darker.
Like two oars, rowing in opposite directions.
On pulling me to the familiar shore, the other to an adventurous ocean.
An abandoned boat drifting in the tides of Pride and Ego
Stuck in the same place as the current's ebbed and flowed.

At first, Pride saw Ego the way a perfectionist views a misfit
Judgmental and disapproving, she was brutal in her verdict.
And Ego returned the favour by ignoring her condescending behaviour,
Arrogant and self-centred, he embodied everything she had ever loathed
Her vanity and his complacency
sparked their never-ending profanities
My mind was now their territory to mark
From every flaw to the very last scar.

One defines my comfort zone, the other exiles me from it.
One pushes my boundaries, the other keeps me confined to it.
Ego fills me up like a helium balloon.
I feel my fake confidence soar right up to the moon.
Then Pride comes along to prick holes of morality
Tying me down to earth, the land of harsh reality.

Ego is Narcissistic while Pride is Pragmatic
Ego is my Fan while Pride my Critic.
So I had to be careful enough to not make any mistake
with whom I'd share my secrets with and who I'd ask for advice
For they'd have their separate words of wisdom and philosophy
From when to hold my head up high or when to hang it down in shame
And when to finally walk away or when to wait patiently.
For whoever words I chose to follow the other I invariably did insult.

Their fight over my custody soon gave birth to a love, so destructive
But alas, they knew no other way to convey affection
Other than by exploiting the other's weakness,
Pride's need for control and Ego's longing for approval,
His fear of being forgotten and hers of being replaced.
For too long they've traded their vulnerability in for dominance.
For too long they've forgotten what it means to be loved.
Yet, they managed to complete each other in a way so dysfunctional
Like a scenery composed of hues of fire and ice.

Then one day however Ego decided to replace my brush with his blade
And Pride decided to keep his canvas all to herself so she hid me away
That day a new meaning of the colour red was etched onto my soul
But Ego was only trying to bear the same shade Pride wore
And when I tried to scream, Pride would me gag me down
Till I gave in to find comfort in her suffocation.
From that day I was haunted by a voice in my head
That echoed, again and again, that I was better off dead.

I wanted to run away but where could I escape?
From wanting to disappear but not feel invisible.
Like coordinates drawn on a map to locate a place
I carved those lines onto my skin to find a beating pulse.
Reassuring myself that I am still flesh and warmblood
Not yet frozen, Not yet numb.

If I keep at my course, my plane is bound to crash.
But I have no parachute, nor no autopilot.
I don't want to seem like I'm against the world.
I am only at war with myself,
So I'll dawn my demons like battle armour,
In this gunfight called life where we've been armed with wooden clubs.