Tag: political poetry

Distracted

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Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels

I’m sitting here, comforting myself – and there’s no one else

I’d rather trust to hold me.

My pounding heart demands a sacrifice each night,

It hopes to die so boldly.

The veins have turned to mist, another substance

They can’t truly carry.

I always think I’m falling when I’m out of secrets

Left to bury.

Living is the strangest thing if you’re alone

But you’re not really lonely.

It almost feels like you’ve made friends with fiction, and for that –

Others call you unholy.

Being the keeper of my youth and audacity to take cover

Might be an extravagant act,

But who is to judge the difference between curses to heaven

And a genuine fact?

Don’t lose your tact

When you are attacked.

The arena is packed

But you don’t have to react.

Distract.

-JW

Frosty Paws

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Photo by Allie Smith from Pexels

To all the people in silver armors, high end saddles and low end taste

I bow so deeply it cracks my bones. They’re the meanest dragons that I’ve faced.

Too faced – everyone lacks one perspective as they see all the plot holes

And all the ways to get the deal through. Chasing money like stumbling foals.

Frosty paws get stuck on unsafe paths in places where stopping is a sentence

Of life spent is rotating fields of nothing – so you better run from that fake vengeance.

But how come we trust the system after it fools us twice before the alarm starts?

Did we simply nod when they said – you’re the target, circumstance is the darts?

There are 500 ways to write yourself out of the simulation this very second –

How could it be there’s only one narrow line you decided to reckon?

Furthermore, is it pure luck we’re born starving but manage to keep it at bay each morning?

I don’t know a lot about mourning.

But I trust that every fool in shiny helmet who chases money is doomed

As great ideas seldom come to minds very well groomed.

I know a thing or two about getting my frosty paws trapped in grounds

Where you never want to be seen by larger crowds.

It’s cold out there for us who don’t believe in glitz of serving

The ultimate purpose of always earning.

How much are you learning?

-JW

Faux Grieving

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Photo by Ian Panelo from Pexels

When the light has left for the day – and so has reason,

I patch up the cuts in my stomach, clean ichor from last season

Of the witch,

Where I was the last one standing up to them, soaking wet,

With filth under my fingernails. Yet they didn’t see me as a threat.

They read into my words but they misconstrued the meanings.

Dictionaries are useless when it comes to faux grievings

And holding onto to things so tight they pinch your carotid

Until there’s not a single vessel left that’s solid, unrotted.

“Choose your fights carefully,” they say, guns blazing.

The ironies this world can teach deserve a proper razing –

Unless, of course, all things corrupt are also built from good intentions,

Spoiled by too much trust and lack of attention.

Aiming a revolver in the sky is not a choice many get to make

Although we’re told that going our own way is a piece of cake –

Wedding cake, probably, as there isn’t a faker symbol in the business

Of selling out souls for pennies at time, just to end up with a grimace

Full of ghouls and a grimness.

-JW

Catwalk

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Photo by Mike Chai

Lying on the floor between pages filled with pen scratches,

Trying to find one as blank as my stare, one that matches

My vision of a perfect day – not touched by an unwelcomed gaze.

But I know you are watching. If the story of my life was a contest

You would get the first place.

Walking through allies during tasteless springs, buried in pollen.

The weather is crisp, yet my feet feel heavy and lungs are swollen

To the size of an iron maiden. It is pressing down on my chest.

A heavy sensation hits – deleting myself from the narrative is

The only way to get rest.

Standing still in the middle of an always running city mob,

Checking my sanity, looking for signs that others also get robbed

Of time and dignity – while you peek away with your grueling precision.

I even wonder whether these stares only live inside of my head…

What a joyless derision.

Running up the stairwell, haunted by the words from the worst of humanity.

Gravity is drying my tears but it does not silence my profanities

As I curse every single stranger that said – my story is not a safe place to exist.

They can look all they want, browse and lurk as they please, but I promise –

At the end of the day, you will get what you do not desist.

-JW

The Young and Defamed

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Photo by Victor Miyata

Defamation is the strong suit of many, sadly – so is temptation.

I don’t share paths with these well-intentioned people, I’m creating my own narration.

The youth is neither rotten nor broken – it’s just caught up in the middle of a mess,

Facing trauma since the day we were walking. We’re used to loving distress.

Tiny spaces in shady places are often the only locations where we feel free to chafe –

But lads in their forties are trying to convince us that they crave the young blood and they love the chase.

I’m begging them to stop walking over the half-done graves before the benediction

But no one seems to drop the addiction to filth, and they won’t change the conviction.

It’s quite poignant how my presence causes people to prejudge my affairs

As it was decided centuries ago that I must only speak when nobody cares.

A few steps away they will sell my ideas for less than is legal – or even hand them out for free.

And who will be the first taker? A priest or a scumbag, or just another devotee?

The night is careless to those who reluctantly swim in its empty commitments

Because the ones who only live for the dark will hardly make a fair acquitment.

Dedication is the strong suit of a few, luckily – so is persistence.

I do split roads with many who are lost. Only those who run blindly at times will manage to make a difference.

-JW

To Stop The Duel

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Photo from Pixabay

How did it go from me never settling for anything less

To me being the angriest person you’d meet on a workday

Because of the stress?

How did my pain become a part of someone’s reality

When the only truth I sought was the ability to stop ignoring my alarm

Because of my fragility?

How did my nightmares about failing

Involve into daydreams of bailing

On the life I know – like I didn’t build it, at all,

As if I was someone’s undeserving thrall.

I know it takes two to tango but why can’t I stop the duel

When my feet are on fire, yet numb,

But they keep adding the fuel?

I know it’s my desperation speaking when I have no time to eat

As they munch away on my future and money

But try to keep it discrete.

I know I should’ve pushed harder,

Knowing this tale is a two-parter

And I didn’t have anything to lose back then.

But it still felt like hell when the clock struck ten.

How do we pretend and keep avoiding the questioning?

It is much easier, of course, to ignore the reckoning,

But is it promising?

Have we become the jurors and prisons for our own sentencing?

The background noises are quickening, they might become deafening.

Call me when the standards are settling.

-JW

The Coast is Not Clear

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Photo of Pok Rie

If you took a peek inside my words, if you glanced through the mendacious keyhole,

You’d see the truest parts of me and how they each play a role –

My own heart can’t be trusted as it’s often acting as the mole.

I’m just a broken person, your narrative won’t ever make me whole.

“Believe me” can be harsh words to yell when you’re cornered,

Especially, when there’s not a single supporter in your corner.

It’s hard to feel fulfilled surviving on some empty calories,

Depending on a lust for blood coming from all the crowds you please. From your enemies.

Tired of walking the line but you can’t step away from it either.

“All your exits are blocked, honey, go and take a breather.

It’s going to be just fine. Now, go get in the freezer.

It will help with the burning fever of becoming a leader.”

***

Fingers are trembling, touching the broken screen –

Can you ever feel truly seen? Or do you only get your spleen

And a vivid red spite to go with it, waiting in line for the guillotine?

I can’t believe I didn’t end this when I was fifteen.

On a more hopeless note, it’s been two days since I last took a shower.

Been working so hard on proving my worth to some superior power

Which I’ve never believed in or prayed to in the first place, but what’s the use

Of being an atheist if you’ve always preferred some systematic abuse.

Called myself “worthy” on the bus ride home, but that’s simply a fraction

Of the fights I have to win with my demons. This is the first wave, the first contraction.

What we need is a true call to action, no abstraction or extractions

Away from the truth – with its burned edges and imperfect boundaries.

We will not sleep on this – or do what we’re told. I beg you, please.

At this time there’s so much pain we have to help ease,

So many smoking guns we must reach in order to seize.

Life with a price on your head was never for the influential –

It’s meant for the power hungry on the barricades, the so called “nonessential”.

Climb faster and aim for the higher ground, avoid the pestilential.

One day more to fight the confidential. To answer the existential.

To fasten our credentials.

To get the attention

Or pack the essentials

And leave – like we were never really here,

But I really hope they hear.

My dear, they will not always adhere.

One day they will learn to confront,

Even when the coast is not clear.

-JW

Routine Riptide

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Photo from Pixabay

Isn’t it romantic – how we verve by a shattered screen for long hours

While the Insanity Watch serves us the career that isn’t really ours.

It sounds like a plan – while you lay low, the profits go high,

And the greyer you become, the bigger is the imaginary apple pie.

The story is not about ambition, it’s about what you expect in return –

‘Cause they will settle for nothing less than depression and a sudden heartburn.

“Don’t take yourself so seriously. Smile. But not that wide, be decent.”

Why don’t you want to see me grin? This facial pose is pretty recent

For me, at least. I also never rolled my eyes before I started in this position

Because it takes the 360 degree view to take in all the disposition. Plus, the factual fiction.

This can’t be real, right? Am I really asking or am I making a deal with the devil?

At the end of the day, it’s about the heads you sever

While dealing with the pressure level.

Yet – I’m not good at it. I often revel.

Rebel.

***

My bloody nose is treacherously tickling, blood is trickling.

The sunrises smell coppery. Evenings – soaked in bleach, whittling

And turning the last white blood cells into goo. Have I lost it completely?

Is it supposed to be resembling dying, or is this really death, masked discreetly?

I would prefer if you don’t answer. The silence is much better than your breath –

The moments when your rotten mouth is speaking,

I’ve always viewed with so much disrespect.

All I look forward to is the next taxi to take me away to a place around the corner.

A place nearby where the tentacles can’t reach. Where I have built a border.

The dim prediction that I’ll break in the process lingers, right above my shoulders.

But if I once built palaces for people that I hate… Then for myself

I will be shifting boulders.

-JW