Free

The king is dead

The courtiers fled

The soldiers bled

For a loaf of bread

The maid it fed

Now makes his bed

And in her head

Wakes a foreign dread

These bars of steel

Sheer walls of stone

Have echoed forth

Many thoughts unknown

Cut through the cracks

New sun has shone

That light is mine

And mine alone

I am a beast

Of heart and bone

A hungry seed

In desert sown

When towering weeds

Had overgrown

I wrung their necks

To forge a throne

A summer sung

Among my own

The bird remains

The nest has flown

For them that see

Past the canopy

Waits a misery

You must agree

You will decree

The swelling sea

Her sunken tree

Ever home to me

When in that boil

I choose to be

Am I then caged?

Pray, are you free?

The End

At the end of this life, you will have laughed and loved, hurt and hated, fought and failed, won and waited. You will have tried and tested, cried and coped, dreamt, denied, helped and hoped. You will be learned and lonesome, wistful and wise, calm and clueless, it'll show in your eyes. You will have been anxious and affectionate, firm and furious, interesting, insecure, conscientious, curious. You will be a lot and a little you won't, you will have taken far more than you thought you could give, you will be tired but find yourself grateful, for every day you were lucky enough to live.

Smug

I sit here among you. I sit here with a drink in my hand and the odd smirk on my lips. You might think I'm a dreamer. You might believe I'm a schemer. But the truth, God's honest version of it, is I couldn't care less. I don't care for small talk and long winded conversations of no comprehensible consequence. I don't care who you are, what you've done and where you're from. I don't care for what you have to say. It's not that I despise you. It might appear to be the case, but I'm not judging you. No, that's unfair, because I don't know you. I don't despise you. It's just that I don't want to know you. You must be interesting. You must have some joke, anecdote or achievement up your sleeve, raring to unleash itself upon an eager audience. But, I will spare my ears the trouble and spare you an audience. I'm closing myself as the evening wears on. And I quite like how that feels.

Maybe

‘Maybe’ is a fascinating word.

In fact, I’ll go as far as to say ‘maybe’ just may-fucking-be the second
most interesting word after, well, ‘fuck’.

‘Maybe’ is better than ‘or’, and not because it’s three letters or a syllable heavier.
Come to think of it, ‘or’ is barely a word. Actually, it’s barely a sound, much like
a half-swallowed hiccup. Fundamentally, ‘or’ is dependent on the two choices
it needs to fit snugly between; in or out, soup or salad, your place or mine.
‘Maybe’, on the other hand, is a brand new choice altogether.

‘Maybe’ is shorter and sweeter than its overtly sophisticated cousin ‘perhaps’.
Perhaps, you’d disagree. See what I mean? ‘Maybe’ is easy on the tongue,
you can drop it at will, like a hydrogen bomb, which brings me to my next point.

Wielded well, ‘maybe’ is a potent weapon in the power hungry control-freak’s
(you, if you’re wondering) arsenal. Allow me to illustrate.

--

‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was easy.’

‘Yes’ is acknowledgement, and although it presents the subject with success,
the feeling is short-lived. It’s precisely one chest thump, two fist bumps, three calls,
four social media posts or five eventful nights long. You can’t keep replaying
a single glorious instant for an eternity, can you?

Outcome: Power forfeited.

--

‘Do you love me?’

‘No.’

‘Bite me.’

‘No’ is outright rejection, a slap in the face, it’ll make the subject reel momentarily
but recover nonetheless. It’s a wake-up call, and some of us need more than one.
It puts the universe into perspective, and the jilted on an entirely disconnected
intellectual plane.

Outcome: Subject forfeited.

--

‘Do you love me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What? How? Why? Okay.’

‘Maybe’ feeds both curiosity and hope in the precise measure required to place
the aggressor in a position of power. Even though the odds of approval and rejection
stand equally divided, it is human nature to disregard the latter. After all, hope sells
harder than sex ever did. And, while a part of the subject’s mind devotes itself to
optimism-laced flights of fancy, another dissects the response, probing desperately
for arguments that aggravate the former.

Simply put, when blind hope gets boring, one turns to curiosity to discover worthy
justification. A valid justification strengthens hope and the cycle completes its first,
but far from final, revolution.

Outcome: Power and subject retained.

--

‘Maybe’ is the grey in a world of black and white. It is the convenient middle path
between ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Do I sense Buddha frowning? ‘Maybe’ is nonchalant,
noncommittal, nonconformist even. It has a certain air of suspense working for it.
It’s Bond-like, yet catty. It’s a veiled insult, yet sometimes pretty darn straight.
It’s absolute, yet throws open a world of countless probabilities and analyses.
It’s the answer to the question you weren’t seeking an answer to. It keeps you on
the prowl and your victims on their toes.

‘Maybe’ is a drug. Use it before you lose it, because you’re eventually going
to lose it anyway.

Well, maybe.

The Fame Paradox

The light never dies on a person of greatness. It burns immortal, a warm glow that reminds us of the stature they once occupied, and still do. The same light burns brighter for their progeny. But, not in quite the same mellow timbre

For the young of a colossus, the light is deafening. An inescapable reality, it stares them in the face from the moment their eyes open. Through night and day, it is their unrelenting Sun, a cruel reminder of life’s sole purpose. To live up to the name they’re deemed fortunate to be born with. While the rest waltz through existence in the search for meaning and a higher calling, theirs is predefined. Their benchmarks etched in the sky, finish lines drawn before they learn to say ‘go’. The light teases and taunts them at every turn, as society prods them to follow in hallowed footsteps and occupy the circle it casts

From the dawn of time, the children of famous parents have been expected to outshine them. We can observe, barring the odd exception, that famous men and women seldom come from famous parents or give birth to children who grow to become equally if not more famed.

Most of us have wondered what it would be like to be born to titans. Lives in place, world at our feet, a sizeable serving of success and its many privileges without having to raise a finger. But, we’ve overlooked the heat that is always on. And feeling it up close, the gargantuan obligation to go one better, as we squirm under the shadow of a giant we’re always being compared to, can get suffocating. For us world is no stage, it’s a rancid lot of hecklers watching our every step, waiting for us to fall, and ultimately fail.

About time I made my point?

It’s simple, and becomes evident shortly. By chasing fame and achieving it, are we building or derailing the lives of our children? Are we landing them the luxury of a struggle-free upbringing or substituting it for the greater struggle of rising to, and hopefully besting our stature? Are we securing a precipice for future generations to look down at creation from, or are we preparing them for an untimely roaring leap off the edge? Is our quest noble or is it the veneer of our vanity, our constant need for power and the recognition it begets? Does ‘I’m doing it for myself.’ have more truth in it than we imagine? Do we go for gold or settle for scraps so our children can swap silver spoons for blank slates? Are we who started with blank slates obliged to leave blank slates for those to follow? If we forsake our thirst for glory, will our children do the same for our grandchildren? Should we be grateful to our parents for underachieving (achievement is subjective, but you get the drift) or prepare to face an impending outburst from our children against the pressure we have already begun piling on them? Is it better to be born to a legend or to raise one?

I don’t have the answers. Do you?