Less Than Human

Get lost,

Less human than me,

I’ll go to sleep,

In thousands of movements,

Under the eyes of heaven,

Amounts to devils I can’t see,

I could pray,

For a life more humane,

I should cry,

Hands stained with sin,

And get on running,

To the East,

My Lord knows now,

It’s the killing that’s freeing,

Less than human,

So are you,

Then, I’ll lie down,

Why can’t the demon be you?

BORDER

There was nothing but the scream fouling the air with the stench of a thousand corpses. The young boy with blood of another staining his hands crouched onto the acidic earth with tiredness burdening his limbs. It has been thirteen days of walking past the borders between different states in Malaysia and his blistered feet were caked in mud. Five years since the government declared a state of emergency because of the silent pollution which caused the construction of gates across territories in order to cage in the citizens and lock out refugees and immigrants. An hour since the boy arrived at the final obstruction in his journey for salvation and it was one wall he couldn’t climb nor dig below it. Before him was an eighteen feet high barrier of men, women and children weaved into rusted wires; their eyes gone and so were their tongues eaten by the crows.

My Youth and Your Sun

Of all my silly mistakes,

And my youth,

I couldn’t tell the truth,

Get me out of this wretched maze,

As I waste your days,

Show me the landscapes,

And I’ll touch your face,

I’ll whisper sweet love,

Find shelter at the cove,

As I waste your days,

I’m always on the run,

Chasing your glow,

Dear, I’m getting old,

And I’ll have your minutes,

As I waste your days.

WHITE NOISE

The air is thick with the shouts of the students in the basement of the library as they pumped their fists in the air. In the cloak of the university’s Debate Club, they gather under the dimming lights to argue about white supremacy, modernity versus westernisation and Islamophobia. Spit flew from their mouths as they break one point over another and their feet would stamp at the rhythm of each argument. “For so long we were colonised and now, our minds are occupied by the white beasts from the West!” a young woman wearing a headscarf arose with her peers cheering below. The hour is filled with their cries and hoots. Then, as the moon glazed past midnight, they’ll arrange the tables, lock the doors and leave for the day only to come back for another battle of words.

An anomaly named Aina Izzah who loves law, films and equality. I’m currently in my third year at law school where during the day I would contemplate the legalities, politics and dullness of the world but, at night, I’m allowed to write and dream. The secret hope that I have for humanity is that one day we are able to blind our eyes to the colour of skin, the accent in our tongues until we won’t be able to differentiate between a woman wearing a scarf over her head or around her neck.

featured photography by badpoem