Screens flicker, faces glow. We are all Narcissus now.

These are my poems. Be careful if you read them, they could cause existential horror. Or mental enlightenment 😌. Or both? Or neither? I don't know... your opinion on it will be subjective regardless so enjoy I suppose.

Dark Poems.

What Inscription Means Now A Meditation on Heritage, Silence, and the Unprotected Wild They wrote it in gold letters: Outstanding Universal Value. On South Africa's Cape Peninsula-a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a protected landscape of ancient fynbos and impossible beauty-baboons are being erased. Chased from dawn to dusk by paintball-wielding monitors. Shot in roosting sites and on the mountain that is meant to be their home. Buried in unmarked graves. Scheduled for enclosures euphemistically called "sanctuaries," with euthanasia protocols built into the fine print. And those who object are told: speak, and we take the better option away. This prose poem is a refusal of that silence. It is a cartography of the lost-the dispersing males who crossed invisible lines, the troops buried in soft sand, the euthanised whose deaths are spoken of only in passive voice. It is a meditation on what heritage means when protection can be revoked the moment it becomes inconvenient. It is an act of witness when all democratic channels have emptied into bureaucratic sand. What does aversion teach when there is nowhere left to go? For the baboons still running through a home that no longer answers when they ask where they can be. For those who cannot stay silent. For those who keep records. For those who grieve. For what inscription should have meant. This happened/is happening. It has a name. Look. Image courtesy of: Robert Sachowski on Unsplash Cover created with the assistance of Canva.com

Submission to #Shortys2025 Flash Fiction: When cartographer Mela discovers his grandmother's atlas bleeding saltwater, he follows mysterious baboon tracks into False Bay's moonlit waters. Beneath the surface, he encounters an underwater parliament of baboons who challenge him to see beyond colonial boundaries and map the true geography of relationships. In this haunting tale of magical realism, ancient wisdom meets modern exile as Mela learns that some territories exist only in the heart, and the most important maps are drawn with love, not ink. Set against the backdrop of Cape Town's contested landscapes, this lyrical magical realism story explores belonging, indigenous knowledge, and what it means to truly know a place. This story is dedicated to Mela, to K, to S, to A.

The tiniest of inspirations can lead to the biggest revelations. A short collection of poems drawing inspiration from something someone once told me- "We're all dead and this is Hell." -Love, An Average Guy

A sleepless night. Shame, regrets, and erased dreams. Between broken pages and heavy losses, one voice asks: Why am I always an "almost"?

Ambivalence: the voice wanders through fascination, bleeds in vulnerability, and lingers at the edge of despair. A mysterious presence collides with the fear of a power that could save... or destroy.

A haunting confession of faith lost and prayers denied - when silence becomes God's only answer. 🌑