Photo credit: Adrian Swancar
Non-Plagiarized Tear
By Rayan Sammak
I just came here to express my thoughts that are fragile
I do not apologize for the following information you may not be able to handle
I raise my glass of confidence and proceed to lift my drunken spirit
This is where two pathways collide and form exactly how I feel
I bleed with the same intensity of when I yell out and say: This is life and that is how I live it
I couldn’t help but notice your pain
I couldn’t help but notice you
I couldn’t help but notice
I couldn’t help but
I couldn’t help
I couldn’t
How deep can a word cut through your metaphorical pain
And what about the overexposed heart you’ve been carving for a couple of years
The problem is that you used a knife
When you should’ve been slicing with the sharpest smile you can cry out
My brain knows better than to be a slave to this crooked perspective
Evil has offered me chains to get locked up, yet I have used them to choke myself instead and get
killed, I die helpless and resurrect as my destructive descendant and dispose of danger before it
realizes its disrupted senses are now defenseless
I share DNA with the grave and I’m still able to have room to prosper
These words will break their backs for this author but when it is time to fight and survive, the
syllables will automatically grow up and fix their posture
My body is an instrument of its own
My heartbeat is composed into war drums lead by dead bones on the battlefield of emotions
And every vein is pulled as the strings of the aftermath melody rises to play the music of
beautiful death
And I dare you to listen to that symphony
Listen
I only shoot when my soul has its hands up
Enjoy the mess I made
Good luck knowing who the guilty party was
And when you find them, try explaining to yourself, you are that guilty party
Good luck knowing the question to how much blood you’ve wasted
And good luck knowing what the fuck you are doing on these frontlines
I double dare you to try and find out who the fight is really against
And if you ever thought you really knew
Now find out if that answer truly satisfies your void
Oh, how you want things to be different so you go looking for hope
Well I’ll tell you where that is
Hope is the bum on the street begging for change just like your cause
There will be damage
There will be blood
There will be a lot of people and in between them rotten minds with the intent of dying with
them
Die on your own, dig your own intellect and bury your wisdom with a ‘fuck you’ to toxicity and a
smile for yourself
You deserve it
These are conjured thoughts waiting to be painted on this mural using the blood of my hungry
heart
I fight only with the reflection of my distorted mirror as I proceed to shatter an image just so I
can upgrade it
My self-esteem is a concerned citizen who gladly walks through clean streets filled with snipers
on roofs that only target his precious anxiety
And feels that he may be terrified of the remedy but injects the poison regardless
He calls what makes him stronger death because he firmly believes that what fucking carves you
is the same disturbing element that stitches you back
He says the word “he” because sometimes it’s hard for me to confess
Sometimes we want to take turns
It’s mine now
I speak without a mic
I barely shut my eyes to sleep because I would love to see what a nightmare looks like
And when I say this is as real as it gets, it’s only to sound as raw as I can
This is when you are able to see the smile from my scar
I live from death, so I live to die and when I’m resurrected I die again so am I truly alive
I bet that if I firmly believe in wisdom being my wealth
Then I’ll die so slowly my growth is gonna miss out on death
What a tragedy
I bet all of you wanted to witness me merge with dust and become a casualty
You keep trying to slice my path of a great life but not realizing your souls are all amputees
And that is something you can never reattach
Photo credit: Bianca Berg
Raw
By Rayan Sammak
They’re a problem and you just don’t know it
You don’t even want to try
Why the fuck are you even alive
I love you I love you I love you believe me
Believe me, believe yourself, you are fucking worth it
The search is set on a broken map, you’re worth it
Get lost it’s beautiful
Tell the same person who told you to get lost: gladly, I’ll just find myself in a world where you
don’t exist
Find yourself, cause goddamn it you are sexy and beautiful and an intellectual
You’re alive on the inside, take a look, maybe say hi to your soul for a bit, half a cup of black
coffee, hold the sugar
Enjoy your drink with death, it’s nicer than it seems
So go ahead and feel offended just cause I tried helping
You never appreciated it anyways, never asked for anything in return but a little respect, and
kindness
Your highness, I will never bow down
Your highness, you called thyself that only cause you smoked to reach the crown
We never liked the subliminal messages
Mr. false advertisement
Mr. body shaming stinking lousy piece of inconsiderate fuck
Mr. If you don’t have at least a $100 like me, then you never fit in… and all of the above
You’re worse than how a spoiled rich kid views fake designer clothes
I’m kind of bored, always running out of enemies in my life, I might just have to redraw some
foes
I promised not to continue this piece until I was properly medicated, since I started it like that,
but I just couldn’t help my hunger deprivation, I had to satisfy, cause when this stomach growls,
this mind automatically writes limitless lines
My thoughts dispersed between diverse universes
So try and grab one of them
Oh come on give me some credit here
I haven’t boasted in years
So long that I boasted never
I’m telling you I deserve being lyrically clever cause to die and resurrect to getting till this day
just so I can spit my piece and learn some lessons, you gotta be insane with the veins that I sever
And btw if you ever truly cared
Don’t you worry about me cause I’ve been a whole lot stronger
I sewed up my heart in a couple of places
And left it on display
Also, did I ever mention that expectations are fucking murderous
Yeah, no I just wanted to point that out
But I don’t really have to talk about it do I?
I mean you understand that whether your expectations were met or not, they still kill
So don’t, just don’t, don’t put a fucking expectation because you agonized me with it
I hate when people criticize the fuck out of you and then they say I won’t continue cause I don’t
want to hurt you
Huh pathetic
Ahh I get it, you’re just a goddamn idiot aren’t you
You can’t even tell yourself that you’re strong and alive
So tell me how the fuck are you gonna teach the sun how to shine
But anyways you can shoot me while my words are speaking
My pen will live, and I’ll die eating
You simply can’t eliminate or disintegrate my ink
Cause my thoughts build up best from fragments
In fact, that’s the only way they form
That’s the way I was born
Mural painted as if Salvador Dali had a baby with Basquiat as their brains created a storm, I stab
you straight with words from my magical horn
A surreal influential poetic masterpiece
I illustrate prolific army stripes and blood on fists
Only to remember that day and onwards I take hits better than a marine’s endurance levels
My syllables will live longer than waiting for stored honey to get spoiled
I never had writer’s block and I never will
I have too much to say and a lot of feelings to spill
Instead I have a block where I set the writers on
Chop them up and fulfill my starvation of writing them off
My rawness in my thoughts will be so pure, the most religious person who cured themselves of
all their sins shall feel jealous
I’ll flirt with death and fuck with love
I’ll intricately draw a blueprint that represents the mighty schemes of how to draw a Find Muck
blueprint
My shoes may be tinted but these souls that live inside me are darker than the feeling of
emptiness
Yet regardless I still carry vigor and strapped muscle better than the perfect strongest shield
taking hits from an expert swordsman
No scratch that
Better than the overconfidence of the most self-centered person on Earth
No scratch that
Better than finding order in chaos
No scratch that
Better than the sound of a flower growing from pain
No scratch that
Better than the power of my decibels saying better than
So salute to strength and wisdom
I never saw them until now so I don’t really miss them
But I definitely earned my badges
By welcoming an energy that is savage
Don’t wait for me I will never vanish
Growth from the mighty wolves, I now mentally live lavish
Photo credit: Lawrson Pinson
Louder Than I Thought
By Rayan Sammak
I could’ve never figured it out
Neither could they
I breathe the wind that decays
And speak the language that’s dead
Or dying
And the truth might be lying about itself
And everybody listens to the wrong voices
My loud sound can be spoken in different decibels of silence
And no there’s no way of telling which path I might choose to attack your soul
Cause that is my main target
Guaranteed that I will harm it
I spar with every single heart that you’ve harmed
And maybe then we’ll decide who’s best at being carved
I starve for this
Believe the hunger not the appetite
I’m glad I fight
Choked by the wire of my mic
I hate it, but it’s fine
The rhymes never make it on time for dinner
So I gotta cook the syllables earlier
They don’t even pay attention anymore
I might be broken I don’t know
But surely if I am, I’d fix myself instantly with the words I learned
And with the wisdom I’ve earned
Enough of that for now
I did not hide away from my frown
I got it to not appear in the meantime of my growth
I cry a lot, but my tears never needed stitches
Happiness is heavier than I thought
I met up with happiness many times but each time it would ask me out on a date, Sadness would
jump in and yell out: you’re out of my league
Because sadness became my mother tongue
I never liked hope
Neither did the smile of a clown
The only artifact that will vanish is the crown
Nobody is royalty
Try and build this thing you call a castle
My house is better with one aspect
It is home
And you can never beat the heart that is beaten and now only knows how to reply with a beating
My language is street and you can hear the gang wars making peace from the corner store
My life will look at your spirit and attempt to walk on the core of a war
I fell from hell, but the angels are waiting from the bottom floor
I think it’s finally time to draw walls for the evil
And color it with fruitful shade
The dark might die from the love hate relationship I have with it
But only rotten emotions can be felt
And dirty words can be tasted from clean soil
And to living I am loyal
I used to write about death, now I’m only concerned to live
Only because I handle my failures way better than I ever handle success
And when I choose to cut myself
I’m only letting things off my chest
You bet you can get offended
Your image is that of a hybrid lie and the act of media rebranding
So you can take your dead character, see if you still wanna defend it
You never guessed the half of my schemes built by a mind where inside the ideas tick as if
machinery dominated and my elements concentrated on armory charmed by poisonous alchemy
actually innovated the chemistry that was never basic, you couldn’t live in between this wreck of
a matrix because if your vocal chords are silent then we only allow yelling out in these spaces!
Amazement from penmanship formed from intensive hatred
And even my evil opinions wouldn’t ever be debated
Put your medication to the test and best believe my disease born from this seed is definitely
twice as potent and heavily dedicated
There will never be a “best”, so I am not the greatest
But since you only look at the stereotype, I’ll work silently and let my success shine because
what’s better than great is being greater
I reek of influential savagery, smell me now or never but that will forever be my favorite
fragrance
But I never settled the burnt kettle, I’m still cooking with high fires and the devil in me is gentle
The weight on my soul is heavier but only because I am no longer an empty vessel
You can hear me quite clearly, I could be saying nothing, and you’d still feel, I am a mixture of
several instrumentals
My success can rise without your fake thank you, I don’t need a medal
Simply into lyrical bursting, I’m flirting with kind murdering, swerving from light but darkness
to strength is what I’m converting
Listen well but are you learning
Disturbing stopped becoming concerning
I don’t have a resume
Forget your lousy jobs
I’ve scared fear away
You make me pile up boxes in an office
I’ll make you pile up offices
My flavor is stronger
Taste it if bitterness is sweet to your tongue
This is the music that should’ve been sung in my death
But I only heard it when my growth had begun
