Insurgence

They say the pen is mightier than the sword.

Every regime sharpens steel for the scribes first.

Because a stanza can slit a throat deeper than a saber,

and ink bleeds longer than the blood of your neighbor.

~~~

When you live by the pen, you die by the sword—

Mandelstam carved frost into Stalin’s name

and the tundra swallowed him whole.

Lorca strummed Spain into flame

while Franco buried his chords under stone.

Socrates asked questions too sharp for the crown,

so they held open his mouth and poured tyranny down.

~~~

First they kill the poets.

That’s the policy of power.

Because poems are sharp—shrapnel disguised,

often passed along as lullabies.

Because every metaphor is a Molotov in a glass bottle.

Because choruses don’t grovel when sung, they riot.

~~~

You can polish a blade till it gleams,

but words cut deeper into memory

and remembering isn’t hard

when violence is liturgy.

Steel rules the day.

Language rules history.

~~~

Ink is insurgent,

grammar, a grenade.

Rhyme is rebellion rattling empire gates.

And no breastplate deflects a ballad.

No helmet drowns out the echo of a psalm.

No other weapon turns power pallid when drawn—or written.

~~~

They’ll call it treason when you tell the truth,

call it art when you’re dead,

and call it freedom when they can’t erase the words that you said.

But until then—

we write in defiance,

we breathe in rebellion,

we live like punctuation in God’s unfinished sentence.

~~~

When you live by the pen, you die by the sword—

But here’s the paradox:

kill the poet, and the poem hits harder—spreads farther.

Silence the singer, and the song resounds.

So strike me down.

Ink will still seep through the cracks in your armor.

I’ll die for the line, but the line will live longer.

Words are weapons smuggled into every generation’s lungs,

so violence can be challenged again, as it comes.

~~~

When you live by the pen, you may die by the sword—

But the verses you spit can snuff out the forge.