Once upon a time,
you and your kind
were similar to mine,
but somewhere down the line,
things began to change.

You became the kind who sought glory.
Not the kind that seeks to help others off their feet or
lend them a hand in times of need,
no.
You were the one standing tall above us all,
craving the taste of malice and
believing that you were the one in control.
And you got what you asked for.

Slashed kneecaps and broken bones,
a carnage of corpses is left in your wake.
We learned too late of your motivations, for
you weren’t our saviour.
You were our destroyer.

Hurling insults and jeers at anything
more beautiful than you,
throwing to the wayside
laughter and kindness,
for you were here to take away
the spotlight. Here to impersonate
the comforting cradle we put our trust in,
the safe we spilled our secrets to,
the one we thought of as our friend,
with a bracelet as a contract
and a seal of a pinky promise.

But you couldn’t bear to stand
not being able to feel what we feel.
So one day, you made it your mission
to be the best in the art of cruelty.

Tongue like knives, you slashed
the strings of innocence and purity
of those who didn’t ask for it.
Left mirrors of lives shattered to pieces,
not wanting to see the monster you have become,
not bearing to look at your victims in the eyes,
not caring for remorse.
Because we believed
that you weren’t real.

We were once told that you
were just a figment of our imagination, that you
were just a phase in this chaotic world, that you
just
couldn’t
exist.

But somehow, you slipped under our radar,
waltzing into our minds like a virus we
didn’t see coming,
creeping in through the floorboards
like an uninvited guest,
crawling into the spaces of sadness and neglect.
Breeding and breeding,
watching and waiting
for the weakest link.
And you found it.

Leaving no one unharmed,
your loathing and rage
found homes in the hearts of those you embraced.
Planting seeds of doubt that
when they sprout,
create destruction from within.

Exploding shrapnel in all directions,
puncturing our hearts and hopes,
our limbs and souls,
leaving us as living corpses
full of ugly and old.
But that’s what you wanted.

We were once told that you
were only a figment of our imagination,
only existing in fairy tales that started
with “Once upon a time”.
But unless we want
to accept your gifts
of ropes for nooses,
pills for poison,
and blades for blood,
we can no longer afford
to think of you as
just only
a figment of our imagination.

---

Note: A fiction piece I wrote titled “My First Hit” was inspired by this emulation and can be found here.

This was inspired by a Writer’s Seminar presentation about Shane Koyczan, where his spoken word poem of “Troll” was presented. I was inspired by his lyricism, flow, and the way he crafted his words to make it simple yet elegant. Along with being told the history of his childhood, I could hear his trauma through the words of this poem. With this piece, By interpreting the entity that the narrator was addressing in “Troll” as the collective forces of evil in this world (such as cyberbullies), I wanted to capture the idea that he has regarding evil, and explore the style of flow between diction and structure.

And the reason why I named this piece, “Fairy Tale” was because there are some things that we believed couldn’t ever happen. But as history and current events show, we can no longer afford to think of some things as “just a figment of our imagination”, but rather, consider certain issues facing our world as real.

You can hear the video version of the poem here.

You can find the lyrics of the poem here.

My blog can be found here.