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Tag Archives: Peace

Greed

Some people want the whole damn pie,
Then steal your fork and ask you why.
They’ve filled their pockets, filled their plates,
And bought the locks upon our gates.


They con you with a charming grin,
Then tell you that you’ve got to fit in.
They twist the truth, they move the goal,
Then sell you back your own poor soul.


They want control of what you say,
What you believe, and how you pray.
They’d bottle freedom, brand the air,
Then charge you extra for a share.


They’ll preach of kindness, peace and light,
Then rob you blind before the night.
They’ll shake your hand, then pick your pocket,
And call it business, put it in the budget.


Oh, what a clever bunch we’ve grown,
With hearts of ice and egos overblown.
They count their money, worship gold,
And wonder why the world’s grown cold.


They build their empires on our backs,
Then blame the poor for what they lack.
They hoard the land, the food, the sea,
Then sell us dreams of being free.


Well, here’s a thought, you greedy lot,
The planet isn’t yours to squat
Upon like some entitled king,
Who thinks the world owes him everything.


You cannot eat your piles of cash,
Or hug your gold when forests crash.
You cannot buy a world reborn,
When every field lies stripped and worn.


We don’t need more who cheat and rule,
Or polished sharks who play the fool.
We don’t need bullies dressed in ties,
Or con artists selling paradise.


We need more people who give a damn,
Who help their neighbour, share the jam.
Who speak the truth, who stand up tall,
Who know there’s room enough for all.


Less taking, more giving, less ego, more grace,
Less winning at someone else’s expense in this race.
Less “Look what I’ve got!” and more “What can I do?”
Less “Me against them,” and more “Me and you.”


For no one gets out with a mansion in tow,
No golden parachute wherever we go.
We’re all just visitors, passing on through,
So perhaps we should leave something decent to do.


Let’s plant a few trees, let compassion take root,
Stop worshipping money as life’s sacred fruit.
Let’s teach our children that kindness is clever,
And being a decent human matters forever.


Because the world’s not short of wealth or power,
It’s short of a conscience in the darkest hour.
And if we want a planet worth passing along,
We need fewer people convinced they can’t be wrong.


So here’s to the kind ones, the brave and the true,
The ones who make space for somebody new.
The ones who choose love when hatred seems cheaper,
Who lift others up instead of climbing steeper.


The future won’t shine because someone got richer,
Or because some con artist became a bit slicker.
It starts when we choose to be better, together,
And stop treating our planet like disposable weather.


So, greedy little kings, here’s a thought for your throne,
You might own a fortune, but you don’t own this home.
This Earth belongs to no tyrant, no clan, no elite,
It’s the home of us all, with one shared heartbeat.


And if we want tomorrow to be greener and fairer,
Let’s be kinder, less selfish, more honest, more caring.
Because we don’t need a world full of people who take.
We need better people for the world’s own sake.
JH

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2026 in poetry, Ranting

 

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Not right or left

They do not arrive with books open,
or sleeves rolled for the hard mathematics of truth.
They arrive with one word,
thin as a matchstick,
sharp as something thrown from the back of a classroom.

“Lefty.”

And suddenly the debate is over.

No need to answer the question about hunger,
or why the rich man’s dog eats cleaner meat
than the child beside the station.
No need to explain the smoke climbing from wars
signed by smiling hands in tailored suits.
No need to untangle history,
that long electrical wire
still sparking under our feet.

Just say “lefty”
and the room exhales with relief.

Because names are easier than thought.
Labels fit neatly into pockets.
Arguments do not.

The hater loves shortcuts.
Loves exits marked with insults.
Loves the trapdoor beneath complexity.

Call someone “lefty,”
“dreamer,”
“woke,”
anything that folds a human being
into a cartoon shape.

Then you never have to meet their eyes.

You never have to admit
that compassion is inconvenient,
that empathy rearranges furniture in the mind,
that fairness asks difficult questions
and waits for difficult answers.

Hatred fears debate
the way moths fear daylight.

It survives in slogans,
in chants shouted over microphones,
in comment sections foaming like poisoned rivers.
It survives where nobody listens.

Because real debate
requires a dangerous thing,
the possibility of being changed.

And those who worship certainty
would rather burn libraries
than move one inch from themselves.

So they throw words like stones.

“Lefty.”

A tiny word attempting to bury
entire landscapes of thought.

But language remembers.

The teachers remember.
The workers remember.
The poets remember.
Every quiet soul who ever asked,
“Could this world be kinder than this?”

They remember.

And somewhere tonight,
beneath fluorescent lights humming like tired bees,
a student raises a trembling hand
to ask a forbidden question.

Not left.
Not right.
Just human.

And that question
is heavier than every insult
thrown to silence it.

JH

 
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Posted by on May 11, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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peace is not a whisper

Peace is not a whisper;
it is a door left open.

It is the light that stays on
when the street goes dark,
the quiet cup of tea
set down between two shaking hands.

Peace is not weak.
It does not bow its head.
It stands in the centre of the storm
and says, enough.

It is the courage
to lower your voice
when you could raise it,
to unclench your fist
and find a pulse instead.

Peace grows in small places.
In school halls.
On crowded buses.
At kitchen tables where words once burned
and now begin to soften.

It is the brave art
of listening past your own echo.
The steady work
of seeing a stranger
and choosing not fear,
but wonder.

Peace builds bridges
from the thinnest thread of hope.
It stitches torn flags
into blankets.
It turns battlefields
into gardens where children run.

Do not mistake its silence
for absence.
Peace is a deep river,
moving under the noise of the world,
patient, certain, strong.

And when enough of us
step into that river,
the current shifts.
The shouting thins.
The ground remembers
how to bloom.

Peace is power,
not loud,
not cruel,
but enduring.

It is the future
walking towards us
with open hands.

JH

 
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Posted by on March 2, 2026 in poetry

 

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Lantern Heart

Lantern Heart

Some days
the world feels like a siren
that never quite switches off.

Headlines flicker
like distant fires
and I stand in my kitchen
holding a cup of tea
wondering

how can we do this
to each other

How can hands built for holding
learn to strike
How can mouths shaped for lullabies
learn to spit stones

Children sleep under broken skies
while men in suits argue over maps
as if lines were worth more than lives

And my chest
small and human
tries to contain it all

I was not built
to carry continents of grief
yet I feel them
pressing against my ribs

Still

there is a woman
feeding birds in the morning rain
there is a stranger
who kneels to tie a child’s loose lace
there is a nurse
who smooths a blanket
as if it were sacred cloth

The news does not linger there
but I do

Because I have seen
how kindness moves
not as thunder
but as a ripple
touching one shore
then another

Respect is quiet
Equality is patient
They grow like roots
in the dark
before anyone notices the tree

I cannot command the powerful
I cannot silence the cruel

But I can refuse
to become hard

I can speak gently
when sharpness would be easier
I can listen
when turning away would be simpler
I can write
so that someone somewhere
feels less alone

Perhaps the world is not saved
by one great blaze of goodness

Perhaps it is saved
by lantern hearts
that choose
again and again
not to go out

And so
when the siren rises

I place my palm against my chest
and whisper

be the ripple
be the root
be the light you are waiting for.

JH

 
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Posted by on February 25, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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The Tattered Soul

The soul learns early
how to fray
Time does not shout
it brushes past
soft as a sleeve in a crowded room
and still it leaves threads behind
Once
the soul was a clean page
bright with belief
stitched tight with first mornings
and reckless hope
Then came the years
quiet thieves
lifting colour
loosening seams
teaching the heart the slow grammar of loss
Time tugs
not cruelly
just often
It pulls at laughter until it thins
at dreams until they feather
at love until it aches with memory
instead of promise
The soul grows tattered
but not empty
Look closer
every tear is a doorway
every loose thread remembers warmth
every worn edge has held on
longer than it thought it could
Time thinks it wins
because it leaves marks
But the soul
oh the soul
keeps breathing through the rips
keeps light caught in its tatters
like dawn through torn curtains
And if it is ragged now
it is because it stayed
because it felt
because it dared to keep going
while the hours kept passing
A tattered soul is not broken
it is proof
Proof that you lived
and loved
and let time touch you
without ever giving it the final word

JH

 
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Posted by on February 1, 2026 in poetry

 

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We must remember

Not as stone remembers rain
but as skin remembers fire,
the way a name once spoken can still bruise the air
History is not a museum with clean glass,
it breathes, it waits,
it hums in the wires above our streets
and in the silence after a door shuts too hard
Hands have built hospitals and cages,
the same hands,
fingers that can cradle a child
or sign a list that turns people into numbers
Do not look away,
forgetting is a luxury paid for by the broken
memory is the candle we keep lit
even when the room wants darkness
We remember the trains that did not ask questions,
the ships that mistook profit for prayer,
the borders drawn like scars
across living, speaking hearts
This is not about guilt alone,
it is about vigilance,
about love standing guard through the night
with tired eyes and an unyielding spine
Because the past is patient,
it will repeat itself softly at first,
a joke, a shrug, a rule,
until cruelty feels normal and silence feels safe
So we remember, loudly and tenderly,
we say the names, we tell the stories,
we teach our children that dignity is not divisible
and humanity is not a trend
Memory is an act of hope,
a refusal to let tomorrow be built
with the same old knives
We remember,
so that kindness stays awake
and the world, bruised but breathing,
gets another chance to choose better
JH

 
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Posted by on January 27, 2026 in Uncategorized

 

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No Right No Left

There should not be a left
or a right
Only a circle
where we sit close enough
to feel each other breathe
Politics learned the language of corners
sharp words
pointing fingers
maps drawn with rulers instead of hands
But the heart has no party
it votes every morning
for warmth
for safety
for the simple miracle of being seen
A border is just a sentence
written by fear
it says stop
it says yours not mine
it forgets the grammar of kindness
We are made of shared weather
shared grief
shared laughter spilling over pavements
like rain that refuses to choose a country
Imagine power that listens
laws that kneel to humanity
flags lowered just enough
to wrap the cold
Respect is not radical
Care is not naïve
They are ancient
older than slogans
older than walls
There should not be a left
or a right
only forward
together
hands open
voices softer
eyes brave enough to recognise themselves
in everyone else
A future where we do not win over each other
but with each other
where the loudest statement
is how gently
we choose to live
JH

 
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Posted by on January 20, 2026 in poetry

 

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Choose a path

Choose the path that lets your spirit breathe,

Stand with your friends where honesty is kind,

What serves your heart will gently serve them too,

In caring for yourself, you leave light behind.

JH

 
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Posted by on January 9, 2026 in poetry

 

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New year

In 2025, the world rattled like loose change in a storm

Voices clashed, fears flared, hearts forgot their shared warm form

Yet from the noise grew listening, slow hands learning grace

Till chaos bent toward peace, and kindness found its place.

JH

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Em 2025 o mundo tilintou como moedas soltas na tempestade

Vozes chocaram, medos arderam, corações esqueceram a sua humanidade

Mas do ruído nasceu a escuta, mãos lentas a aprender a graça

Até que o caos se curvou à paz e a bondade encontrou o seu espaço.

JH

 
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Posted by on December 31, 2025 in poetry

 

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Now

I stand in this breath
as if it were a soft doorway
opening to the wild hush of everything.

The world leans in
holding its cup of warm light
and I drink it slowly.

Time forgets its hurry
and becomes a friendly stray
curling at my feet.

For a moment
there is no before
no after
only this
bright bead on the string of living.

JH

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2025 in poetry

 

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