Weaponised Poetry

The World As It Is

I am sailing to utopia.

Not because I believe in it,

but because it believes in me.

I sail on borrowed winds,

across seas made of salt and sadness,

where every wave whispers promises

and every promise is a little lie we call hope.

Utopia is not a place on any map.

It is a direction.

You cannot arrive there,

just as you cannot hold the sky in your hands.

But still, I sail.

Because the boat is built from dreams,

patched with revolutions that once were,

steered by old ghosts who refuse to die.

The sails are tattered banners

of causes lost and causes found,

stitched together

by hands that never stopped working.

To sail to utopia is to believe

in something impossible and yet necessary,

like breathing underwater.

And when I am asked,

“Why do you sail there if it does not exist?”

I answer,

“Because the world as it is, exists too much.”

By Adam Johannes

“I dedicate my poem to Greta Thunberg and the international crew of The Madleen, a vessel in the long tradition of rebel ships. You are attempting to do what governments and world leaders refuse to do: bring food to the people of Gaza, starved by Israel. You named your ship after Gaza’s first fisherwoman, Madleen Kulab, who risked everything to feed her family. She sailed into danger because the sea was her only hope. Now you sail too, into the storm, because injustice must be confronted.”