collision

Amidst the inner storms and hurricanes, there are moments of peace and calmness that arrive when least expected: Walking in fog—the fog like a thin layer of smoke rising from a hut—I stumble across a stranger on a warm bench awaiting a conversation, waiting to scatter his miseries and to worship a soul. Silence aside, everything was lifted with sound. Simple symbols.

You may easily imagine how strange it is when the souls of two strangers collide: it’s destructive, beautiful, unearthly and eternal, yet, ephemeral.

a strange dream

I had a strange dream and thought of sharing it:

In this dream, I was reading about a young girl who was on trial for witchcraft. There was a fine line between the reading of and the witnessing of this trail; because the dream did seem to come alive and the girl did spring between the pages to stand before my eyes. Perhaps, it’s my current imagination that is shaping my dream, and embellishing on this lost reality.

She was on trial for raising the dead— she lived by a graveyard, which made the dead quite accessible to her. The judge was faceless; he merely had a voice that admonished the young girl.
She was a dressed in white, curly hair tossed about her shoulders, exuding supernatural confidence as she spoke. She did not try to deny this accusation, but rather to justify it, and it is her justification that I found most intriguing. She responded that she only wanted to play with them, and that by raising the dead someone in the future will raise her from the dead.

Her innocent rejoinder got me thinking. There was something about her desire for immortality that struck a chord within me. Perhaps it is I who has an unconscious drive for immortality that has yet to surface fully, or it may be a romantic notion that all humans desire. If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s my mortality; yet, a part of me seems to want to romanticize eternity—that the sun will continue to rise and set beyond the pale sky, forlorn mountains, for a time that knows no end. But my words will end, and maybe I want to leave a mark, or a word, even after the sunsets, and the evening becomes my shroud.

Maybe I'm just uncomfortable with the looming implications of death. Or, it was just a dream, and nothing else.

empty moments

Have you ever experienced those brief moments, or perhaps not so brief, when you are confronted with complete emptiness: a deep dry well with an inaudible, tautologous echo menacing against your ears. Nothing can assuage your anxiety, comfort your obscurity or fill in this unwholesome gap. Indeed, all that you are offered is blank space. A place to write of your new life, your old death; your perpetual death, and unborn life; your sunken chest or your sunken eyes. Then you exhale and exhale, but nothing emerges—the sky suffocates. This feeling, both physical and metaphysical, burns in all directions, which doesn't really matter, because you lack any sense of direction. It's all fallen cities, people without emotion walking against one another.

You’ve developed such a fixation with nothingness that it has painted over everything—one colour, one large brush stroke, one large gap. Memories in a tattered sack splash across the canvas, leaving nothing, not even the dead fly at the bottom of the well.

You yearn for it to end, but yet it continues to spread like dark wine on fine cloth.

clarity

I think of how to fling my arms around the painted sun,
long enough to dry the rain drops covering the seas,
find referents for the signifiers divorced from their signifieds,
rock the world to sleep with a single lullaby,
plant lilies on the moon

but in time for me to slip onto the isolated cloud
who moves with prosthetic wings
into another world--a better world
between the hills
and the invisible souls of dead soldiers,
without wooden boxes.

A quietus clear as a rain drop.

...

A petal amid the ash-stricken leaves may spawn a different memory.

fall memories

Staring at the piles of fallen, forlorn, ash-stricken leaves, beyond the pale walls of my room, it becomes difficult not to turn to the rigmarole of melancholic thoughts of our past living(s). These thoughts cautiously slither and slide their way, time-travelling into my present reflections: To think that without this memory I have nothing, but because of this memory I am nothing.

But, what if by a slight, thin chance this memory was fabricated—my imagination unscrupulously playing cruel tricks to pass the time?

Yet, whether this memory belongs to something real beyond my imaginary landscape, it becomes real nonetheless. It has penetrated its way into my very being: spreading over my mind and body; stretching over mornings and nights; crawling into my veins; stamping my soul with a lucid, pristine, immortal memory.

shadow

the shadow of hallucination constantly runs from the tip to the pit of my sundry dreams—hollow, long, lithe.
sun dried, moon filled.
the deeper the dream,
the longer the shadow
veiling the secret
of morning.

reality

I had to dream of it to realize it was all senseless.

long nights

We worked into the night: the fans, buzzards, drums, notes, and half torn stories were all piling up in one great frying pan. The smoke began to rise between the pages and the notes, and we saw our thoughts before our eyes—colourful and glowing with ghostly excitement, yet discordant. All we could hear now was a desultory vibration, bouncing from one ear to the next. Our names, simmering in the distance, became unintelligible, and in those passing seconds we knew one another by our glances.

sleep paralysis

Have you ever experienced hypnagogic sleep paralysis where you are completely cognizant of your surroundings, can hear your name being called, but are incapable of moving any limbs, flutter an eyelash?

In those moments you are absolutely frozen. In those few seconds you stop being human. The light bulb transforms into an angel, burning in the ceiling, yearning to fly.
Have you ever experienced hypnagogic sleep paralysis where you are completely cognizant of your surroundings, can hear your name being called, but are incapable of moving any limbs, flutter an eyelash? Count an eyelash?

In those few seconds you are absolutely frozen. In those few seconds you stop being human. In those few seconds you feel an eternal pause.

The light bulb transforms into an angel, burning in the ceiling, yearning to fly to go beyond the edge of sleep, beyond the razors of dreams.

Stillness

I wait for it. That stillness outside my porch, so beautifully alive, yet so full of solitude. I imagine intertwining with the stillness -- smudged with earthly marks. Brief.Pure purple darkness. The ephemeral stillness leaves behind solitude.

Questions

I have a preponderant task at hand that seems so insignificant to the indiscernible eye, perhaps at times my own. Is it all that complex, or am I unconsciously constructing it as such? I guess I should continue to sit in the yard and ponder it...Now where do I start searching for meaning when my thoughts seem so gnarled?

Murky Ink

My petulant pen scribbles capriciously—where am I heading, question mark, then questioning the mark—my hand placing a still shadow over the I. Murky ink--thickening. Heavy thoughts envelop the I. Then the shadow meanders over the loose page, searching, pleading, if not for an answer then for an end.

Deception

We think of ways to deceive ourselves, crown ourselves with laurels and thorns,
leave anonymous wrecks, bastardized dreams, severed vows, uncanonized hymns.
let us name the wrecks for once:
till the heart uncensored overflows, and everything that lies within lies without.
the melancholic heart, dry and feeble, lies flat, clutched by ignoble fingers
too weak to speak
it draws its pain as the sun sets
--strange marks—
and the world retreats into the night.
even when the self dissolves, our deceptions linger.

caution

A drip of reality can obliterate not only our dreams, labour, hope but our sense of self.

We must closely monitor our hopes in hopes of preserving ourselves.

moribund pronunciation

Life is much smoother when words are not like cadavers passed to your ears, without fulsome syllables that lie on your tongue. Sharp. Higher and higher they rise. A cacophonous gathering. Banging and kneeling. Gasping. Breaking glass: a sea of you favourite portrait of your past now a shadow. They will not absolve you of your sins. Brown eyes dip low. Then you stop. Your flow of words backlash. And everything seems to die.

it must mean something

well, not necessarily. somethings mean nothing we just invest meaning in them, but we must be wary of any meaning we create out of nothing, and the illusions that follow surrounding this new meaning. let us not be consumed by our fantasies or my urge to create meaning regardless of circumstances.

insomniac

fears her lack of sleep will invite grotesque, ghostly faces that will exchange her for a sign that signifies nothing because it does not dream.

my eyes like daffodils in the wind waver.

my pillow whispers blindly

so I feign sleep on the margins.

untimely memories

An aged memory tugs against the sheets, hardly breathing, trembling against the dark that contained it. Flashing, more flashing, forgoing space and time, it asked:
What season kissed death and brought it to life?
What vowel fell illegitimately only to speak serenely of novelty?
What tear survived and quenched earth’s desire for water?
What ponderous sin set the world in order?
What was spoken but was never said?
A younger memory coyly replies: That season and that vowel birthed hope
It glowed, shimmering, burning to the touch
Leaving ashes to the wind
That tear and that sin offered forgiveness, so sweet and yet poisonous
Silently humming to the wind

It said nothing but sank against its flesh, before realizing it never said anything.

Some memories just die, prematurely.

Anonymous

their distant words grow faster, and faster than emptiness, then emptiness. The words feign themselves as illusory, artificial-like extension
cords wrapped around warped outlets. at the sounds of explosion -- not real -- wounded butterflies die in bellies. round, flat, shimmering. they yearn for other words, silently.
misery must have driven those words. real words in a strange world.

demon love

before we love, we must love love
before we love love we must
chase demons
up skyscrapers
down coffins
across dreams
near annihilated beauty
--the consequence of breathing backward--
and into fridges

think in cold abstract terms

understand that demons are vulnerable
then stutter and sigh
love

spreading

poised on a wooden canoe,
red paint fading
empty
sad, glances
spreading
words spreading
sheets
blank black blanketed beds
crying for warmth
dusty spider webs
spread in the corner
water, calm
kind to the strangers below
you discover yourself before the wind
unwinding thoughts
spread
the first foreign—buzzing echoes
the second strange—wings of bees burning brightly, slightly cold
the third-a ray of sunlight: pure
honey
breath spreading
I saw you with your graybeard spreading
your cheeks in ruin
sticky
still, sweet
you spread
your arms
waiting

some people

know how to kill words and cry innocence.

falling

i'm used to falling deeply, never lightly. always out. out of torn pages, and onto ordered thorns. black holes, tightened at the waistline.

never in

always out

centralisation

centralisation of capital led to the economic crisis

centralisation of pessimism will lead to a suicide crisis

as evidenced on our bodies.

the mind in pain

When the body is in pain the mind suffers, but when a mind in is in pain, every body suffers:

The mind is in pain when brain cells tingle but forget to mingle,
speech becomes blurry like stars falling on the window shield of your brand new car,
answers leave a bitter aftertaste and you turn nostalgic towards questions that breed questions,
smoke rises from tongues scorched by the heat of political visions,
the sea evaporates and you shower with sand that was once rock,
when nothing is too much too hold especially at midnight when the clock roars,
pounds and pounds and pounds against glass doors locked in your mind.
you shed weight
and forget about love
and everybody suffers

Sometimes

Sometimes
We want to move closer to insanity
Sometimes
We want to batter our dreams into bottles
Of all shapes and colours, but specifically azure coloured glass
Where we whisper tornadoes
Sometimes
We want to grow innocent on filthy streets
And burst into verse
Sometimes
We want to edit suicidal notes
Make sure the endings rhyme
Sometimes
We want to manipulate time
By stitching hands
Sometimes
it's difficult to figure out what we want

Nothing

Nothing happened, and that was everything.
Sometimes, it is hard to forgive nothing.
Some people are killed by nothing.

blank spaces

I reassemble ruptured ------
Painting flesh over shattered ------
Blood: a mumbling stream
engulfs the heart—
made of glass
melts
over palms
ressembling -----.

How can I justify my being?

Well, I’ve figured that I’m here and might as well ask why. No, not electronically, even though I am swish swishing and click clicking, but physically, flesh fleshing and blood blooding. I’m here, as you might have ingeniously observed, not out of choice or desire but out of sheer necessity.

That’s silly to claim, is it not? I’d like to think I’m necessary for something, but for what? Is it necessary for me to think I’m necessary for the sake of preserving my sanity? But is my sanity a necessity? For what? For whom? For how long? For material or immaterial existence? Can a response to one contradict a response to the other? One thing seems certain, one is seemingly necessary for the other, but, perhaps, not the other for the one.

Perhaps I should work backward and ask what is necessary? And then to ask how could I become necessary? For, as it stands, it’s a silly declaration. However, it must mean something, mustn't it?.

This should create considerable anxiety for you as well, perhaps hives, dark spots, sleepless nights, illiteracy as to convince yourself you have not read this, because I’m unsure of why you are here and whether you are necessary.

In no time

Then it was over. No more hushes and shushes, just notes, whether high-pitched or low-pitched. No more ambiguity. We could not measure it, not by time, location, or tense. It was gone, and its origins yet unknown. You can see the earth bend itself in such an awkward position as to reverse the order of things, just to take a peek at this new phenomenon. Life came, when silence disappeared. It was different, you could say interesting.

naming those edges

you make compelling sounds when you stutter your name, building soft layers around those letters, except the O. the O in the sky and the O of the wheel barrow. I imagine your spelling always meticulous, more syllables than I can handle. but a bit sharp on the edges, those suicidal edges. repetition drives us to edges.

odd moments

It's odd when you have those odd days, those odd moments, those odd feelings, those odd pauses. when you have slept on your arm for so long that it's barely there. when silence rips apart the charcoal sky. when handkerchiefs cover eyes. when curses turn to verses. when hallucinations turn vicious.

this is not bravery.

all i want is to maintain a good heart, even in my odd moments.

pre-reason

I’m guilty due to my senses, because wherever I go, they follow. even during my moments of immobility they sit silently and contemplate existence, never fearing epistemological breakdowns. I’m guilty because war turns our gentle, timid nature into a gruesome one, or multiple grotesques. or is this landscape fabricated, and there has always been war and no gentleness?

to accept guilt is to create and reside in a nightmare, and when nightmares become reality they never truly exist as real,nor do we for that matter. there’s always an air of surrealism to nightmares —- they are anti-logic, anti-art, anti-sense. nightmares are pre-reason, perhaps.

rules

you announce yourself eloquently with assurance and ease. a permanent smile, never awkward. phrase complete with unbroken, untouched, unblemished semiotics. with your perfection you can love and speak of souls.
but you can’t claim all languages are the same when you’re still trying to figure one out. note how your tongue wraps itself around syllables as you glide into another language; your skin speaks new phrases, such sweet sweet broken phrases. only with imperfection can you speak to souls.

Perspective

We part our separate ways, and that’s it? Can I not ask why? Where? How? Or perhaps the dead can’t ask? Or do questions keep us alive?
I have memories, but so what? Must I remain a prisoner of my memories? I know they move horizontally, but why not vertically and straight into the sky? Or do they fear that the sky may collapse onto them? Do they then turn into ghosts? When memories become ghosts, do they remain memories or turn to mere fabrications? Can these fabrications bridge the divide? Or is this division beyond a fix?

running

it perplexes me when people vanish through doors, fugitive like, without a trace, without a sound this moment of departure seems like an eternal banishment: played and replayed, and perhaps now overplayed that I want to disrupt metaphors and undo time and rupture space—the space of inaccessibility where familiar names seem disjointed, somewhat strange now barbed on my tongue and sleeve, barred from sight

to wish death upon oneself

is to stop dreaming, hoping, wishing, crying. to live in sustained silence, young, crippled by the lack of light always at the back door of every house. to weep for oneself over petty misgivings, past moments that have died in passing. to read only to search for closure and warmth where there is only a void at the end of each page. to forge an identity for death under one resilient breath. to place borders of fear around love. to hide under blankets and not seek....
to wish life upon oneself is to breathe and let breath be.