:: Words Become Me ::

I return your ode:

In and out of dreams
Burns an insomniac Fire.
Rising,
A dispirited myth;
Unsung,
A famished melody.

We know ourselves
As fragments -
Slips and silvers of humanity.
Today I am yours;
Light casting darkness
Hope eroding joy.
Tonight I am yours;
In words and wayward prose
In the glow of a strange intimacy.
Would we find
An exit
The mystical door guarding
Our old world
An exit, a vent, an eclipse,
Breaking cosmic patterns of pain
Liberating, flaunting -
Daunting.

In and out of dreams:
We have loved and lost,
At its blithe cost;
I am still a prisoner, I still have
My chains;
I don't seek a knight, a hero -
I don't keep track of loses
And gains.

Long ago I have known you
Heard you
When you are no more than a whisper
An echo of faith
In and out
Of dreams.

Broken poetry

:: Broken Poetry ::

And I still have no words
For goodbye
Is a tear-soaked phantom
Of our past.
And I still have no strength
For goodbye
Is a hideous instant
Of our present
And I still have no hope
For goodbye
Is a blood-singed vision
Of our future.

***

Sometimes you fight a war, and there is absolutely no glory in the outcome. Whether you win or you lose, the two-bit medal will be seared with blood and memories so raw and potent you would never live again, even if you didn't quite die.

I have no excuse to be melodramatic. But yet I have no wish to be anything but.

***

You are youth's soldier once more
Serenading a different dawn.
Embrace the eternity
Of this moment,
And discard
The broken dreamscape of yesterday.
Love has no
Justice
Nor real malice,
No master
Nor true hero,
It is - just is.

A Dream Within A Dream

:: A Dream within A Dream ::

"You looked unhappy," you said.

How do I begin to explain - the turmoil of emotions beneath the seemingly calm surface, the pain-pleasure element of our current state? I'm not unhappy when I'm with you. But I don't know if that feeling of buoyancy, that little pin-cushion of peace that offers no support for the impact of my heartache, that little jolt of joy at making you laugh - I don't know if that can count as being happy either.

My joy is a phantom now. My pain is a dull throbbing ache. My tears are my front-line defence, holding a deeper dam firm and fierce in its place. I've told you countless times; there is only space for your happiness now. And I wish for you find it. With me, with her, with them, with yourself.

I looked, and there was a jaded sky; the ghastly expanse of indigo stretched itself into an eternity we may never live to see. You've been my star and my constellation, but now it's time you shine for yourself.

As many nights endure,
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure,
When one is gone and far.

***

Yes, kiss time and it'll make up. Keep the faith, because, like you said, pain will run its course, and there will one day-one moment for sunrise again. Demain, oui.

1984

:: 1984 ::

George Orwell's 1984. Winston Smith was the protagonist, and Winston Smith was in love with a woman named Julia. It was an unerring love; it was pure, it was loyal, it was unconditional. Even when faced with his own death, he chose to honour his love and refused to denounce this woman. But when the authorities tortured him by caging his face with four live rats, he caved in. As it turns out, death was not his fear - rats were. The prospect of the beady-eyed, yellowed-teeth creatures gnawing at his eyes destroyed all romantic nobility. He denouned Julia. The oldest calling of life - love - could not compete with the strongest one - fear. But fear does not stem from irrationality. Fear comes from a instrinsic core within each of us - the self-serving, interest-seeking person. We're selfish and egoistical, and evolution - of the society, of the individuals, of the physical body - has only strengthened that into an inevitability.

We're all selfish. Love is not altruistic. It's not beatific. It exists because it serves our interests. We are enslaved to it, we're rejected by it, we're chained to its whims and facies - but only because it suits us.

(I'm embarrassed that the only reference I'm making to one of the best literary works - its premise is on totalitarian control of the state - of the last millenium is about love. How disgustingly typical.)

***
To my fellow urban poet,

I have almost forgotten what it was like to really laugh, really laugh, until last Friday. It was the best nightI had in a long time, where conversations had no beginning or end, function or meaning - we talked because we wanted to, and the result was the exhausting fulfillment of cartharsis.

Kiss time and it'll make up, because there's no other way.

A Lost Muse

:: A Lost Muse ::

I've never known anyone as earnest as A. He's a sweet soul - fiercely talented, yet gently humble. I was in awe of his art - as I am of his heart.
'They're just shapes,' he said, not self-deprecatingly, but matter-of-factly. As with the last few times we've met, I felt strangely small in his presence.
Because once upon a time I believed in my art as well. Once upon a time, I had my own fairy-dusted ideals, shinning with ethereal brilliance. Now? I am tired and small and insignificant.

***

To You,

I can never share your loss, even if the loss of my old Marlboro Man allows a tiny atom of my empathy;
I can never truly say I understand, because I don't, not really;
I can never find the right things to say, because even wordsmith fail in the face of something this inevitable;
I can never do anything except to say I'm sorry, so sorry, that right here, right now, this moment, you have to endure the heartbreak of loss and the remorse of never knowing.
I'm sorry.

void of an echo

:: void of an echo ::

After the torrential of emotions, all there is, all there really is - is a quiet disquiet. The human psyche seem to be a paraphase of nature - the calm before the storm, and the quiet after; the bleakness of the night that would eventually break into dawn; the sweep of a hurricane that can level everything in its wake; the hungry ferocity of an earthquake that is blithe and blind in its destruction.

And so are we. I am quiet now; everyday is a requiem of an old life. But I'm not at peace. It's like the void of an echo - a vacuum but not quite, where the reverberations of a festering ache continues its rhythm, drumming and droning into a swan song.

I'm sick of my own whinging, and I'm tired of being tired.

Wilted

:: wilted ::

I was feeling tragically poetic this morning. As I sat at the void deck, waiting for my boss's car to beam its imposing lights round the bend, waiting to hear the familiar growl of the Audi engine, waiting for the day to throw its blindfold around my eyes, pushing me into a black oblivion of robotic function - I suddenly felt sad.

Sad and sore and young and hopeless.
Not just because I'm still nursing a broken heart.
Not just because I'm the cause of my ruined relationship.
Not just because of this love.

But because the ghost of my old nihilism - I used to embrace the fulfillment of nothingness - was threatening to come back. The sun was a gentle cloak of butter at 7.58; the morning breeze was bringing with it fragmented melodies: a child laughing, chattering of people, the sound of a horn or a hurried footfall. Life. In its splendor; in its prime. And there I was feeling as though I would never know happiness, that I was never meant to know happiness - all my old fucked-ups, threatening to erupt, waiting to take over.

If there is a greater point to pain I feel I must discover it. Melancholy was never my Holy Grail, but I've been given an Excalibre of ghastly power. And yet there will be no battle. Time and Circumstance are my brothers-in-arms, knights at the same table. One day they will intervene, but one day some day, not now, not this moment. And where is my King?

I amuse myself. Tragic poetry smudged with distant mythologies sprinkled liberally with my own lingustic pain. Tres pathetic, if you ask me.

If only life could continue its way in a dichotomy, in which the human nature is conditioned to know in the first place. A dialectic of equals. Good and bad. Black and white. Innocence or Evil. Truth or lie. But no. We seem to enjoy existing in the many shades of grey, and like moths to a flame we seem inclined to the very things that would burn us, kill us. Masochism at its most poetic. Maybe it's just me.

***

I dread going home. What's happening?

***

There's a chain reaction. What you say, what you do, what you don't say, what you don't do. A chain reaction to pain. Is there hope, not to wilt?

god of small things

:: god of small things ::

An old friend made contact. It was a surreal moment to see his name in my inbox, almost like homecoming. I risk sounding melodramatic, but I've always known he would come back. When he told me he would never be silent for long, when he promised to keep in touch, when he predicted our friendship would go beyond time and distance and circumstance - I believed it all. Cem, he calls himself now. A new citizenship. A new life. Still as crazy, still as poetic, still as charismatic. Still my mentor, still a friend, still...there. Shalom, B. Welcome back.

***

Tiny, accidental moments of enjoyment. I never knew this simplicity. I never understood its importance. I never realized the expense of emotions that could be possible in small, trivial things. Did you?