Frail state of mind

Losing every creative bone by the minute, I come tantalizingly close to existentialism. I don’t know if its bravery to stare right into it or to chide at it by giving it the name of boredom. I keep writing in my own head but everything seems to disappear behind a cloudy memory. What are daydreams but self-guided hallucinations? My fingertips move too often, a Parkinsonian tragedy for the pen that I never even hold anymore. The sun tells me to calm down and I oblige and the world seems still, even if it is for a fleeting moment. Peace feels like it’s on the run, a prisoner of its own device. I try to find meaning in this bizarre bulky world and in my foolishly charming attempts, all that happens is spectacular failure. Every forgettable indie song becomes an anthem for my coming of age, an event that surely has surpassed me by now but I keep waiting for it to happen, I cling to it like it’s the only thing I know and seek and need. Where exactly am I stuck in the age continuum? Somewhere between being a teenager for the first time and being an adult for the last time. It’s not a crisis for the early 20s, there aren’t enough wine bottles around to call it that. Yet. To feel just doesn’t seem like it’s enough anymore. How is one to feel without experiencing anything? Everything I feel seems to be an out of body sensation that I observe as an outsider. Am I really feeling it? Or am I just thinking that I am feeling it? Either way, it is overwhelming. I feel like I’m not emotionally equipped to handle the kind of emotions that I face. What amazes me though, is how empty my spirit feels despite facing all these overflowing emotions. Is there a way out of this? I really don’t know. But perhaps, picking up the pen is a start.

Phantom Phrases

The tryst between comfort and chaos. The cowardice at choosing the former. Wanting to embrace the symptoms of your own delirium but being so disconnected from the self that you observe your own madness as an outsider. Finding shelter. In words. In humans. In dreams. The seemingly same sequences and how the brain refuses to be fooled into accepting them everyday. Singularities that you once breathed. Now you watch them perish. Not because they have ceased to exist. But because you have. Discourses with the body and the soul and how the world reduces it all to mere dysphoria. Disillusionment doesn’t happen when the world fails to replicate your ideals, it happens when your own reality crumbles into fragments of futility. I am no sun but pessimism doesn’t run through my veins either. All I am is a collection of my multiple lives- all lived through during the course of one single day. In life, I suffer but in my own death, I’m reborn.

LIMBO

The dichotomy of distance. To have but not hold, To want but to be helpless. Bones that ache for they aren’t being held. Longings at blue midnight hours that slowly melt into lonely sunrises. They all want me when I want myself the least. To desert one’s own shadows and to search for someone else’s. Someone who can bring back smiles on soft bruises, someone who can light matches to dispel the darkness within, someone who can take my sorrows far away or maybe sit by the riverside and watch me weep so that we could go home with no tears left to cry. Memory is hazy, time is money, heaven is a heart and two arms and nostalgia is an old friend that fancies long visits at strange hours. What’s one to do? Old cities, old lovers, old stories- I’ve left them all but they just can’t let go of me and so I hold onto fragments of ashes of an era so ancient; so ancient that remembrance serves as a questionable cocktail that leaves nothing but a bitter aftertaste and a smile etched by the hands of sadness herself.

Adrift

I feel like my days of rabid journaling have become a thing of the past. Constant re-invention. They gulp down drinks while I swallow the skies in their entirety. How come everyone’s words feel so crass and bitter lately, like rattling trains and construction sounds. Ever so jarring. Sometimes, I think of myself as an eternal passenger which is ironical because all that surrounds me is four walls. Plush prisons masquerading as warm homes. No home for me though, none. I feel, almost behave like a vagabond now. Pink Floyd and an evening breeze. Noir movies and bitter coffee. Fighting. And sulking. And dissolving into thin air. Smokescreens everywhere. Comfort costs a little too much, misery piles on free of charge. This world, this life, it goes from fireworks to extinguished fires. All I want is to swim in blue estuaries and drown in love. Wishful thinking. Or maybe it’s just a shadow of a glorified existence that I wish I had. Shadows. Plato’s allegory. Thoughts and how they never die- just like life and how it goes on no matter how tedious it gets. To slip into intimacies, to descend into anarchy, to befriend one’s own angst- there are rewards to be savoured and battles to be won. For now, I’ll just mumble my daydreams out loud hoping for the birds to hear them and take them away to their picnic spots of migration. Correction: to their alternate “homes” that help them survive.

Dog Days

A sweet mouth reeking of bitter coffee. Probing questions about life. Am I killing time or is Time killing me? My bones seem to be recovering from wounds I know nothing of, for my slumbers are long drawn and deep now. The sultry sky changes colours without even wanting to. Yet, there’s neither heat on my skin nor warmth in my body. Metaphorical meanderings, sigh. I crack open a Lager in the dead of the night and watch the city lights come alive. My brain is a brazen organ, it loves to flash erotic images and poignant memories simultaneously, a little too earnestly. To be alone from your own self, can that really happen? Thoughts continue to chase me without me asking for them. Where does one desert them? I keep scraping my skin, my face, my lips- an act of defiance, I mutter. Strange acts we do to lend meaning to our ever-growing insanity, I suppose. I go back between wanting and not wanting. It’s already difficult to operate in dualities but to be a highly functioning human at the same time? Well, I’ve pretty much deserted my old productive self now and there are guilt pangs from my actions. Or the lack thereof. Days melt into nights and it all seems like a never-ending ordeal. Too bad I’m a routine lover and a change hater? Or is it my blatant disregard for almost everything in life now? It feels like I’ve lost the sight of who I am. Or who I’m supposed to be. And so I’ve decided to cling onto anything or anyone that makes me feel remotely alive. Some would call it my road to self-destruction. Like I give a shit. All I care about right now is the granola bar I’m going to devour at 1 am before surrendering to the seductive serenades of sweet ol’ sleep.

Of daydreams, desires and dances

 

Daydreams of the most sensual kind, with breaths that linger and passions that never die. These afternoons have become too sultry for my liking and awaiting rain before the onset of an arid summer is the only optimism that seems to run through my veins. There are far too many things to do with you in the day and far too many things to do to you in the night but such is the burden of the boundaries between us- when this reality gets too much to bear with, you take a dip in my daydreams and so the endless cycle of this love-sickness begins. What wouldn’t I give to taste you, to feel your warmth, to fall so deep that there’s no way out, only in. To slip into an intimacy of this kind takes eternities and to sustain it takes epochs and yet, every time we talk, it feels like new galaxies are being birthed inside my tiny heart. Maybe someday, not far from today, we’ll dance the night away, tipsy from a love that happens only in movies and yet, the Gods were kind enough to make sure we found it in each other and now that we have, the only thing left to do is to hold onto it till we close our eyes forever.

You’re the Light

 

“Sleep, my love, reawaken the optimism in you.”

I see you with my eyes closed, it’s not a dream.

Wordless whispers travel in the air,

a whiff of white lilies to comfort the senses

and yet, we remain, quietly gleeful.

It’s a skill for our bipolar selves,

we rise like the waves of the sea

the pathless skies we meet, our wings are left free.

But the inevitable fall, like the Black Plague

death screams in our longings, our deafness-the shield.

A whirlwind carries us somewhere far

among the blue hills, you walk noiselessly.

When disappearance takes forms in you,

your flowery scent remains with me,

I carry it in my heavy pockets, for my heart’s too full already.

The breeze returns but brings your absence to me

I taste my tears under a starless night,

the pain of our parting is too much to take in.

I close my eyes, now it’s a dream.

I have slept, my love.

My optimism spells your name now.

Chaos is me

 

I look into the mirror

I see myself.

I don’t see myself.

The irony of it consumes me

It tears me apart.

And yet, all I see is me

but not myself.

I ruffle my hair to see a change

Finally a reflection of my emotion

and yet the wounds don’t show.

My eyebrow quivers, my eyes a silver molten.

I’m beginning to see, the real me.

The more the teardrops succumb to gravity,

The more hazy my vision becomes.

And yet, things look clearer now.

Pristine and crystal in blurred motions.

The less I see into the mirror,

the more I see myself.

And this irony too, consumes me.

Remnants

 

I have left a trail of melted brownie crumbles,

for I’ll be tasting the stars tonight.

These fireflies, I see them dancing on my fairy lights

as they glitter in this silent winter night.

Marshmallows and coffee sips,

take me back to a simpler time

of playground swings and snowball fights

and as these strawberry cheeks glow in soft moonlight,

warmness I find in me just like those fireplace embers I see.

I’ll chase the stars hidden in pink clouds

and I’ll gaze into the weeping pallet of a winter sky.

The fog and the streetlight will make soundless music

and yet, I’ll hear it and travel places I never knew existed.

The twigs of the pine trees will make me smile and then cry,

for I’ll finally know of the magic I’ve been seeing

and even though hearts are broken under mistletoe

but passions they smolder so much more.

Half burnt candles and bright colored stockings

slow melting nights and crisp cold mornings.

Watching old movies inside the warm blankets and I’ll smile

and once again the tears will find their way through my eyes

and when it’s time for my mortal soul to breathe its last,

I’ll carry in my pocket a little flake of snow

Bearing a souvenir of immortality,

I guess, that is a good way to go.