what I think

21. 04. 19 (completely random, largely senseless, and originating from a prompt asking for absurd imagery)

Coins slip down pinball machines and into slots that chime with the ringing of religious notes that I do not rhyme, but resonate to the sound of.

Strings stretch themselves across cardboard boxes to allow me to sing to the young of heart that though far apart are roped together on the same vine that ties your meaning to mine.

Walls are created to be climbed, atleast the rough talus slopes imitated within rooms designed to falsify nature unto a mere physicality that can be replicated.

Copy machines pretend they know the content they produce but really they serve as mindless mazes that I get lost within as I try to navigate winds that carry the fragrance of spirit.

Adventure lifts our souls out of the tyrrany of conforming and into the pillowy clouds that soften the blows of whips cracking across the backs of those that try to stand in your way.

You are cruel in the mechanisms through which you interact with a world that has nothing but love (and even blind) for an image of yourself that you will not confirm nor deny.

You string us along until we jump and trapeze off into the unfaithful vacancy of space that feels empty but it crowded with hundreds of millions of stars threatening to end my existence.

Life is but a dream that memories found themselves upon and the base tastes a lot like thick concrete in ways that seat your unsure mind places its representation upon.

Resurrect not the masses but the few that have lived massively extraordinary lives and been the queens of their efficient but cruel hives, for goodness is only a treatise with some version of You.

I float away on a donut the size of the black hole at the center of our galaxy into a planet that disappears as you approach its atmosphere, in no direction other than one away.

I drift away not from you but from the hidden rules those that tell stories of your fates impose upon the most few you refuse to bless with the proof of your muse.

I wonder and I write about the beauty in art and in the eyes of somebody you truly love because the depth of that emotion transcends the platonic or romantic nature of an association.

Some links run deeper than the metal that they are made of and represent deeply ingrained biases in the very twisted fabric of spacetime itself.

My thoughts constitute a whole lot of chaos that often more than mildly resembles the dissertation above, yet I desire no escape from a prison that does not trap me.

I am free to leave
yet I choose to live
My thoughts are wonderful people
to spend weary nights with.

freeway feels

20. 04. 19 (quick 11 pm poetry written while driving back from a movie)

I dreamed of the perfect dance,
well timed kiss,
thought I’d miss
(a sad consequence
of one way roads
I sped down
without company around).

Streets converged,
Yet my other parts
on the other side
of walls blocking roads
and trees keeping me
from the same dreamy
(and slightly steamy)
romance I once bought.

Repeatedly being crossed,
I land at cross
roads, and choose
the painless highway
that leads off into the distance
with speed, but no hope,
wheels, but no rope
anchoring my heart

to the dream of a better part.

(Yet, part of me still needs
something to think
when I watch shooting stars
fly by in a blink,
and maybe deep down
I still wait
for that selfsame,
dreamy fate)

origins

11. 04. 19 (this one felt so good while writing I’m not even re-reading it before putting it out there)

I was made out of the dust. I was made out of shells collected from sand that slipped between His fingers. I was made. I was not made. I was only planted in a vessel through which my worth could project itself into the world. I never needed to be made. I was made in a bedroom.

Yet pleasure in a process that should transcend physicality is unwanted, so I was flown in on chariots by storks or in a dream. I was born in a Gooseberry bush. Yet, the making is of no consequence without space (in houses and in hearts) to be shaped within.

I was shaped out of sleepless nights. I was fed the sight of the moon. I was grown on stone cold mosaic floors bearing chips that looked like insects. I grew and the growth was commemorated with a shaved head. I was made out of prayers and out of love. I was raised on pawns and dice. Yet, the raising is of no consequence without a purpose for the risen to rise to.

I rose heavy hearts. I shaped a hollow space in my pillow for my head. I made out of blocks the pillars that would hold up dreams for the stars. I grew in my yard messy, but bursting-with-love birthday cards. I fed my own hunger. I grew into somebody I wanted to be. I grew into somebody I didn’t. I rose on my tippy toes to hide the last square of chocolate on top of the fridge.

I became somebody. I was made somebody that became somebody. I started to know myself. I knew the books that I liked. I knew how turbines worked. I knew I’d never be able to pick just one color when asked which one I liked best. I knew Your name. I knew the name of meaning, and then suddenly I didn’t.

I thought I knew. I think I do. Experience says I have been made and will be made, that I will make until I will not know. The making changes the maker in stages of evolution till the maker kicks the bucket. Yet, the end is of no consequence without a book to turn to the end of.

I write. I write the story of the living. I write about the way the waves feel like home. I write about family. I write ballads about escapades too wild to recount in open forum. I write a poem. I write that I was made. I write a story. I do not know when I will run out of pages, but I sense there’s a long time left to become something.

I am made out of lines and lines of letters. I am made out of tales. I am made out of rumors blown in by the wind and glory brought down by the sun. I am made of mortal flesh and skin. I am made of love and passion and despair. I am made of odd addictions and faults. I am made out of frappucinos even in the winter, but mostly I am made out of what I make.

I am made of a story that I write even today.

// side note: I absolutely love the existential seagull cover image for this post! //

a room in review

09. 04. 2019 (been away for 5 days on account of a wildly entertaining trip to Goa; day 9’s prompt asks one to write a poem that makes a list of some sort; I ended up completing a piece I started over a year ago)

i.
red headphones –
that punk metal drummer’s anger
bleeding through
lyrics someone else wrote-
I bet they found his too bloody
messed up, and never once
paused to wonder why.

ii.
dust forming a shroud
over a dead painting-
I thought I would finish it six months ago,
and once more six weeks before that
but both times
I forgot- I tell myself once again today
so I can pretend it’s just a function of my memory
for the third – or is it thirtieth?
– time

iii.
broken strings
from my sister’s guitar-
she brought it over because-
I don’t exactly recall but
something to do with
the phrase “self expression”-
what’s wrong with words?
I ask her,
as I write.

iv.
paint peeling off the walls-
AsianPaints was shut yesterday
because they changed closing time to five-
the economy is going to die-
the wall ain’t going anywhere anyway.
It can wait.

v.
books.
a lot of books.
house-fulls of room-fulls of shelf-fulls of books
and books full of stories.
it’s all very full
up to the rim and-
it’s a wonder
the glass hasn’t overflown yet.

vi.
crumpled bits of paper-
unsent letters and love notes,
a sheaf of blank sheets,
an empty mailbox,
words
don’t seem like enough anymore-
perhaps I will start playing the guitar after all;

vii.
a broken chair
that cannot wrap its own arms around itself
without screws that I drive in every day –
I try to replace
this freak, but cannot break
into shoes that do not reflect
that comfort in their own
broken nature;

viii.
lights
which when I squint,
seem like stars –
I suppose the mediocre
when seen loosely from afar
can seem magical;

epilogue
are objects as objective as they seem?
or is the inanimate scene
a reflection more of ourselves
(the shades we wear and the ways in which we see)
than of an omnipresent reality?

reflection

02. 04. 2019 (NaPoWriMo day 2 – write a poem that asks questions)

Are we the questions that we ask?
Are we the answers that we seek?

Months spent dragging pens across pages and fingers across keys that serve purposes beyond the reach of the moment I am trapped in left me wondering who it was that was trapped;
I didn’t t know whether I loved the things I loved because the narratives I spun around them created stories that sounded like stories
I created stories that transformed fact into perfection
I left out the dirty details
I forgot where the dirt under my nails dug and where the treasure trove was to be found
I was nowhere to be found.

I began to ask myself,
Are the the questions that we ask?
Are we the answers that we seek?

I’ve always looked at the world analytically;
I like to break words down until their definitions and the definitions of their definitions are syllables swimming around in a chaos of hidden meaning,
I like to count the sides on the dice
I like to break down video into thousands of stationary clips and in this blur of static I feel the movements of my heart grow numb.

I find myself feeling the most found in moments no reason can wrap its head around.

I used to think what we are is the negative of the places and the people that we cannot stand,
That the living were only purposed by the dead, and that all contraries defined one another until I found myself moved
Not be what I wasn’t, but by who I wanted to be;
Not knowing what held myself up, I tried to define my stable state by what could bring me down.

Over the last few weeks, I have begun to find my feet:

In watching someone simultaneously eat carrot and chocolate for a dare,
In climbing sandy slopes to place myself upon a rock that felt like home,
In hugging my bestest friend and wishing we never had to let go,
In inventing spontaneous dance routines on mountains that overlook the Dead Sea,
In the broken remains of tombstones and intersecting faiths,

In people and in stories and in lights,

I have begun to find myself.

entropy

29.06.18

currents cross the Atlantic ocean and spill
out onto the folds underneath my eyelids
that buckle and bend like the Himalayan plate
grinding against rock and bone to hoist mountains
atop its shoulders

streams run down broken runways
where shattered glass crowds icy marble floors
like shards of chocolate sprinkled across
honey glazed caramel cake waiting to burst
into a beehive of chaos

rain trickles down the car windshield only to be
swept away by doors slamming themselves
upon rooms hiding within haunted houses
with ghosts that leap like frogs waiting
for their princesses

chaos is not just a mathematical theory
but a direct reflection of the increasingly entropic
universe expanding unto nothingness
unlike a balloon that has the whole world
to catch it if it falls

my mind is a hive of nerve fibers intersecting
like yarn knotting over itself and into tangled hair
that lies sprawled across my self
esteem on the bare wooden floor begging
to be swept up

and away into the stagnancy of dustpans
that are reservoirs of motionless marbles so cold
they draw the life out of dragons and slink
across the infrangible threshold into the warm sanctum
of supreme serenity.