ir a principal |
Ir a lateral
Even though there's less than a lip in between,
I can clearly see where you end, I begin
to wait for symbols but the fibres are thin,
and I measure more than I'd like to have seen
in the distance in between
your words, laundry-pinned to dry in my sun,
hanging from the moment ago they were spun
in drenching new-birth, concatenating with mine
to form the meaning I'd been meaning to sign
in the distance in between
us, and what has happened, what could never be,
there was nothing woven where nothing's to see
and I crane my neck, reading in front of me
the results of what I asked for, honesty
in the distance in between
the self that I aligned myself with, and you
expelling the code that puzzles me through
the silences when we meet, our rendez-vous
from a language I speak to get to what's true
in the distance in between
the vocal chambers that reside in bodies
picking up signals from closer melodies
that sound out help from minds not at ease
like mine, a poet ambling in memories
in the distance in between
where I've done too much searching for your smile,
ghosts have passed a lonelier road in denial
of their release, who I'd joined up with, all the while
talking, yelling, mouthing verbs and nouns, guile
in the distance in between
that I'm trying to overlook even here,
sounding out various prayers to an ear
I imagine is yours, wherever you hear
the fibres telling you that I am near
in the distance in between
where really there's a bridge you laid the instant
when the strings I tugged began their descent
into my sun-deprived consciousness, sent
from the warmth I recalled as an infant
in the distance in between.
This didn't seem to be
In need of counselling,
But wait, it's the call of hesitation
That I find me waiting on.
Maybe it's naive to think,
To think I know to think,
Keep the emotion buttoned down -
Why let it slip away?
It's like waiting on authority
For answer. For the sign.
Did I miss it, hands in pockets,
Watching the world be round?
I can't help but run out
For the answers to be read
And when I'm to ever get there,
Silence reads instead.
Spot me sitting a seat away,
Waiting for the words to say,
Holding me captive in mentality,
Bested burden, waiting prey.
Answer me. Answer me.
You said you would when I'd call.
So did I miss your ring
Out of the context I was in?
I tried not to think,
As I now avoid to dwell,
And the prayer that I sink,
Addresses this species of hell.
God, I don't know it any all.
"Don't be fooled", I tried the same,
But why did I not talk?
Is that the question?
Hesitation translates to regret,
And what is, is.
And if we never would have met,
The moment, would I seize?
I'm breathing. Just tell me, man,
What do I do? I implore you,
The pieces I've pieced together
Don't fit to me. Yet,
Where do we go from here?
How do we carry on?
To the answer that you'll give,
What is the question?
What do I ask, to know the truth?
Find me.
Find me.
Find me.
Silence has a good way of yelling out the truth.
Today, time just waits while people pause
and find a feeling.
The quake broke the clock,
timed all that was meant to be
and stopped intentions from fulfilling.
I speak without a voice;
despair: my vocal chords,
with no verbs, just sheer implosive emotion
eager to shout and save
in its scything silence,
echoing the sound of bone.
Downtrodden, Christchurch ushers in a new day
this 22nd afternoon,
dismantling the old one
brick by brick, life by life.
Now, I wait for confirmation
that my child is alive and well
and my mother's still out there breathing
and my friends and aunty and
the elderly man three doors down, are all okay.
Life is still.
All of the lights strobe red in sawdust fog,
cars rake along the city streets,
away from the concrete caveats.
The buildings creak to stay statued
before the worms start feeding under them.
Faces hurt,
ache to react and contain and release
but freeze, uncharacteristic, undecided, disabled.
These dust-covered ashen molds
from which I hope life may still emerge,
I cannot even touch,
though they have touched me.
I see the fear of being abandoned, of being lost and excluded from the circles of the people I look towards and see as my family and friends. I am pushed away, and no one says anything. I can't fulfill their expectations, especially because none of them are willing to show me how. Maybe no one knows, but I believe they all do; they just refuse to tell me I'm a wretch, a should have but didn't, a should be but isn't. They all walk over me and don't look back. But still within earshot, they laugh amongst themselves, shadows painted right over this feeble doormat that I am.
I hear the fear of what they say about me. It makes it hard to trust because I hear my own thoughts sweat and brood and plot endlessly (seemingly) a way out, escape from the death sentences these people utter about me. Their thoughts of rejection are loud. They don't want me near them. They don't make an attempt to understand me, to see me as I am, because they can't accept that I do hurt.
I think the fear of not being liked, and conveniently, of not being told there is something wrong with me. It comes paired with the belief that there is something wrong with me. I am wrong. Listen to it in my mind. I am scared the stuff my mind is telling me is actually true. I am so wrong, no one dares tell me. Yet they all fuck silently over it and glance with their minds into mine, shooting darts of spite. They keep me apart from all they do. I want to be included, and they shun me, backs turned, unwilling to let me in. No redemption.
What did I do?
It's who I am.
I fear their judgment. I fear that I am not good enough. I fear I have lied to them, and they cannot overlook that to find the truth in me. I fear that truth is a lie, and they can see it clearly, but I hold on to it.
I feel the fear. This is the worst, because this feels like the proof to all that they do, that I deserve this. Hurt. Abandonment. Exclusion. Silence. Poison. Breathlessness. No reason. No forgiveness. Hate. What a hated bastard I am.
I fear all this will come true. I fear this is more than just writing. I fear it has momentum, and will invade my life and spin it out of control and into death's eager hands. Then I'll have lost. As if I hadn't lost by now.
I quit. Behind some attempts at poetry, is honesty. These are my reasons for quitting. Life's not worth it if all of this is true. It's not worth it if any of it is true, actually, because the possibility of one makes the rest seem real. All this has come about because I have listened to my mind religiously, trusting it that it was telling me the truth, even when it made me hurt badly because sometimes the truth hurts. I believed it when it said it wasn't my fault, that it was all their doing.
Fuck it. I listen to my heart, and you know what, all I can hear is its beating. No shit about anything, it just does what it does. And it's quiet. The mind replays recorded messages about guilt and disharmony and weakness and powerlessness, all on fear's album, out now. My heart is kind, and at least, honest enough to let me know about the shit I've been putting up with. Yes, I am scared I won't be accepted for sharing my fears, for shining this light. I admit it. But I choose the path already laid for me before me, not the rickety road nowhere I made.
This is where I let go.
Merci.
Out of my personalised sopor I awaken;
out of a shell's worth of pieces unbroken
I hear these words being spoken,
reminders of happiness' little tree-like
veins reaching within from the extremities
to that bulging center of importance beating,
serenely, supremely succinctly,
undisturbing any appetite I may have had
for teeming, killing, suffocating, dreaming.
Repercussions, I accept
before any all secrets are unkept
and naked, I stand unkempt,
but am I free, I am free, free to feel
how it feels to feel free without feeling
a freak fleeing fear, me, upset by what has been set up,
ere stolid now solid,
but such gauze, such a window,
such a veil blowing in the wind,
such a flag, glad to be waving and saluting
to the laconic riposte of the sails on the road.
I travel, through blueprints voyage do I,
chalking a trail of words and compliments
and a backlog of unused breath mints
still on the counter, still,
like silence,
still weeping
across the bow of the horizon,
for the telling of love.
An ethereal head on an ephemeral pillow, I am,
I do, unthink
unblink
return to sender my post
a bird's nest I host
as I wake up to the scent of dust in the dehumidifier;
on
I turn myself, too;
I do keep a tumor of nerve endings
on a spot of space just beneath my skin,
just so that the day can pass through.
I can't begot me, while sitting silent
waiting, praying, following a road
to nowhere's prison; conviction sent
my release, I'm going t'well does bode.
It be, asked to be begot; feign reason
to be understood not by cherishers,
by friends, by admiration's heathen
sisterhood, but by stamped seekers.
They come shape-seeking, apathetic
to yonder-brimmed apostle jeering -
desirable to who can tell the septic
from cleansed - they may come reeling.
It's where I take my place, I earn by edict that jest
to rise above the nothings, be professed things to the rest.
Napalm is irrelevant, but inspirational.
Seventeen things that could make the day better are really just one.
Nobody claims to know what they are talking about.
Shadows do not dance on the wall.
I don't know what love songs are about, but they make me wonder.
Diamonds aren't forever, neither is marriage.
Solo, in silence, amidst the crowd of a thousand and four spies with no eyes, who I am is. This sounds less impressive, yet more degenerate and puzzling because it is not saturated with meaning as something else might be. The blurriness dispels your ability to judge. Yet you cannot see the truth when it is blurred, so you must come to know it for what it is, without any edge.
All good things come to an end. All sad things come to an end as well. The same end. Perforated by an emotion, dulling can set in. You might feel numb. Unwilling to respond, and confused because you drift. Floating, this is inemotion, a sentiment where you feel you are falling and also know you are not, that you are safe. You wander and wonder about everything. Questioning nothing, leaving everything in its place, you begin to see a distraction in all there isn't, and life in all there is. But the imbalance remains acute and persistent. You know you are love. You know it. Yet your beliefs are torn apart by truth, and you feel you are adrift in a land of unknowns. In reality, you are safely grounded. But you don't always feel that way, and it becomes a process of going back and forth between what is and what isn't to realise what is is and what isn't isn't.
Love is here, it is about opening the eyes and heart so that it can be seen and felt. This means crossing an inexistent gap, making a leap over no distance. Jump with me.
Silence, is deeper than the energy combined of an eagle and an angel, both soaring and calling the firmament a path between homes. Neither struggles to find comfort in the absent because both know where they are is where they ought to be. One could say they don't even know the absent, the otherwise, for to them the air is present and that is all there is. Owls are the same, although they prefer the night to fly over the day. I think they can all tell that the world is quiet. There are no clouds that separate and no creeks that divide. It's just one whole plain, varied in its form to display its sheer beauty, inherently simple. Mountains rise up and appear to tear at the sky, but the intention has always managed to make way for the action.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's in a song by Madonna which was subsequently covered by the cast of Glee, so it's not an idle signpost to a broken well. The wrong thing done for the right reasons is still the wrong thing, although one could dispute that if something 'wrong' is done that its reasons must have been flawed at some point. Intentions can be misguided by illusions that pose as lights, as true guides. One can tell they are fake by their ephemerality. Nature doesn't crumble, by contrast. Yes, seasons happen, leaves fall, grass grows, but there is a certain intelligence at work here, something or rather somehow knowing what to do, when to do it and executing it with exact precision. To understand it we could call it Gaea or Mother Nature, because what it does looks to be similar to what human beings do. But I suggest that it doesn't do anything at all, and it merely is. Perhaps it fulfills all its desires through its being. We have a relationship with nature that we honour. We all share in the miracle of life. We are connected via the 'being' because it is the same. Discover this by going amongst nature and listening, appreciating the sounds of insects, leaves and wind, but also the silence, in its incomprehensibly peaceful depth. And breathe, letting the quiet resonate, radiate and remain.
In it is within. Out it flows, not as displacement, but as courage, as romance - a short whisper and a gentle murmur that says absolutely nothing but means everything. Heroism? Threats? None. Just connection, the reason and result of being one.
It's like everyday I start anew
Like I don't even have a clue
How to live my life.
I pretend it's clear
But I know that I'm wrong
Because finding peace takes far too long.
In my quest for an answer
I have broken myself down,
Told myself that happiness is too lost to be found.
And I believed in me and in those words
So desperately, so foolishly,
So childishly I spent my energy in vain.
Hopeless, I'm lost.
Sought validation for the things that I had done,
But took none to heart.
Breathless, I gasped
For the one to make everything all right
But no one ever said a word.
There's always some reason
To feel broken apart
By the hands I pen these words with.
It will never get any easier,
The words never meant anything at all
So this wall that's built remains tall.
I find comfort in the abyss,
In the maw of sadness
There's always, ever an opportunity for bliss.
But solace doesn't heal my wounds
Love doesn't know why it left
And I don't know why of them I am bereft.
Shedding tears might be beautiful release
But no love is given to those who can't see
And I'm blind, faithfully so, in pain.
Somehow despair renders my eyes inert
And I don't know where I'm going
To find sweet surrendering paths to true knowing.
Caveat silence, tripping the switch
I fell into my trap of ages and gloom,
From where I weep for my own tomb.
I think I'm stupid, so stupid,
Such a fool to believe.
For missed redemption I grieve.
Chances are, I've given up,
Chances are there's no tomorrow
I held on too long to my sorrow.
And out of that came hell
Beckoning nightmares to come ravage
My dreams, my hopes, my terrifically mistaken hopes.
You shouldn't care about me,
You shouldn't listen to my lament,
You shouldn't know what I'm crying about.
But you do.
Here's the life you wanted, messed up.
Because we feel the same, we're losing this game to our pain.
Worries have traveled far
Clutched in my tired hands.
I have been waiting so long
To let go,
To let them go.
Hills became mountains to climb
When my burdens held me back.
But that's all gone now,
In the past,
I've let it go.
Aching whispers, breathless gasps,
I couldn't hear the silence behind
So I turned off the set.
Eyes up high,
I said hello.
And my understanding descended,
And I knew this:
The baggage that we hold on to, the past that we cling so dearly to, is gone.
No hearts can break.
No stones can shake.
No love can kill.
No death can will.
No light has passed.
No wind has grasped.
No hate has flown.
No peace has blown.
No hearts can truly mend.
No darkness can transcend.
No stories are told.
No present is old.
No fear is meant.
No fire is sent.
No shadows are paved.
No ego is saved.
No hearts are torn.
No grace is born.
No silence is shattered.
No pieces are scattered.
No hurt is real.
No pain can feel.
No truth is a lie.
No life can die.
And the rest is silence.
Elsewhere, in crevices unweathered
There's a box of hope stashed away
Awaiting the touch of your hand.
Open it.
In between your fingers, feathered
Light may shine, show you the way
Through 'ere hallway of darkness.
Face it.
Hold out your hand, receive,
Be whole in what you are to give
Never ask for it back, for you do have
What you give, always in your hand.
Looking for myself in empty places,
Broken paths I must uncover.
Yet the silence and the lack of faces
Yell the truth I need discover.
Trodden journeys nowhere, blind with dread,
Mirror perfectly my mind.They show the wayward image, turned to shred,
And a blessed son behind.The world we're given, we push away,
Desiring one made by hands with which we pray;
Hands not wounded by counted battles for control
For a say in who we are, our role, our soul.RhymingSeveral spacesLyrical inspirationNo frustrationBut memoriesMemoriesAny meaning?Anyone?Any certaintyJump the gunSit stillListenStop hearingListenStop seeingListen
There is space in everything.
It is a silence that we know.
It is the foundation on which rests our beliefs, our forms, our emotions, our thoughts.
Transcend this. Go within.
1) Live the Life You Want
Emotion. Such a thing courses through my veins under the deceptively persuasive guise of lifeblood. It surges from my aortic pump into places of other biological import and teaches them shades of shared sentiment: la tristesse, la colère, la honte, la peur, or a viable concoction consisting of any combo of the previous and the unmentioned so that, on demand, when the command center utters its instructions, the expansive plethora of feelings can dip into its colors and manifest a condition under which each organ can play in an orchestral manner. This rich culture is further enriched by long sentences, symbolic of their journey, but also of their ephemerality. That decisive punctuation mark, little in size, is a segment of finality. Its presence is telling. It is defiant and seemingly otherworldly. It ceases, it ends and as such it is feared. It is a doorknob which can, when turned, open the door for emotion to enter. In it comes. Out it goes. Personne ne comprend. Nobody. It is with this apparent caveat that I ponder emotion in vague vagues. The road behind me was paved with good intentions, with the silent hope that there would be something ahead, and voilà. I never wanted to go to hell. I forget where I came from, but I made a wrong turn somewhere I can't go back to. No loading a previously saved game.
2) Corners
Nobody looks at me. I walked on, giving in to clichés. I played my cards with subtlety as to not give away my game but I created an image for the other players to look at. Call it my poker face, sans the sexual undertone introduced by Lady Gaga, or maybe just a little of that dressing, for influence my behavior it did. This image, which glues all the players together, which builds them up when they are down, worked for a while, when thoughts could be manipulated. But things have changed and I don't have the same cards in my hands. I can't play the same way with the different circumstances. I can change my tactics, but... I want to stop playing, really. You could mistake my jeu de cartes as a metaphor for life, but I precisely mean it to be an ironic symbol for the absence of made-up rules. Language, socialisation, is all a game with apparent winners or losers. But nobody looks at me. I sometimes think of myself as a winner, walking down the street, music in my ears. When I play the loser, I walk slower, head down, to the lament of a sad song that I feel is attempting to capture my sentiment. Life is not a music video. There's nobody watching each one but the people that make them, with their stories, so it's all in their heads. No one else cares. Everybody is too concerned with their own card games . So there's really no reason to lie in the corner, hunched, seemingly protected by the two walls that join behind. There might be a singer crying and validating somebody's abandonment, but they don't know, they aren't aware. Disillusionment is not revolutionary. I wasn't going to do anything very impressive actually, but attention is something we give and receive. The balance is ever-present and unchanging. This is why nobody looks at me. I don't like to look at them and when I do, I don't always want them to look back at me because, just maybe, they might see truth in my eyes, sign/sneer, and turn away. In those eyes, I might see myself, but there would be no place for me to turn, cornered.
3) The Silence of Those Who Lie
Deception plays its part and li(n)es are cast in the waters, baiting the restlessly foolish, begging them to fall into the net and believe. Losers... they'll want to be winners later which means that there will be more losers and then we'll have a food chain. But you know, it's all fake. There's no meaning anywhere, no significance that we can point to and say "This absolutely means something." In God, we do not trust. In ourselves, we have no faith. In nothing, do we believe. In nothing, we do believe. When it's dark, we turn away, avoiding what is not there, because we think it is there. And we lie about it. We say we are strong, we are brave, we are wonderful, we are powerful, we are free. We mean something, we are more, yet we call each other less. We play with meaning like it's something when it's nothing. And while we play the game, we are silent.
Notice the irony?
