I'm Listening

I feel alien.
I feel different.
and I feel apart.
because I don't seem to be like everyone else.
because differences are maximised in my mind.
because few, too few, offer to build bridges
and so I have to, cross my heart,
cross these worlds apart and render distance inexistent.

I have to be,
philosophy,
yet have to live,
lie, to fit.
how is this a viable option?
when there are no words,
but those that don't hook onto others.
what language can I speak
so you can understand?
that I feel alone.
that I feel lost.
that I feel like I am a battle without its fighters.
that I know there is no war, but I feel it's worth fighting for.

Teach me to change my habits.
I'm listening.

Somebody's Anchor

You caught me dreaming again,
held down by the weight of my mind
and I asked for your help up.
but you gave it to me,
so easily, hand from your heart,
I took it with my fingers,
dripping chains, doubtful daze,
dragging mud in my wade.

I have a fear, that
I'm not where I'm supposed to be,
that
I'm weighing you down,
someone's anchor, on one knee
I'm begging for mercy,
and you're still smiling.
It's one more burden I have to carry
to see you happy
though you didn't ask me that,
you didn't ask me for that.

I'm hoping that I'm not dragging you
while I'm trying to float
at the bottom of the ocean
I call lies, you call life,
pieces of harmony
carved together in the sand,
planks of wood reminding me
that I'd wished for irony.

I have a fear, that
I'm standing in the way
of you just understanding that
I cannot be who I say I am,
and you,
you stand there smiling, still,
like I can't feature grim
or make a fool of myself,
someone's anchor,
someone's pillow in the depths.

Finally, cast ashore,
I want to be free
but I cling to you rope
that you tied round your calf
when you pulled out of the sand,
my sanity,
and me with it.

I am scared, still,
drowning in a new air
of responsibility, guilt still heaving
down my breathing.
And you want to float, away,
spirited display, affection.
I just want you to stay.
Don't ever leave me, alone.
You saved from certain death
but I can't live by myself.
I'm somebody's anchor,
and I want to be yours.

Afterthought

Horizontally, they play the keys on the piano
together, never how we used to be. I am
waiting on my bed - no. I am not waiting.
I thought I saw the little words, I read them -
no. I skipped some. Never yours. Never mine.
Planned our future, blueprints for my lie,
and unfurled it lies next to me, in your spot.
I look now and see that there's nothing there.
There's relief, there's an unencumbering, then
there's the question of the space to be filled.
You were never meant to be here, you were not
the one. Funny how I held on, clipped to a wisp
from a thought, in the hush of an angel's wingbeat,
yelling out at echoes. Tipsy, burned clean,
we stand not hand in hand but keys apart,
in the same symphony, notes for another heart.

A Letter With No Address, To You

Dear,

We may have met, or maybe yet to have. But know from the get-go, that I am not going to be your everything. That's an expectation that, while my ego would love to fulfill, is not one that I can. I am who I am, and I've walked where I have walked, and I will try not to point to my footprints when we meet, but if you see them behind me, and you ask me about them, I will tell you where I have trodden. I will be honest. I will be. There is no other way for love to discover us unless we are open about where we have been, what doors we have closed, but most importantly which ones we have left open so that the breeze and the sunlight can have passed through.

Do not hold on to me. I won't to you. If there is pull, and there would be if it would be love, we will come together and celebrate our oneness. And why not go for long walks on the beach, or talk 'til dawn, or cuddle and kiss and look into each other's eyes as if we were looking into sincerity? I can play with your hair, you can play with my lashes. You can dream, and I can dream, but let's not hold on to what we've done or what we make up. Let footprints be, but let's celebrate now, what we are, together as one, beyond what we may look like to each other.

Love will find us. This, I know.

Be ready.

Hymn For Today

We're all innocent souls
Trying to get by the best that we know,
Trying to feel in our hearts
What every day is like.

We're all bystanders watching
Life unwrap its gifts of grace.
Won't we all miss it
When we go our way away?

Just a little goes a lot
In our senseless stints of thought.
Does this moment seem forever,
Cause it's all we've got?

We're all innocent.
We're all pure.
Distance is reminding us
We're here but we're gone.

Unfinished

Tools are on the floor, strewn. Pick up those sticks, those houses in the making, and build a bridge to a boy's heart. He needs the shelter, too. He needs to find peace within himself without a wolf blowing out another birthday out of his internal calendar.

It's a world out there. No,
It looks like there's a world out there and yet,
and yet,
He feels it here.

And he's wondering why?

There might be laughter. There will be, by the end.

Pursuing What Means

The light has faded, the peace has burned,
The room is cold and I can't reach out
To grab the hand slipping out of my sight,
Too bright, too far to see into the night,
Too long to bear the pain
Of standing alone in the rain.
While life is pouring out its veins
It's still my beating heart that strains
For love, to come be my savior,
For love stares blind into my fear
Like it wasn't even there, my fate to cripple,
Like somebody quietly knows it's all so simple.
I have half a mind to see responsibility
And the other part to want the seas to part,
It's outside where windows look alive
But spirit drowns and after it I dive
To give it breath, divinity I can revive
With the hope that I somehow will survive.

A Light Script

When this light rises I'm restored -
I don't know how to feel though
Because the situation confuses me so.
The day takes on a different chord,
A shade I didn't play
A word I did not say
A heath I protected
A secret I neglected
A heart I singled out
A man I broke apart
All by myself.

It was me, you know, me.
Or do you?

Fuck, it seems like it can be so many things
But it's only one, everything.
And the light shines
And I don't seem to know how to connect one to one.

Your Beautiful

The fragrance of your smile
The womb of your indifference
The flight of stairs for a mile
The whole lack of penitence.

The peace in your heart
The marshmallow gaze
The presence from the start
The most familiar haze.

The riddling laughter
The broken lies
The prose right after
The sudden ties.

The four lines
The feather
The two signs
Together.

The she
The you
The me
The true.

Your face
Your pupil
Your space
Your beautiful.

Finally

Those words, those words that you said,
I took them and burned myself with them
Hoping that the pain would be great joy,
But it wasn't.

Hea rtbreak
Is like that.

I know you knew nothing, suspected some
Things maybe, but you didn't know. It's how
It turned out. Nothing to do about it, but
Forgive.

All The Difference In The World

You've got heaven on your doorstep
The man standing with a hand outstretched
For a while you've left him there untouched.

But he hasn't taken back his offer
This is something telling you he never will
You can close the door, you know he'll be there tomorrow.

Counting the times you've shut it
Withers not his dedication, his wish to see you
Never wavered, always eyes to your eyes, heart to yours.

This man, you're telling him to leave
But never wanting him to go, and he won't ever
Because he knows you're simply lost and all he wants to do is save you.

In your mind there is a cloud, a shroud,
A loincloth stripped of life that's doing the impossible
In causing you pain, shame, blame, and all the rest of sorrow.

Yet you look upon heaven and know,
That it doesn't matter at all, that no one asked for blood,
That no one sought your life to end, no one really cared.

And he makes all the difference to you
Because he is gently walking across the doorstep
Into your room, where you welcome him with your arms.

One day with your heart, one day
You'll wake up, one day you'll seize that day
And never fall back down for there will be no tomorrow.

That day is sooner than you think
That day is brighter than you feel, and closer
To your heart than what the world tells you to see.

It will make all the difference in the world
The same.

Where To Find Happiness

Happiness, not something found in someone else's hands. Don't look for it where you think you have placed it because it has never left its source.

In my fingers
You can see the lonely night
You can just about touch
The sadness.

I gave my heart away
To those who never found it
And I lost its place
Among the wreckage.

It's all fair in love and war
The wisemen speak betrayed
And the rules tell you to ask for more
Lest all the happiness may fade
But the lie was told
And taken to the heart
And rejected by the rest
For no one really understood
What happened?

Everybody fought in vain
For what could never be retrieved
What never seemed to be
In your arms was never free.
And we all draw conclusions
And we all make lost mistakes
But we all forget to listen
To the sound of tears,
Tears streaming down your face
Your cheeks, your mellow chin,
Your voice within,
Silenced.

It's more than I can handle,
It's more than anyone can put up with
So I ask you why you do
The things you do?
Don't you realise yet
That what we do
We only do,
Because we think we have to.

Home is where the heart is.
Happiness is home.
Love is happiness.
And love is everywhere we see it
Because it's everywhere we are
And in each place we put it
We find more of it.

You don't have what I can take
But you promise to undo my mistake
So for that, I look upon you finally
And smile stupidly and freely.
I have it within me
I've had it all along
Life awaits me to begin
On the path I left so long.

Brother To Another

Repetition, of partition, of repetition... we have a mission and it is in our lifeblood to protect it.

These thoughts somehow fit together on the screen. We see them not as a whole, but as something broken, divided by words. This is how we see the world, fragmented. Writing is an excellent reflection of it; it comes from it, does it not? It is an interpretive dance without the movement of limbs. Instead, oil lifts up above water. Words come up on the screen, no, colored pixels. The brain is trained to remind us of that which we attribute meaning to, and what that meaning is. And ultimately that that meaning never really was inherent in what it was attributed to. That part's not a special feature, but it is part of the film. The movie ends, sometime.

Caught amongst the feelings of grandeur, is a little boy. He's wee tall, wee small, wee wee-wee. The youngster accompanies the desire for love every where he goes, but he knows the desire for love is simply a shard of amnesia, forgetting that what it is looking for is in itself. How then, could I describe to you, and to me, that love is within us? Here.

I know your every move, you know mine too. And off the screen falls a place of enlightenment, somewhere where you can't see where you are going but that you know you inhabit. Already, there's a search going on for shadows, in the night, for emotions that are hidden in the most obvious of places. If only you looked during the day, when there is light, when the streetlights were off. That way, you could actually see, because in the light, love is most visible. In darkness, love is still there, but it is not visible to you because you choose to see with your eyes instead of your heart.

So I ask you, the writer, the reader, the interpreter, you, to look up in the light. There is no more to your pity than your bones, your body, your weaknesses and grievances. No more to your anguish than what you invest in it. No more to your loss than your lack of recognition. The light fails to see these, and instead merely shines. One day, sooner, you will know that the light shines so bright because it does not shine through anything. And the day that you will know that will be the day that you are uplifted and you will see. The truth. All of it.

We already are brothers. I just don't know it, but you do. I'll find out though, and you will have already known and will still know and when we both know, we will rejoice because are brothers. And that moment will be, and is, now.

So tell me, how do you feel? If you let it all go, it will fall apart.

But now we both know that life remains. And that's love.

As It Is, It Remains

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.

We Are

Love, it travels by everywhere,
Reaching us where we are most,
In the heart
In the mind.

I'd digress if I wasn't being honest
When I say I care.

I am learning how to speak from my heart,
Finding out that there are simple ways
To unite those pieces fallen apart
In love.

And for this to occur, there must be peace
There must be acceptance and truth,
There must be the things that are already there
For they have never gone anywhere.

And love, love, it never disappears
For it is more than what meets the eyes,
More than a box of chocolates, more than a surprise,
It's more than what makes it up
Because it's whole.

This sentiment, it yearns to expand
For it holds its holy place in all the land
In all the land
Where it flows, it transforms,
Where it breathes, it seethes,
Where it springs, it knows its way
To a brightest day,
Today.

And it's all around, in every space,
Upon every face,
There is the light of grace
Through which we see.

Are we not lucky?

We are free.
We are love.
In many attitudes, forms and formlessness, we burgeon
And touch each other's hearts with our own.
Whether we cry out in pain or in joy
It is love that we employ;
That which we call upon, we already have
And so we are reminded.

Are we blessed? We are.

We are.

We are.

Loss Sung By Somebody

Singing a song like this makes me smile
For I know you're smiling beneath as well.
In the morning light we lie there a while
Your hand in mine, you break through your shell.

Oh, we are waves
Meeting at the seams
Crossing in complete formation
The love that sees
Us come together as one.

Oh, we float above
The shores of sentiment
Hearts untied and bold and true
I can let go
Knowing I won't lose you.

Words are spoken like the past smoke
And the mirrors go along with them.
What truth is there, near our own oak
By our campfire, roasting love again?

Oh, carry on without
The burdens of my memory,
It may lead you to a brighter day
One without
Choruses and bridges over what we say.

Oh, catch the stars
In their wishful magnificence
For they may grant life to your dreams
That you dream
On a night where nothing's what it seems.

Stir within the confines of this scorned jail cell
Betray no secret that has dawned on you to keep,
Unfold the corners of the letter written to tell
Me of your truth, your decision made to made me weep.

Oh, how do cards
Arrange themselves in such a hand
That any move will split the heart twofold
And blood will drain
Leaking into rivers, into seas of love and gold?

Oh, why do hearts
Guide us into memories together
Where we are denied a new chapter to our story
Because it is done,
This irreversible undoing I had never wanted you to see?

Amidst All The Black And The Undone

So high. Just amazing, the view from up here. There are few clouds in sight, apart from the one I'm on of course. Floating is freeing, physically. What happened?

Firstly, let there be words.

Entanglement
Written words
Desolace
Gentle whispering
Forgotten

Flickering street light
Breathing
Footsteps
Nowhere in particular
Crowds
But no one

Broken inertia
Dream of the day
Awakening
Eyes widening
Anchored heart
Pull
Pull

Yearning to escape
Confronting the past
Dancing
Empathy
Emotions are loss, abandonment
Question
Floating in the yonder

Now, let there be a story.

Somehow, beneath the following tracks of the pendulum, the earth moves. It slumbers and turns, awaiting to meet the yonder by breaking through. In purgatory, I await entangled, nearly daily trying to break free, to escape. This is no prison sentence, no "Mein Kempf" to go with the lyrics scraped on the walls of the cell. I shan't personalise it, I might become attached and grow emotional claws to hold on. But the written words are clear. In this world, this desolace, I am alone, free to weep, to crawl, to deny, to seethe, to participate, to cower. Existentialism dawned on me recently in my cell. Characterised by a shadow of hopelessness and other nasty feelings that I'd rather not feel but still are part of my available pallet (because I still decide to make use of them in my artistry efforts), the day is a process of getting up and getting through. Occasionally there is a gentle whispering, not nearly loud enough to deafen the silence, but noisy enough to remind me that I can still hear, that I am still here. It's soothing, but as soon as I turn my head towards it, the quiet that had never left returns and I am once more left sitting by myself. This is the only opportunity I have of remembering that I am forgotten. No one knows I am here. I used to not know too, then my frontal lobe developed and my place was revealed. Its purpose is yet unknown to my physical eyes, but in the greater scheme of things, I am there, certain.

In the evening, through the bars of the cell I can see a lone street light, lit. When I watch it, it flickers and this exposes the flying specks of dust orbiting around their star. I'm somewhere in that solar system, probably in a prison cell too, wondering why. There is nothing else to wonder about. When it's cold, I huddle in a corner with a make-believe blanket. My breathing is then visible, an expelling of steam from the mouth of a dragon that never really had a chance to live. Another one of my fantasies is hearing footsteps. I sometimes hear them through the same ear and from the same area that the whispering comes from. But like the latter, it disappears when I turn my head, when I try to trap the perpetrator into my net of judgmental sight. I haven't caught anyone so far, and I don't expect to, but I still do it. It's a habit of being for so long nowhere in particular. There is no certainty, everything is a blur, so any expectation would become lost in fog or amongst the crowds. There are other people here. I am whispered that they are my brothers, but they are faceless, they don't look anything like me. I get the feeling that many of them are in their own prison cells but they are always free when I watch them circle the street light. Shadows dance as it flickers and it makes whatever they are doing that much more mysterious and odd. Watching them, I found myself circling in the middle of the room, trying to copy them, but I wasn't getting anywhere because I was nowhere. So I stopped, but I still watch them now and then. But no one looks back at me. Sometimes they look at my feet, but I get the sensation that they are looking through me for the moon or some other celestial object they can orbit around.

All time is in this piece of fresh avocado I present. The inertia is broken in my ambling from bar to bar, yearning, pretending. I have my dream of the day. I am an astronaut floating in space, sans the suit, traversing distances that are relatively insignificant. I am a light, or inside a light, and I watch as faces I obviously recognise but fail to identify shimmer into view only to fade the next second. I am whispering back to the gentle whispering, telling it that I want to know where it comes from, and it replies by repeating the same question I ask it. I am in front of a glass through which I see the flickering street light, the orbiting, the circling, and then I see my silhouette trapped in the glass like some painting I wouldn't want on my personally autographed mirror walls. When the awakening comes, I simply see the light from the street light for a longer few seconds without flickering. My eyes widen then, because I can see more. Light lights the way and grants me vision. I cannot see in darkness, which is why I have been blinded for so long. I probably scared the gentle whispering and the footsteps away through my rash actions or my lack of initial acknowledgment. I couldn't see. I have a heart though, and because I couldn't see, I have anchored it until further notice, i.e. until I can be free and see and let it beat. When I awaken, and I look out at the brothers going in circles, I pull. I pull because I want to join them. I pull the chain because their own version of this great tragedy appears to at least be more mobile than mine. That makes it interesting, I suppose, and more bearable.

Despite my imprisonment and my settling into this null world as if it were my home, I still yearn to escape. Even after so long here, I do want to leave. Comfortlessness is comforting only until I realise that there is no comfort in it. Contradictions... there is an ample amount lying around in the recesses of my mind, by the bars, in my dreams, around the street light. Somehow I am anchored into a prison from which I may not leave. Here, I am condemned. I have to confront my past, not because I have to, but because I cannot let myself not do it. I cannot see anything different but darkness until I face the light. Dancing. It helps sometimes to put myself in the non-ritualistic mood that is required of me for such realisation. If only those brothers of mine would be more empathetic towards me. If only they could see me, maybe they could tell me how to find myself amidst all the black and the undone. Because, I feel abandoned. I feel an emotion of loss. No one is here. Not even me. This makes me sad. One question arises, in many forms, though. Who is the dragon? Who is the astronaut? Who is the brother? I float there in the yonder, right by my side, and I wait with open arms for my return.

B-Side

Look at us now, chasing ideals
Thinking we've got to run far.
I ask you what it is you feel
Do you know who you really, really are?

Have you been asking around?
Have you been searching away?
Before the pain strikes its bleak sound
Let yourself find the heart's own way.

It will lead you here
And it will be great
A day without tomorrow.
Skies might be grey
No tears on this path
I won't ask you to follow.

Know that I tried to break through
Carve a tunnel to find you.
Among the rubble I discovered
Pieces of your scattered lies.
I know enough to not assume
That fragments are what's left of you
For truth can't hide its permanence
And there's not a single secret to be kept.
I know you.

In the mirror I was looking for
The reflection of my own image
I found nothing, my boat, no oar
Flowing away under this bridge.

In this light I changed my ways
Stumbling on my lone impotence,
Wayward from the hanging haze
I charged ahead with renewed deference.

It will lead you here
And it will be great
A day without tomorrow.
Skies might be grey
No tears on this path
I won't ask you to follow.

Unearth the worlds in distances
Don't pretend they do exist
Walk among your brothers well
And sing to them your wholesome love.
Fall apart those sediments,
Those illusions of real sentiments
Remember your hand of guidance be
Nothing cold, unknown, no mystery.
I know you.

Illuminate your thread,
Those false weapons you shed
Fly across the depths
Across windswept Everest.
Glow in the dark, glow
Let the only light show
Those that close their eyes
Will see through their meaningless disguise.
Into my mind and theirs.
Into my heart, always
I know you.

Every Point On The Line

Child, young, standing in this very spot,
Holding the escaped rebellious red ball
Looks wide-eyed at what could be th'end all,
The headlights bright, breaks heard but screaming not.
The son frozen.

"You're a legend, awesome, fantastic, the best,"
To the slaughter he now goes with all the rest.
From the white winter tops, right down to the basement
He's fallen; an abyss mirrors his replacement.
Watch and learn.

Those lessons he's receiving, to deduct the jealous,
Will purge him all of masquerading mind-made madness
For his fate is written-thus, that no self-made can alter.
With his secrets revealed, unhiding, the son cannot falter.
Be homeward bound.

No three, no four, none can claim a prize not to be won
When brothers all connect, correct and create as one.
It is forth that they must bring their minds and hearts
To unite their worth, meaning into a sum of all parts.
The lone fall.

His ways to complicate have been lost and failed,
The rhythmic contemplation, despair has sailed
Upon some wavelengths unreal, to mouths of fear.
The boy saved, has no need to run but be here.
He is returned.

What roads he has crossed, derelict, with sorrow,
Are lessons that remind him the lack of tomorrow.
He did not write himself into his being, but played a role,
An amnesia that he had to forget, to return to what is whole.
And he remains.

Remember

I will remember,
No matter if the places where I have been
Will fade away into oblivion.
I will remember,
Skies are grey and no one's to be seen
In corners where I have been.

I've been searching, here today, for the light
The one was promised, guided, shining bright.
The essence of me, disregarded untruly
By a mind that forgot despairingly
About love.

What do I live for? I ask myself the question.
An answer I await in my reminiscence
For there's no further loss in my possession
Than that of my heart, lost on the fence,
Troubled, hurting in the rain of hesitance
Trembling feebly in the puddles. Yet remembrance
Is nigh, I feel it, I breathe it, I swear
That heartache won't end until I share
The lies that I have kept, away,
Hidden in a tiny heart-shaped sepulcher.
Locked in the depths of darkness-ever
Stuck from finding out the truth, its way.

But I will remember.

My key, I lost, there was no second chance
I forgot the reasons why in this dying trance.
But I discovered light
Among the depths, into the night,
I fell through, apart,
Shreds of everything I kept
By giving winds, away swept
Revealed anew
The whole of my heart.
My heart
Its beat
Its warmth
Its call
Its whisper
Its promise
Fulfilled.

I remember.
I came, I saw, and I forgot.
But the pain which I had brought
Was now a lesson learned.

Thank you.