The Watchful Self

Arrowhead sipping the colour from my eyes.
He she may not recognise me in my disguise
as a river, with my knees bent into a rush
and my arms dispersed to hide in the gush.
I'm nowhere to be found, having never been lost,
having not been taken apart and further tossed
into the oceans of other minds. Where I belong,
I drink from the wavelengths of a conscious song.
What I would call a hush, a murmur, I hear,
and see without vessels that worlds can tear
into estuaries. Listening, I am blind and deaf,
but a fingerprint on the window to the self.
I stream through, as he she wanders about
through the mistakes of believing in doubt.

Mote Of Life

Unfinished writing on a half
written page of a half-
filled book of words
that would mean something
if sentences would
complete,
paragraphs would
end,
chapters would
close,
verses would
flow
down

further

down a falling wave,
suspended continuity,
forgotten serenity,

down
further to

a whitewash of text
that doesn't really make any sense
but it keeps gurgled suspense
that extends
outwards
towards

Vague Vagues

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?

Alone

So far, now near.
The distance grows shorter, the tide creeping upon the beach then
falling back.

You see, the waves emerge in the distance,
Armed waves, white foam of thunder, ready to smash, slam, swipe, swell, singe
And they come in waves, the squadrons;
As they get closer, you can see the soldiers
No faces, but they're there, advancing, flags held up high beyond sight.
Those were white.

The shore is silent, awaiting.
War,
They hit, they smash, slam, swipe, swell, singe,
Here as they did there, indifferent.
In war, there is no celebration of life.
Here, there is life, and it goes on,
Unlike war.

The battle moves with the moon, up and down.
Terrain is conquered, lost.
Castles and other temporary constructions are destroyed and
reduced to lumps, to be evened out and rebuilt
In circles.

When the moon is at its bright height and round
I stood awatch, the waves coming on and on.
Poor visibility? Darkness hid the illusion of distance
but what I needed to see was there.

Note here that this is a sight I met in childhood:
Evening, staring out towards the sea, waves coming forth
crawling onto land and spilling their lonely secrets upon surfaces and
unsuspecting beachgoers.
Alone, that's how I felt, because I couldn't see anything past the blanket of night.

Alone, the feeling.
The answer, alone.
You, look. In the word. Alone. Look. Pair the L and split.
Oh, it fits :)

The sight is here.
It is a feeling of sadness, of being small.

Tiny.
Tiny.

Everything is. The waves, the moon, the darkness, the light, the sand, the water, the wind, the unmentioned.
Yet we weave all these things together into our own blanket and we hide either under it or from it. We think we are insignificant, minuscule, wee (in more than one sense). We could just as well appear to be that. If I think I'm bigger than that, then I'm delusional. If I think I'm unworthy or pathetic, then I'm delusional, too. If I simply am, the world around me is too. I appreciate the sight because I have learned that while the waves crash ahead and everything is large and small, I am witness to it. It occurs, and I can see it, witness it in its presence. Its emptiness, its hollowness is not a feeling of lack. It is a feeling of completeness. Nothing, yet everything.