Cut

“In the cloud, reflections mirror reflections, cutting out the object and leaving only infinite emptiness.” 
Joseph MacKinnon

~

My hand was in yours. Your hand was in mine. And there was a moment where I didn't know which was which. Then, the moment was gone, and another one came. It was the moment of separation, slowly tearing the pages of the book we wrote in our minds, pages about the dreams that we carried in our hands, interlocked. Yet, right before that second moment ended, time froze. Time froze with the tips of our fingers barely touching and I knew that a blink later I'd be falling off your side of the edge like drawings of sands made of demons while you'd be falling, over and over, in water-drops, off mine, like an imagined suicide scene on playback.

But time froze because it knew we were timeless. And it just sat there on a dusty chair that had 'Faith' carved on its back, watching the motionless picture of Fear's sword of Doubt pointed at Love's heart of Hope.

Cut.

~

You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience. You're not supposed to be in the audience, watching an ego disguised as reason taking up the role of the lead actor. You should know that this podium is not only set for a grand masquerade where the truth doesn't matter. It's set for anyone who has something genuine to say. And everything you see on stage is but a staged symbol, a moderately hidden clue for what's going on behind the scenes. So get up and come inside for it is in the dark curves of your mind that you find the scriptwriters. And when you do, it will neither feel nor smell good back there because all your lies, fears and insecurities dwell in the ego's lair, fueling your quest for a nonexistent power. Maybe, just maybe, one day you'll find it in you to write your own script, your own lines instead of lying yourself to sleep.

~

And so we spend the time that wastes us and write stories that erase us. Then time just vanishes because the shame leaves no place for any other concept but disgust. And they stare blankly at the conscience that died with its mouth open and its eyes gouged, screaming two simple words for the child that ran away into the horizon, Come Back.

~

Once, in a nonexistent time and twice, in a place of delusion, a child ran into his reflection in the mirror and broke it. Both were running to find themselves but what they found was something else. The boy in the mirror found a broken hourglass of sand and water, drowned in mud. And the boy with blood on his face found an open locket with an empty picture frame and a clock that's always stuck at dawn. Each paced around in his room in recurrent patterns of confusion between the definition of a curse and the 'nondefinition' of a curse. And as they walked through life, the pieces of glass wrote, with blood and footprints, tainted puzzled words and painted worded puzzles. They met again, and again, in different colors and shapes, on the surface of other people's eyes. And many mirrors were broken twice, and twice, again.

~

Whether you break mirrors because you can't see yourself in them or polish them because they withhold the truest lies you've ever written, know that you are neither of the elements of the inner fight, nor are you the sum of the broken mirrors.

You're that person still sitting in the audience, alone.

~

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.” 
Konstantin Stanislavski

Revolution

To whom it may concern,

I live in a country called Lebanon. I live among people who preserve a rare kindness in their hopeful eyes. All these people were once kids with beautiful dreams, dreams that were stolen along the way by a ruling band of thieves.

It turned out that those who were supposed to protect the voice of the people had managed to make us forget that we actually have one.

Now if you think you still have a voice, keep reading.

This is for all the things that never die, for those who once died for this country, each in their own way, though they now look at us and wonder how they are more alive than we are.

Know that this is not a poetically hopeless eulogy.

This is a call for a Revolution.

It certainly isn't coming from its future leader because I am nobody. And these words you read, you read them with your own voice and not mine. But perhaps, you will share this. And perhaps you will write or draw or sing your own call for a Revolution. Perhaps you will talk about it with your friends and they will talk about it their other friends until the future leaders of this country hear about it and wake up. They will wake up and unite the Lebanese youth under the name of a new political party that doesn't judge individuals based on their religion or how much money they have. Perhaps it could start as a think-tank whose nominated candidates would win in the next elections and change everything. Maybe if each one of us expresses their own revolution in their own way on social media and/or share their friend's, the idea will become a movement, and the movement will rewrite history.

So if you truly have a voice, start talking.

Do something.

Whether it's for the lost ideals of freedom and justice or for the people who suffer everyday, it's really all the same. What matters is that we must take our country back.

My revolution starts now.

When will yours?

Sincerely,
.

Dawn

"Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head.

And since I fell for that spell, I am living there as well."

Coldplay

~

To whoever has buried the soul within, I write this to you.

The night is still and the beat is faint as the fight continues between sinner and saint. The night is still and this world is empty for you have lost both self and will. The night is still and your face just turned off all the lights with that flickering candle dancing with your blinks. The night is still and this foreign body I possess longs to see the paintings on your skin. The night is still and starless as I breathe in a scent of dying sighs and microscopic supernovas. The night is still and I still don't know how to move at the sound of this soundless music. The night is still and silent as your lips slowly close and break these words I inaudibly bleed. The night is still and the empty feeling of emptiness envelops me because I am inhibited by an enforced lack of inhibitions. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you? The night is still and I'm failing at writing a musical letter because harmony has long forgotten me. The night is still and the rhyme is free, as I fill the blanks in my memory. The night is still and the blanks reveal themselves as ancient bullets within the beats. The night is still and my blood streams through the electrified hell I hide behind my eyes. The night is still and the supposed windows of the soul are bloodshot with reddish dew, burning in and out and through. So break the door and the still of the night, for tonight the angel's wearing black and the devil, smoking white. Break the door and kill the guards, before the spirit jumps off and turns into red and broken shards. I know that you are the light that shines on the broken and that each person is his own savior. And I know that I am numb and frozen still. But the night is still and I knit this painting with lips made of smoke. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you? The night is still and earthly love mostly swings between a proof and a quest for a self that's always somewhere else. The night is still and these are ashes of a cigarette and not those of a phoenix. The night is still and the fire you start in me burns this quill into blessed sinful ink. The night is still and calm and I wish I could smell your perfume as I imagine kissing the fire off the palm of your hand. The night is still and the wind is pretending to understand how destiny is handwritten with a flowering faith shaking in the storm that fights freedom, the storm that fails to realize that this rose is made of heavenly fire. So enter the world of lonely nights and dying lights. Enter the world that writes with that bright and blissful fabric you fail to hide, to paint the still night with bright broken letters in envelopes you unfold in your dreams. Still, the night is still, so still that it reminds time of my undying love for you while I remind you why those envelopes are undated. So break the door between your heart and mine. Break the door because the music within me is that dimmed light on the floor outside your bedroom. The night is still and you still don't get it. Please wake up. Wake up and break the door. Break it and enter this world with fire in your hands for the night will remain still until you light this broken sky with the dewy faith on your bedroom window and mend it with the reign of the divine love that's beating in raindrops within your chest. The night is still and you still don't get it, do you?

[...]

We are one with fire and rain. We are one with the rose and the flame. We are one with the birds and wolves. We are one with the equations we solve. We are one with the general emotion and the particular thought. We are one in this rainy drought. We are one with the wind in the music. We are one with the beats in our heart, and this heart doesn't rhyme with anything else.

[...]

The night is still but it knows that we are one even if you don't. The night is still and the ending is always the most difficult part. So enter this world of endless stories and maybe one day we'll write the ending of this musical masterpiece of cosmic love, together.

I'll start with the first line.

Your hand is in mine and the lines intersect at dawn.
[...]

I already know your line, by the way.

~

"But I believe in music... 

The way that some people believe in fairy tales."

August Rush

Smoke

"What I've felt, what I've known

Turn the pages, turn the stone
Behind the door, should I open it for you?"
Metallica 

~

It is a dark and deeply beautiful view. And I want you to be here with me. And I tell myself now that I want you here because I want all the stars hiding behind empty clouds above me get the chance to meet that one star that shot through my heart. But I know that I just want you here because I love you. And I just said those three words out loud four times in a row and I don't know exactly why.

Yet now I tell myself that words are but empty promises, hopeful fireflies that die when their ink catches fire, when the plot reveals that death is the hidden title of everything they wrote in the wind at night. And I suspect that this wind travels through me because I am not here, and that even if I were, the night would still magically lose its memory at dawn, just like it did yesterday.

So what happens to these forgotten moments of wonder where you only exist in my imagination? Do they die with me just like I'm dying in them, with the sound of your laugh in this fictional background? Perhaps the fireflies I made up will align in this starless sky to spell out your name in light, to make me smile right before the curtain closes and death applauds with the starry letters falling gently onto my empty bed of heartbeats. And, then, perhaps, you'd wake me up in the glorious morning night-people dream about when they're dead and that's when I'd tell you that you are the light and deeply beautiful view that erased the night in my heart.

[...]

It's almost morning now, and the silently still buildings are staring back at me with a giant grey cloud fading into pieces above them. And the motionless scene reeks so badly of death that I almost forget that there are hundreds of lives having dreams as vivid as the smoke in my breath and as dead as the breath in my smoke.

Yet, interestingly, just like smoke, the truth has three faces. And to every face, there are two scales. When you face your heart, the pendulum swings between Faith and Fear. When you face your self, the clock either ticks for Goodness or for Power. And when you face your soul at midnight, you'll either see that Love is a timeless mirror, or you'll be lost in the drama of self-deception, divided in images of broken silhouettes in the shards of glass you pretend to inhale so you can fall out of sleep from this grand delusion.

[...]

So enter the world of an enigma that was broken when it was born. Enter the world of lies, a world that tricks its own existence into death. Enter a world that can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction. Enter a world of make-believe purple rain falling onto yellow autumn leaves to write a fairy-tale even though the author is colorblind. Enter a world where thoughts become footsteps that leave no trace on this desert sand, while all the feelings in the world are colorlessly buried alive underneath this damned map of empty patterns.

[...]

Just like this smoke, I have one face. Just like this smoke, I was once the purple fire that caught the curtain by surprise. And just like this smoke, I, now, into the morning wind disappear.

So wake up and read the wind and perhaps you'll comprehend how beautiful it feels to burn into love with the sound of your laugh in the background.

I know the night won't remember any of this.

But maybe you will.

I love you. It's only one whisper this time. And I know you just heard it.

~

"I take this key
And I bury it in you

Because you're unforgiven too."

Metallica

Words

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” 
Rudyard Kipling

~

The words can't flow because they're drowning.

And so I hide the cracks in my soul with these whispers of the metaphoric sand that carries your scent.

And they can't flow because people made of sand once lost all their words to the sea. And yet each time you place your hand on my skin, I find my dusty soul floating across the waters, like fireworks melting into constellations because of that slight magical shiver at the edge of your fingers.

And now my eyes are this quill of chaos with waves of heartbeats as their ink. And the words still can't flow because I'm drowning on the surface of this heavenly universe you enclose with a blink, because I fall deeper and deeper every time we lock eyes and I can't look away.

So here, at sunrise, are daydreams, and you, daydreams of you. And there, at the edge of nightfall, I am the night that's falling in love with you.

And thus, the quill, it spirals down the ocean, spelling your name in breathless bubbles, wondering if this is all a hopeless dream. Yet, what are dreams when my soul is building an underwater sandcastle with yours? And what are hopes when I have your hand in mine?

[...]

We build and break and fall, then tell stories to ourselves about the mysterious beauty of it all. But I know that these words are but a distorted memory engraved in the record of skipped beats and words unsaid, swallowed breaths and sighs unread. But next come the words that kill, beyond my darkest corner, in that old pain within me moving still. Next come the words that kill, temporarily scattered in disfigured letters floating atop the sea of untold tragedies I bury in my mind. Next come the words that kill, and I can't arrange those letters and read what they have to say because I know that they'll tell me that my heart is dead. They'll tell me that my heart was nice but now it's dead and that no metaphor in the world can't bring it back.

So what are you doing?
What are you doing and why are you walking next to the sea I never told anyone about?
What are you doing and why are you here?

[...]

In this world, you're either broken, dead or insane. And deep inside, no matter which one - or two - you are, there are words that could change you, words that could tear you apart and words that could bring you back anew. And they usually don't flow because they pity your existence and they don't want to flood it into void. Mine couldn't flow because I hid them in the nonexistent layer between your heart and my empty chest when we first hugged.

But I guess your heart rearranged the letters for me.

So next come the words that kill, faintly beating still,

Some things are meant to be.

~

“We wrapped our dreams in words and patterned the words so that they would live forever, unforgettable.” 

Neil Gaiman

Starlight

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” 
Rumi

~

The rain was falling softly on the two sides between your nose and your cheeks but you weren't blinking. And the sky was dark and starless because all the light and all the stars had found dwelling in your skin and in your eyes. And there was this moment, this very specific moment, when I was watching you and it made me run out of words. So I closed my eyes and ran after them and made them line up against the wall of my heart:

"You resonate at a frequency so intensely beautiful that it confuses the harmony of the golden ratio."

[...]

And as she was dancing she drew Metatron's Cube with her hands and that made me want to call back my only two imaginary friends from their endless pursuit of the metaphysical holy grail. And I did. And they instantly came because they knew I wouldn't contact them after so many years unless it was serious. So picture the scene: Michael, the best student in the mythical Pythagorean school and the first friend I ever made, was sitting to my left. He was the one who taught me to see the numbers in people, to visualize their attributes, their potential, and, naturally, their weaknesses. And to my right, sat Socrates' secret disciple, and the closest thing I've ever had to a brother, Gabriel. He was the one who taught me to see to the music in the numbers. Michael and Gabriel were both eternal rivals and best friends. And this whole time, they thought that they'd figured the secret of the universe, that they had nothing more to learn. Michael put it in an equation (6+12+23=20) which he discovered through Sacred Geometry, then he encoded that equation in the Triquetra symbol and convinced me to tattoo it on my forearm. Gabriel said there was an easier way that Michael had missed. And then he showed it to us with his magnificent handwriting. (Gabriel didn't have a voice, as far as I knew, but he could draw words in the air that only Michael and I could see.) And even after so many years, I still remember how the words floated above us:

The secret of the universe is revealed to you right after you honestly smile to a child, and right before they honestly smile back, in the silent music of that split-second-almost-blink-thing the kid always makes to accept your smile.
P.S. You're right, Michael. It's also 6+12+23=20. 

[...]

So as she was dancing she drew Metatron's Cube with her hands and that made me call them back. And I did. And they came, and they saw that they were conquered by what her divine dance drew in and beyond spacetime. And then I smiled at her and she kinda blinked and smiled back.

Then she laughed.

That's when Michael said: "Where are her numbers? Why doesn't she have any numbers? Something's wrong, Gabriel."
Gabriel was smiling ecstatically, which usually only happens when he claims that he can hear the Music of the Spheres, or when Michael attempts to draw the Flower of Life.

"I think she can see us," whispered Gabriel.

~

"The night was dark

And the dark, blue

And I was both,

Split in two.

The stars were bright

And the music, true

And you were the light

That went through."

Unknown