Forsaken

"For a while I thought I fell asleep
Lying motionless inside a dream.
Then rising suddenly I felt a chilling breath upon me."
Dream Theater

~

They fail to realize that the universally desired constancy of happiness is but ignorant stagnation, and that unending joy lies at the peak of despair.

And you, you fail to notice the pain,  those miniature supernovas hiding beneath the shadows of your extremities, as their fading light lies waiting to engulf you. Yet all pain wants is an embrace, a hug that pulls you back to you, to the divine realm you keep avoiding.

But the show does go on, and the music surely plays on. And our dreams, they die in restless ripples, silently whispering words of forgiveness to our oblivious souls. And I know I always ask you the same question though I try not to, but it just demands to be let go. So, again, I ask you, what do you see? What do you see?

"On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?"

This symphony of waves is breaking the ocean's heart. It's sending chills into your eyes, slowly, steadily, down your spine, composing that stuttering poetic paralysis, imploring you to transform pointless motion into the multidimensional insight that can auto-tune these submerged instruments. So do what you need to do. Do what you need to do so we can play our music as we drown. And if we do, take some time to listen, then look at the forsaken waves we saved and tell me what you see. Tell me if I'm there. And when you don't find me, pretend this was our goodbye song.

"Outside the dawn is breaking, but inside in the dark I'm aching to be free."

The show was a no-show. I was never here. And neither were you. The water was breathless make-believe. And these dreams were children of delusion. And all the dreamers we know are dead inside. Still, no one can see you. No one can feel you. And yet, you keep going, still. Why? Because I'm practicing to perfect my art, tugging and twisting these cursed heartstrings until art becomes the explosion my tremors foretell - because everyone loves fireworks, because maybe then, someone will show up.

"I'll face it with a grin. I'm never givin' in. On with the show."

Blessed be the patient and the brave. And damned be the hearts that took and never gave.

"The show must go on."

~

"She softly whispered in my ear,
Forsaken."
Dream Theater

Phoenix

"Dusk is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel to be always together, yet forever apart?"

Nicholas Sparks

~

Free your mind. Regain stability. There is nothing here for you.

This barrier is weak and broken.

They're all fighting shadows. And I'm fighting with this pen. And it's unable to salvage what's left of me. My senses fail to capture the music. And my heart fails to feel it. Doubt is all-encompassing. And I am not here. I'm that gap between the heartbeats, the forgotten leaves in the wind - a fragment of torn silence that couldn't make it through life's blind spot. We are who we are, failing, fading and forsaken. We're that broken down dust at the beat of dusk, deluded by the bruised colors of sky and sea, drowning in their symphony.

And now the drugs don't work. And all the stars are out. And there is nothing to look away from. The world is ugly and this blackness is bliss. So let there be light, and many, many shadows to shelter us from sight. And, you, dear weakened soul, go back to sleep, for this wand you hold, it bleeds but fraudulent magic. And I... I am here. I'm this damp gaze suspended in breathless vacuity, the infinite horizon that never was... that never will be - a loveless shadow in a deserted darkness.

Now, listen close, dear ruptured heart for now, it is time to go. Listen close and act at once so we can leave, so we can run, so we can row, so we can breathe [...] Now, go and sever that faithless bond and crush those picture-frames. And burn them. Burn them all. Burn them and build yourself great wintry walls of atonement from their residual ash. Have our new citadel of seclusion rise above perfidious pain, above tainted clouds and forlorn rain. The stars are dead and you will never see them again. The stars are dead. The stars are dead and their theoretical story is bitter sorrow - impeccably unwritten, eternally unread.

So let there be light, and many, many shadows, and I'll be that shadow that never lets you hit the ground.

Let there be light, and many, many shadows, and may the phoenix and the blackbird never again resound.

~

“My breaking heart and I agree, that you and I could never be, so with my best...my very best, I set you free” 
Rachel Yamagata

Split

“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. ” 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

Lonely wanderers unite in separation, falling in raindrops through your windshield. And as the beautifully broken breaths of rain find gentle rest on your tender skin, I pull you in closer, and I hug you tighter. And, for a split second, all the desperate seekers of the world find home in our embrace.

The road to love is paved with mystery. The colors on the street depend on the clarity of your heart. The surrounding buildings are adorned with perfect pain and breathtaking joy. And we could be walking there now, hand in hand, carrying each other's hearts wherever they want to go.

Some say that everything here has an expiry date. Others believe that some things last as long as eternity.

Stories have been told and re-told. Words have been designed and composed, recycled and sold. And, today, I find myself wanting to write out thoughts and feelings in secondhand wording though I have no story to tell. I thus find myself filling the void with empty metaphors and darkened smoke. But that's okay.

Time flows faster, racing the tides of motion, blazing through space to finish off this bond and the one after. We breathe it in thinking that we have it contained when, in reality, its bullets are already out through our holey skin, setting the scene for our unholy grave.

But there is music in this world, music worth fighting for. It is the kind of music that silently cuts you deep so its tear-perfumed light can pervade the abyss beneath your heart. The music reminds us that there are souls worth the trouble, and that their smiles are infinitely more valuable than our pain-born hatred.

Yet I am tired and out of soul. And every road undertaken holds beside it a thousand roads untraveled and a wealth of unopened neural pathways.  I am tired and out of soul. And there is no one here because the door is locked with a key I lost long, long ago.

Still, I remind myself that change is inevitable, that it is necessary. And like a flock of birds alters its formation, so too must the stars we have enclosed within.

By the fields, near the lake, I once whispered all of my secrets to everyone around me. But I was alone because no one was there. I remember that I told them about the dark side of red, that part they always left unread. And I told them about the violet shade of blue, and how pain always starts in you. I spat out the driest words of dread, with blood clots hanging by a thread. And now I give that thread to you today so that you pull out this wretched heart of clay.

Hidden demons unite in separation, falling in fire-drops onto our skin. And as the beautifully broken ocean lays us to rest, you pull me in closer, and you hug me tighter. And, for a split second, I almost believe that you're here.

~

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find: 
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.” 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Unbroken

“Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.” 

Robert Brault

~

I saw multi-threaded constellations and embroidered stars. They were painted atop the echo of an orchestrated cosmic dance of fire and ice. My heartbeats adopted the God-sent patterns and transcendentally carried me to an unbounded world of wonder. And then you blinked. And I fell back to what is commonly referred to as reality.

But my soul still rushed to seep through this skin, pushing my hand to hold yours. The trance then became enchantment, a mystical power imploring me to be with you in any way possible - for you are me as I am you, and we are one infinity unbroken in two.

The question comes and goes and then returns again. It asks you, love, about and for and out of love, and, still, you fail to answer. It folds itself in-between the broken lines tearing across my face waiting to ask you again: What do you see? Is this you or me, or us or a temporary delusion floating atop fraudulent ink? And what do you feel? Will the demons of melancholy always puppeteer the storms of anxiety? Or will we become that eternal rapture embodied in a two-feathered quill paradoxically re-writing the present? And are you here now, hiding between hand and heart, pressing on my chest in this outward-inward symphony?

The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And identity lingers, still, in liquid hiding as the blue sky of purpose lays its indifferent gaze into the lock of every oceanic treasure chest. The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And I see you lying on the sand, below the colors of a violet dusk. The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And my face is sheltered in the locks of your hair and my lips are pressed against your neck and our eyes are trembling in that heavenly ecstatic half-sleep. The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And our heartbeats continue to crash into unity. The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And the night is a glistening dark. The waves continue to crash upon the shore. And all that remains is the light behind your eyes.

We fight for what we believe in. We fight for the people we love. And if we find the right timing, we can break time's back and drain all those clocks ticking in its arsenal - for our hearts, they tick louder; they beat, when you listen.

Know that lovers do not forsake love. It is rather love that does the forsaking. For at some silent moment, it commits suicide out of respect for the ideal. And the rest is a history that never was.

Walk the world and you may find wonder and awe. Walk with the world and you could murder the art within you. Walk the worlds with me and our soul will lift off at every intersecting line of skin and lips and sight. Love, walk with me in weightless flight, in that world beneath your cosmic blink. And I, too, will walk this life with you. I'll walk with you forever.

~

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; 

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” 

Sarah Williams

Jisei

“It's the emptiest and yet the fullest of all human messages:
Goodbye."
Kurt Vonnegut

~

Words left unsaid eventually find their way out in silent tears.

My love for writing has reached its last day. I hope you like this final breath.

People change people. I've always known that. But it wasn't until recently that I fully understood it. Throughout the years, I tried to isolate myself so I could find a hint of uniqueness within me. I tried to weave an army of metaphors to protect me from certain universal truths that exposed the mistakes I tried to cover up with both real and metaphorical ink. I tried to come up with an idea of a person made of words because I knew that whoever I was in real life wasn't good enough. I tried to call almost everything an illusion or a delusion because I couldn't handle the harshness of reality. I tried to paint myself as a dreamer whose imagination could alter the course of reality and it turned out that my paintings were merely a shadow of the dying hope inside a disappointed idealist.

But hope dies today.

And thus we become. We become someone new, someone who can disregard the envelope of pain surrounding everything and everyone, someone who can leave their heart behind.

Becoming comes at the price of losing that which we love most.

Lovers die but for the sake of Love.
Visionaries are born out of the death of lovers to transform the death of love into meaningful thought. They live for the sake of a Cause.
Idealists are born out of the death of visionaries to map failed plans into a fairy-tale world of lies. They live for the sake of a Universal they cannot see.
Men and women of action are born out of the idealist's suicide to uphold egoism and pursue their self-interest. They live for the sake of the Individual.
Theoretically, the Artist is awakened to resolve the contradiction between the Universal and the Individual. For in a work of Art, we are all one.
I wonder if Hegel knew that the Artist was the Lover in disguise.

In any case, the con artist dies today hoping that his death poem will be devoid of hope.

Autumn yellow in the sea
I thought you would fight for me.
Autumn yellow in the sea
Know that tomorrow dies today
And you and me are yesterday.
Autumn yellow in the sea
The dark and faithless light are one
So enter the void and just be gone.
Autumn yellow in the sea
I tried my best.

~

"They didn’t, and they died and thus Magic was never performed on Earth again."
Unknown

Graceful

"He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world."
Markus Zusak

~

Blessed be the brave.

It doesn't matter, really.

This wall needs to be broken down. I know my words aren't good enough. The world is filled with delusional freedom fighters. It makes you wonder who's pulling the strings. It makes you see that the ego is steering these wheels towards the edge of doom. I've always been into conspiracy theories. And though I don't know whether my subconscious mind was trying to tell me that my ego was scheming to seize control of my soul, I know that there is only one kind of grace that can destroy any and all devilish plans.

It does matter.

But I've lost too many rounds. And I keep pretending that I'm not afraid of that invisible thing weighing over my heart. I'm exhausted, you see. But, losing rounds makes you stronger, doesn't it? Yes it does. But what about those extra voices that accompany the pain in the memories? What about the cuts and the bruises and all the blood you covered with your blinks while it leaked out of your soul? You bury all those things in the places you love the most, the places that allow you to breathe, places you assassinate one by one because a slow death is subtly different from suicide.

It really doesn't matter.

There are people you love. There are people you hurt without meaning to. And then there's that darkness where there is no one, not even you, especially not you. All those broken machines you can't fix because you can't fix yourself, forget them. It happened that you were taught to never give up. But for what reasons? There are people you love. And then there's you. But what are you without them? How strong are you compared to the idea of losing him? How strong are you compared to the idea of losing her? And what about the feelings carrying this idea? Where did this come from? Where is it going? What are you doing? What are you not doing? Why are all these voices hiding behind immaterial masks? Is that grass or rubble atop your grave?

I usually take cover behind an armor of metaphors. But this time I'm not on my feet. I'm not even on my knees. I just needed the words to bleed out of my lungs because I can't breathe. I've always aimed for my heart. I've always thought I would bring it home. Of course, back then, I thought I knew what home really meant, and I thought I had one.

There are no words. Every human being who has ever written a word knows deep down that - there are no words.

So what to conclude? When nothing ever was and nothing ever is, how dare I tell you that everything is gonna be okay? When all I can hold onto is my ever-faithful void, and all that I ever was is a broken chess set with half the pieces missing, you can't imagine how easy it is to imagine the ending.

There it is.

Blessed be the patient.

Will it matter?

~

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality."
Jim Morrison