Butterflies

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley

~

It’s crazy, isn’t it?

It’s crazy how everyone’s insane, how they keep pretending not to be.
The night is devoid of comets and stars. And I have three cigarettes left. It’s funny how I try to silence the pain with toxins, though I know poison could never be a cure. But I’m well-acquainted with the easy way out and I’m tired. I tried to convince her why she shouldn’t kill herself. And I saw my failure reflected in her eyes.

My fingers tremble because I’m overwhelmed by all the pain I see around me - not because they’re typing intense words. What I let out is nothing compared to the world my eyes perceive. All I see is hurt; a world of dying butterflies slowly crashing to the ground like multicolored leaves. The night is devoid of color and soul. And I have two cigarettes left.

How can they not see the patterns? The path to perdition is set. The road to self-destruction is paved with broken smiles and desperate lies. The confusion is deafening. And I can’t listen to the cosmic melody because all I see is the blood on their hands as they play their instruments. Someone once said that we become what we lose. He was wrong. We become what we want to become.
The night is devoid of moonlit words. And I have one cigarette left.

She couldn’t unzip her dress. So he helped her. And her skin was like that of a flower unfolding the beauty of the universe behind all the smoke streaming through his lips. There’s the universal, the particular and the veil we’re trying to pierce. There’s the actor, the audience and the curtain closing as we speak. Then there’s you and me, and the mystical unity we fail to breathe. And this night is devoid of love and sanity. And I’m all out of cigarettes. And I’m all out of love.

This smoke is as real as the grand delusion. And it mixes well with all the words I could never say. So take this secondhand ramification of endeavors that never made it out of my head. Take it even though words will never be actions. Take it because I’m out of breath and out of smoke. And I can borrow the latter but does anyone have a breath to spare?
The night is devoid of light. And I wish that I could say that 'there is a light and it never goes out.'

But not tonight.

Tonight we die. But tomorrow, we live again. 

~

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
Victor Hugo

Flight

"And this Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest."
LDV


~

She feels as if her heart is getting crushed under the weight of her worries - of the world. And deep down, she wonders how she made it this far, how she kept her relative sanity. I wish I could tell her that within her heart lies a universe, one that could never be filled by neither sadness nor void, a universe that can magically hide its light behind her eyes. But I can never tell her that. Because we don't speak the same language. Hers is for those who think they belong here. And mine is, well, for me - and probably for some of those who don't.

Her child is sitting in the back of the car, his eyes glued to the rear window, his chin resting on the numbness of interlaced fingers. He's wondering why none of the strangers are noticing him, how caught up they are in their own reality - behind seatbelts and clothes and skin. His lips are unintentionally moving to the words of a revolutionary song, unaware of how much their color rhymes with martyrdom, and that they will one day kiss both the idea and the meaning behind it - that the depth of the word is the depth of the hurt. The child was enslaved by his loneliness, hoping to be freed by love. So, perhaps, he was not truly a child.

In his artistic attack against homosexual oppression in the 1970s, a Greek poet came across a rather wonderful metaphor. Today, its modern English variant is phrased as follows: "They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds." Clearly, the use of this fine alignment of words became far more general, spanning across every corner of the infinite concept of freedom.

More tears have been wept for fictional characters than for "the broken, the beaten, and the damned." And those tears could easily flood all the poor and unfortunate along with their possessions. It kind of makes you wonder why we fall in love with fictional characters; with people we don't truly know. And it makes me wonder how many times I was someone's fictional character. Also, the whole thing reeks of hypocrisy.

[...]

"The past is already written; the ink is dry."

And like each lone paper that was written on, folded, and thrown into oblivion, never to be found again, I became what I became. Though I remain unread, I became what I became. And, maybe, I refer to the bits of papers that became me as an unregistered aircraft that can never crash to the ground just because - Because the ten-year-old version of me closed his eyes and pretended that his hand-made, heart-thrown paper-plane disappeared in the horizon.

The ink is never dry. It's in every teardrop, blood-drop, breath and sigh.
And your shadow will always spell out your form, until you find the right alignment.

The ink is never dry. It's right there in your eyes.
So whenever you're not pretending to be a grown-up, use it well.

~

"Things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory."
LDV

Bracelets

"Don't, don't, don't, don't."
Simple Minds

~

It's late and I... I really don't know what to say. Let's see. I'm listening to music to feel better about myself. Sting's Shape of my Heart is playing. "He doesn't play for the money he wins. He doesn't play for respect. He deals the cards to find the answer, the sacred geometry of chance, the hidden law of a probable outcome - The numbers lead a dance." I think anyone would love this song.

Once more, tonight, I'll be hiding behind words. And yes, I know the night is beautiful, even if I can't really feel it. Boyce Avenue's cover of Drops of Jupiter is playing. "Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken? Your best friend always sticking up for you, even when I know you're wrong. Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance, five-hour phone conversation? The best soy latte that you ever had - and me." I wonder if I'll ever learn to play an instrument and make someone feel this way.

"Et si j'ai tort de lire dans tes pensées où rien de beau ne m'échappe - à part toi. Seuls, quelques silences m'effleurent encore quand je dors. Je n'ai plus de raison d'aimer. Et tant pis si je me détruis et je fais le tour de tes mots, tes promesses et tes envies d'ailleurs." The only thing that's more interesting than structure is that freedom one almost feels when they break the structure.

It's truly funny how other people's words can get to me more than my own. My veins are emotion-intolerant. Maybe that's why sometimes my heart seems as if it's gonna explode. Maybe I should stop smoking. He wanted to have the bracelet that was made of my heartstrings. And he has it now even though I had vowed to myself that this bracelet would be the final witness to my final pulse. It's truly funny how, sometimes, everything makes sense - even when all that is substance feels too foreign to exist.

"Do or die, you'll never make me. Because the world will never take my heart. Though you try, you'll never break me. We want it all, we wanna play this part. I won't explain or say I'm sorry. I'm not ashamed, I'm gonna show my scar. Give a cheer for all the broken. Listen here, because it's only-"

What are words compared to this? This thing you can't see. This heaviness I don't want to feel. I don't want to feel. Welcome to the dark side of melancholy.

Welcome to the black parade.

~

"Hey, hey, hey, hey."
Simple Minds

Theory

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
 Isaac Asimov


~

The headache takes over. My fictional bubble tightens its grip on my extremities. They all become silhouettes though I know that they are so much more and that they, too, have bubbles. It's amazing how people can write so many things about their feelings though they don't truly know those people they love. In theory, I see all the ethical, religious and psycho-social patterns falling back to love - or lack thereof. In theory, I find music, literature and art struggling with sounds and symbols, nature and soul, to have a chance at communicating the fabric of love through chills, tears and accelerating or decelerating heartbeats. In theory, I miss my best friend. In theory, I wish I were capable of teleportation. In theory, almost everything is theoretical no matter how much you refer to it as practical experience.

If humans had a button that could play the song of whatever their brainwaves have to say, the world would be alright. Or, maybe, it would be far worse than it is now.

There are many paths, many ideas, many theories. And we discover some of them. Yet one must always remember that these mostly well-paved roads had been there long before we found them, that these roads could have only been created by an intelligent designer.

But it's amazing how almost every single ego is inflated. We don't know for sure why we were born or why we die. And going forward from this point to that one, we convince ourselves that we comprehend patterns of knowledge, even though we struggle to link the few core ideas we have from one layer to another. Hell, we don't even know how these ideas come to mind. All in all, we know virtually nothing. We don't know ourselves. We're not capable of knowing other people's intentions. And while science, with its widely acclaimed progress, continues to succeed in avoiding the important questions, mankind continues to fail in understanding all the words that matter - Time. Consciousness. Love. Identity. Human. Purpose.

So ask them. Ask them about the label they wrap around their pen. Ask them about the grace in their handwriting, and the purpose of its content. Then wonder about the significance of this broken pen and burning paper compared to the vastness of the universe - unless of course it is within us, and our pens, and brushes and chords redefine it, falling short almost everyday.

I wish I could do better. I wish I could swear that I try my best. But the only thing I can say for sure is that I feel like a theoretical wishing well, one that never works.

~

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
 Martin Luther King Jr

Swim

ليه ليهمني اني كون بدل من اني صير؟
كل الأشياء بتعيش لتنتهي بلحن جديد
الفرق بين الحرية والخضوع تخيير
.أنا لي اخترت. أنا لي قبلت. أنا لي قلت 
مشروع ليلى

~

Capture the moment. These lines are the broken streets to redemption. And, yes, none of this really matters. But let us play. Let us choose all the players and leave the void all alone on the bench. Ideas of sunrises and sunsets have gotten pretty sick of my redundant words by now. But that's okay.

All the colors are wrong. All the colors are wrong. And the details on your face are broken down equations. And though they're riddled with miscalculations and derived from unholy laws, they always add up to the right answer when you smile.

I never asked for any of this. This foreign reality is hiding the stagnant scent of childhood beneath their eyelids. And I see nothing but locally manufactured pain setting record-breaking corner-to-corner lap times in their eyes.

So drink up my empty gaze foolish little brother. Replenish my doubts with your leaking bloodstream. Let us drink to all the penknives that redefined our veins. Let us paint our tired dreams with these bloodshot eyes and those grayish-blue brushes we have stuck between our lashes. Drink up this baroque art foolish little brother before your post-impressionist heart crumbles to wheat grains.

Let there be light and many, many shadows - are you there?

The door opens.

The door opens like an old and rusted wound. And I want to close it because I'd rather keep my apologies in my heart, because my absence tastes better than my presence, because this planet doesn't feel like home.

Let it out. Tell them. Tell them that you hate it here. Tell them that you'd rather die. Tell them that you have the right to disappear forever. Tell me what happened. Tell me why all the colors are wrong. Tell me that things change when we really want them to.

The door closes.

The door closes and we both know that it's time to leave. Let go. Release the moment for the lines have already faded. I wish I could make you feel better. But I can't. Yet, I wonder if you're looking through the keyhole. I wonder why I find incoherence so appealing.

Blessed be the knight of infinite resignation. And blessed be the knight of faith.

Game over - soon.

~

سمي الشيطان بإسمو وسمي الفنان كذاب"
نصف الأشياء يلي بحسها بتجي من الخيال 
وإذا بناقد نفسي كلنا منحتوي أعداد
".أنا لي كبرت. أنا لي قبلت. أنا لي قلت
مشروع ليلى

Nothing

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
Anne Lamott

~

I kept trying to change her mind but I couldn't. I had so many chances to show her that she was wrong. And I failed. Maybe there's a point behind her sickness. Maybe it's for the best that her memory is so remarkably damaged.

The soft wind falls gently on my skin and it all feels so undeserved. I seem incapable of writing anything novel. It's all a bunch of recycled secondhand words that I can't escape. I keep shedding them like dead skin and they just always find a way to grow back.

I know it's not a big lie. And I know the game isn't rigged. But think about it. What's the point of writing or reading any of this? It's useless. It's just a way to convince ourselves that our lives are worth being examined. 

But is it worth it, really? Who gave you the right to think that your life is worthy of this or that honor? Are you full of yourself to the level of believing that your struggle deserves a narrator? Does anyone really care? Or is it all for your entertainment? More drama, anyone?

Look around for God's sake.

These words are like those old reeking rags you see failing to cover an ugly balcony of a nameless shattered home. They're like a worn-out welcome mat that has no key under it. They're like a broken door. They're like my broken door. Why can't I let anyone through? Why do I not have better words?

I don't want any of this. I just want to sleep. I'm not even sure why I wake up everyday. This is not even creative. It's narrative-ish. I wonder if this mosquito knows how much I don't care about her drinking habits. I wonder if the stars who were once my friends still remember my name.

Here goes nothing. Really, nothing. Nothing at all. Do you see it? It's so empty. Can you hold it for me? Do you know this language? Do you know what I mean? I'm not even sure I do anymore. It's okay. It's all gonna be okay. We need to talk. I'm sorry. I'm tired and I'm sorry. No it doesn't matter. It's okay. I just need to get this out. Get out. Please get out. It's not your fault. It's gonna be okay.

I try my best. And they just keep dying slowly. All around me, they're all dying. And I can't seem to make a difference. Why won't they stop dying? Can we just pause life? Please.

What are you looking at? What do you see? Can you help?

It's okay. It's gonna be okay.

~

"He said: Son when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?"
My Chemical Romance