Poison

"You came close enough to know my heartbeat but still not close enough for me."
Oscar Isaac

~

These tears lack flow.
This ink is dead.
What have you broken?

This heart shakes
Like yellowish purple foliage
In capricious disquiet.

These words break
Like hollow-hearted smiles
And I can't let you in.

I usually find myself torn between the cosmic orchestra and the abysmal void. This time, though, I'm not stuck. I'm somewhere else. The alchemic lake has dried. The trees of knowledge are naked. But the sky is clear. Always remember that the sky is clear.

You entrust your heart and its blood-flow to someone and you suddenly find yourself waking up to wet, reddened lips.

"So con, convince your mirror, as you've always done before, giving substance to shadows, giving substance evermore." Whatever the poison, it's not really making any difference is it? And no matter how sweet the music, its mysterious remedial force can't stop this internal haemorrhage. And that's okay. I'm okay.

Now take this uninspired garbage and bury it alongside your decapitated principles.

This despair is all I have
And it's not yours to hold
I'm not yours to hold.

This encounter is a delusion,
Boring encrypted mythology.
I'm not here.

This perseverance is an empty shell,
And now I break it into letters.
Everything will change.
Everything will change.

~

"Oh why can't you let go
Like a bird in the snow
This is no place to build your home."
Imagine Dragons

Resonance

"Well, bless my soul
You're a lonely soul
'Cause you won't let go
Of anything you hold."
Ryan Tedder

~

Do you know where your heart is?

The hardest questions are those you do not ask. And all their answers are buried in your mental blind spot. Now there are right and wrong answers in this 'visual snow'. Then there's you, covered in the multithreaded blankets of your optic nerve, pretending this blood is acrylic. And I'm there too. Or at least, part of me is. You won't find me beneath the shadow of synchronicity because I won't be there. But perhaps I'll be that forgotten variable that got crossed out by mistake in the mystical equation resonance always wears as a necklace. Crossed out and forgotten, sure, but I'll be there.

My fixation on a number of mysteriously attractive expressions remains unchanged. And that's okay. Maybe they're those empty diners along the road to purpose. I know most people are ideas - I think. And that's okay too. So are you an idea in their life? Are you a road sign or a street light? Are you a traffic signal or a torn bumper sticker? Are you one of those ideas that come with an expiration date?

He wanted to tell her everything but he didn't. Metaphors came rushing to his mind. The light that drowned the river. The moonlight that jumped off tree branches to land on her skin with an assortment of purple morning glories. His favorite fictional friends implored him to tell her about them, about all their chilling moments. Then the voices came and reminded him about the purple death of dawn and the failed birth of stars, the breathless haste and the daunting heart, and... those sudden bursts of heartache that fucking burn every beautiful image in your head. What happened to you?

I don't know. I don't know if there's someone who can save you from that freefall under the sheets. I don't know if there's a remedy for all those who were knocked unconscious by the lies of society. I don't know if this rotten world can be fixed. It's as if there's this force, you know, a force that won't stop erasing people's identities. Is it their doing?

That was useless.

The world is ugly. And the lonely stranger awakens everyday to walk it alone, knowing that, this, it isn't his home. Wherever he goes, the inviolable fabric of existence asks him terribly ambiguous questions.

What do you see?

Come back inside. Get back to bed.

Don't just stand there; paintings are formless. Don't look at me like that. I can see the dense blood drops slowly sliding off the right corner of your lips, you know? And though I'm not sure whether they're dreams or sins and secrets, I know your eyes can smell their rusted scent of despair. I know your heartbeats have long given up on becoming free-floating clouds, hopelessly hoping to swing the self-inflicted gore back inside. I know that you know that the children of a broken cardiac rhythm are but dehydrated, forlorn hands, recurrently feeding you the delusion within the delusion, punching holes through the painting, spitting you out as you swallow the void and exhale the inner child - dead on the dead knees that got tired from chasing you, his soul submerged in a shallow fictional red.

I don't dare you to move. But please, please do. And, for now, it's okay if you don't mind the gap between Kant and Kierkegaard. Because we both know only divine grace can you lift you up. And we both know that not a single soul cares about your inner battle - because they all know you're collateral damage.

No. [...] Because some singers pause their singing only to rekindle the hope beneath the moment.

So let there be light and many, many shadows. And blessed be the brave that are stuck in between, both wound and unwound by the teleologically suspended question, resting invisibly atop the woven waves of dreaded ink.

The question is right there. It's right here.

Do you think you can find it?

~

"People say that it can't work, black and white; well here we make it work, everyday. We have our disagreements, of course, but before we reach for hate, always, always, we remember the Titans."
Sheryl

Symphony

"Juliet loves the beat and the lust it commands.
Drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands, Romeo."
My Chemical Romance

~

You go inside and you close the door. You drop that straight face to the floor. You shut your eyes to silence the burns beneath the mask. The stranger's whispers in your head say that they no longer recognize you. And you then wander from phantom to phantom in the ghostly castle you had built for your heart. And as the borders of reality fade away, the inner edges grow sharper, harder, darker. I don't expect you to understand. Even I barely get it. There are roads and lines, you see. And while some patterns pull you deeper into the matrix, others push you over and beyond. So, much like metaphors, we float atop the notes of this veiled symphony. And, dazzled and perplexed by the enigmatic mathematics written in its shadows, we remain ignorant amateurs copying answers from one another. The truth, perhaps, is that the answer is the question and its supposed question is, ironically, its answer. And if we keep going backward in that perspective, maybe things make the most sense.

Questions and answers are probably bound by the metaphysical noumenon underlying the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. But none of that matters, does it? Because that kind of universal truth is inaccessible to human beings. Once accessed and comprehended, it is likely to hinder our progress in the quest for purpose.

Either way, I remain in my sea of dysphoria, occasionally saved from this normopathic world by musical bursts of artistic enthrallment. Indeed, most of my words are but sublimated abjection driven toward death by this aporic void. Yet, the music plays on and I am not a fan of tight-lipped melodies. So I'll just keep adding aimless commentary to this boring soundtrack I got stuck on repeat.

Now, you. Battle this delusion of sin and that delusion of reference. Try to put your head around the coexistence of Capgras and Fregoli and after you do that, go back to your room and hang that mask you dropped on this nonexistent door. Then sing the ruins of this imagined tale, and jump and dance on this bed like an uninhibited child. For all you are is a little kid with a pounding heart bouncing on and off an old mattress to shake off the insanity. Now, him. He can unveil that graphic symphony - not you. It starts and ends with a straight line as you lie in bed both born and dead. And there in the middle, all these ups and all their downs, there you go, high, low, high, low; die slow.

Wait go back. Maybe... maybe we can jump on the same bed together. And then, when we get tired we can just, you know, fall asleep and share all those dreams we had buried in ourselves for each other. It always goes back to love, doesn't it?

It does.

So channel the dreamer. Channel the warrior. And channel the believer. Push away the confusion and silence the mind for it is heart and destiny that together one another unwind.

Blessed be the brave, the souls that run on love, with love, for love - infinitely, unconditionally, inexhaustibly.

Break. Breathe. Become.

~

"And I broke my heart in two
One for me and one for you."
Reuben and the Dark

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

Courage

"I went to sleep a poet, and I woke up a fraud."
Fall Out Boy

~

A downside of living inside your head is that it takes you a while to understand what is really going on. And though being detached from reality isn't the worst state to be in, it sadly does lead to a terrible place, one where it is very hard to look at life - or at the mirror - from a perspective untainted with disappointment.

The upside of the state of disconnection is, however, not to be underestimated. Over time, genuine solitude allows you to become immune to everything. It allows you to observe the fake and ugly world without knowing that you're a part of it. It also allows you to see that what you loved and believed in slowly drowned while you were staring at the sunset, writing poetry about childish dreams. Eventually, you find yourself writing about how people turn from strangers to memories, memories to ghosts, ghosts to ideas, ideas to words, and then, somehow, from meaningful words to meaningless moments of silence. Like this one.

All it takes is a single moment of disconnection, to see things for how they really are, and not for how we want them to be. And there it is, all around you, falling apart in a mind-shattering instant.

Insecure eyes. Subtle imitation. Circular repetition. Delusional ego, there you go. If you don't follow, read that again.

It is perhaps the fear of being undefined that most defines us. Meanwhile, in a world of endless labeling, we hopelessly attempt to define ourselves, over and over and over, pretending to know what's going on, believing our own lies every once in a while. And it works, for a while. It works because we can relatively breathe easy with the mask on, during the day, and at night, we just sleep and forget how much we hate what's under the mask.

The thing is that, as our age increases, we learn to slightly alter the sound of our ideas, unknowingly making them, obviously, unsound ideas, shedding light on certain places and darkness on others. Slowly and steadily, the lies take over you. And in time, you become a lie, a fake. Then, you wake up, hopefully.

Result. Some people spend their lives focused on manipulating everyone and everything around them, as if spilling black paint on a coloring set will change the colors of the pencils. Others waste their lives waiting for someone or something that only exists in their imagination, as if there were a mythical creature or prize that has the special ability of turning shit into gold.

Conclusion. Neither spend your life nor waste it. Share it, instead.

The disconnection formerly mentioned is thus, for the sake of sharing, bound, now, to become a connection. So, deluded self, kindly be brave enough to break the walls you've built around your heart and mind. Be brave enough to risk them both again because some people are worth it.

In fear, we run to escape our own soul.
In courage, we run to find it.

~

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” 
E.E. Cummings