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

Light

"If I could be with you tonight,
I would sing you to sleep.
Never let them take the light behind your eyes."
My Chemical Romance

~

I try my best.

What if your best isn't good enough?

But what if it is?

The walls slowly close in, aiming to crush my explosive mind. And I keep staring at the foreign paintings that decorate them, the faces of the people I love. I keep telling the walls that I can't breathe. I send them my pathetic requests with broken eyes because the words won't come out. But it's all in vain. For once you turn your back on the walls of your heart, the walls of reality turn their backs on you. Thus, still, hopeless, I remain a fan of the intensely dramatic, as loyal as ever to the wonderful realm of fiction.

Masks divide you. Dishonesty tears you apart. And the most beautiful things you feel remain inside your head. "Once a liar always a liar." "Once a quitter always a quitter." The voices lie because you subconsciously command them to destroy you. To overcome this, you must remember that one can never cheat their way into and out of destiny. Fate's hand floats around your heartbeats to see which are worthy and which are failed. Will remains free though. Someone I once knew taught me that.

But the world is ugly and sometimes the people we know and love, they become forgotten memories.

But sometimes, we meet someone that restores our faith in humanity, in love, in art, in the future.

And when the past comes back to haunt what's left of you, you find yourself just staring, obliviously flooded with thoughts of surrender, with ending credits flashing. "No, hold on," she says. You see a young soul masquerading as a veteran warrior, telling you that the love in her heart can fight off your demons. She hugs you, pushes you and starts running, leaving you with a gentle warning, "if you don't get up and run with me, you'll never know what happens in the future." And as she runs away from your gaze, you see a whisper flowing through her smile, "our future."

Life is full of surprises.

If you haven't met yours yet, I really hope you do.

Now, look around, after you close your eyes. Those people you love so dearly, are they not worth the pain?

Do not stand your ground as you face the storm. Run instead. Run toward it with weapons of heart and soul. Fix your eyes on the mountain you wish to climb and charge. Run with faith and conviction and you will find that they are the perennial wings of cosmic resonance, smoothly extended from your skin, mirrored in the light behind your eyes.

Run and know, that most storms are made-up ghosts. And though some are future dreams disguised as endless nightmares, you still need to keep your eyes closed wide open, because those details are divine.

We live and die in love. And a fall into shreds today is a chance for us to pick up the right pieces, the ones that can make up a whole that won't break tomorrow.

The music plays on within you, no matter how many doors you close.

Live on, dear friend.

~

"As we fade in the dark,
Just remember you will always burn as bright."
My Chemical Romance

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,
.