Always

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.” 
Wallace Stevens

~

His home is covered in snow and he can't get inside. He thinks tonight is the check we pay in the morning. And his gray wolf is covered in white, howling for a non-existent remedy.

Imagine the light in their eyes, brightly burning out.

Now fix your self on the resolution to embrace the brokenness of awe; fix your self. And as the stranger within you silently whispers a graceful breath, caressing the tomb of your undying dream, it sends a thunderous frisson down your spine - an unfinished arpeggio chews off your vocal chords.

Now the wings of the phoenix are set afire, and the wind is hanging on these broken wires. So we sleep tonight beneath the glow of snow and night, covering cortical flow with disharmonious blankets, sweating in the darkest shades of flares and glares.

Death is upon us dearest wolf - the supernovan star we enfold within us is due. This symphony of delusion will be ending soon - and as the ghost of yesterday takes tomorrow's train, we live and die today. We live and die today.

There are no maps in this revolution. There are no bulletproof hearts in this fight.

What you thought was gone is becoming livelier than honored blood. The child returns - the lady of the lake made an exception. His astral courage no longer exits at dawn. Ocean and sky may, in the mind, disconnect, but his core remains unbroken.

Get out of my head.

Look at yourself. Look underneath the layers of deception. Look into the dark and cut your shadow into pieces of coal - and swallow them whole. I'll pour this starlight in your drink and we'll split your dark side on the brink of this dot. So breathe out these words that emulate your scent and breathe in that venomous perfume. Know that the penultimate edge is never a line. It is that empty space between rapture and insanity. And know that the essence of knowledge lies in grasping the divide between why a forsaken moment can sometimes be momentous and for what the momentous must, sometimes, be forsaken. However, in the end, you must forget everything and listen. You just need to listen - listen to the music.

[...]

The mind extends beyond skin and bone, resting on the mirage of private property, projecting scheme and schema in the form of quantum energy onto a reality it cannot understand. So you see it there, paving the broken way with purple metaphors that smell like the eternal aroma of a dying flower; the morning glory.

The heart finds what it had lost - a pen. Yet this paper onto which we're supposed to write will not cease to be immaterial until the correct heartbeat frequency is set. The frequency depends on a few variables yet it is not your job to know them, it's your job to be all of them, all at once. Until you manage to do that, you can watch the foreign lines strolling down, down the script, waiting for you to act them out.

I wanted to tell her that she needed to lose the gift wrap because I could see the ribbons of her ego suffocating her soul. I wanted to tell her that it's not her fault. I wanted to tell her that I've read that the darkness will never comprehend the light, and that I have yet to realize which side I'm on. I wanted to tell her that I figure out illusions in the blink of an eye because I am one.  I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be alright because that's what I'd learned from my favorite songs - but I couldn't because I didn't want to lie. I wanted to tell you that no matter what I say, it will never be enough. I wanted to tell you that I, too, wanted you to know that I love the way you laugh. I wanted to tell you that you are both my remedy and my home, that whether you're covered in snow or moonlight or tears, I'll be right there with you. Always.

~

“How did it get so late so soon?” 
Dr. Seuss

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

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

Check

“Boring is the right thought at the wrong time.” 

Jack Gardner

~

Seize the moment, if you can perceive it. Wait but what if you're running short on moments? What if you have the wrong glasses on? What if everything is monochrome and you're invisible? What happens to moments that never make it out of time?

Let the moment fill you. Transform the edge of your skin into a boundless ocean of existential stupor. Write about the unpredictable high side of the melancholy before the feeling is gone. There is a light and it never goes out. But why?

This is a moment. Can you read it? Can you feel it? Is this your voice or mine, your mind or mine? Are we sitting on a bench and having a conversation or are you just messing with my head? Who are you, anyway? And why would you put a comma there? Where? Where are we? And why doesn't any of this make sense to the suffering?

Who cares, anyway? I'm not unhappy. I'm content that I understand how and why things are the way they are. I'm happy because I have had the chance to meet wonderful people in my life. I care about moments because they're kind of all I have. Moments either symbolize the start or the end, though they usually appear masked as whatever's happening in between. 

Nothing's happening in between. It's all a game. But people matter. No, they're just figments of your imagination. No, they're real and it's my duty to take care of them. Society is a ghost concept - you know that. I'm starting to feel that you're the only ghost here. How can you lie to yourself when you know this is all an illusion? I'm not lying to myself; you're lying to me and it's a DELUSION - for the most part. We've been having different versions of this same conversation for years - isn't it time to get over this mundane schizoid monologue? Isn't it time for you to tell me about my real fears and insecurities? Well played, old friend. You're not my friend - you're that nothing in between.

The melody is on repeat. It's always the same note, and almost always the same dialectic on that shore that tells the waves to call it Horizon. Hope and delusion, justice and evil, recognition and selfishness, love and despair, freedom and basically anything that stands in its way. The waves are set to the same old playlist. And none of these people can tell their waves from someone else's. They're all confused because they've forgotten about the light shining down on everything, every moment, every moment.

Some think that life is about turning the duel inside into a duet. Others believe in a third, secret player hiding in the audience. Some people are cold and hungry. Others have died on the highway of trying to figure this whole thing out. Some are born with superpowers they can't see. Others hope they won't die before they get the chance to make them see.

The moment is gone but its echo lives on. In art, in memory, in the quiet commonplace distance that exiles most kind words and that other one, that terribly loud one with the broken road at the end of which everything becomes calm and still, when you find the heart you thought got crushed in between this breath and the next.

Moments come and go. But you are here. You're right here and people change people.

Moments come and go. But I'm here with you, in the undefined meta-level that only meta-levelers understand. We're sitting in the numb paradoxical void of metaphorical euphoria. We're sitting on a bench - with nothing in between.

Seize the moment, if you can feel it.

Your move.

~

"Time is an illusion."
Albert Einstein

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