Monday, December 14, 2015

28 years



today i grow too old
to ever die young
on an alien shore
without my loved one

today i jump over
the edge of my heroes
and it feels a lot
like i'm counting zeroes

today is the day
of my mid life crisis
somehow i must find
a way to get past this

today is too long
without anyone i know
i'm a leaf without a tree
going where the river flows

today i'm alone
and i'll never forget
i've left behind my people
in the arms of regret

today i'm a log
i'm a dead branch floating
as i turn twenty eight
without fear or loathing

today i'm sober
too sober to bear
not a drink in my hand
no greens to burn my care

today is the beginning
of a new year upon us
i'm thinking i have hope
but i'm just an ignoramus

today i grow too old
to ever die young
and i feel my lonely race
has only just begun

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Wandering home



i could be a traveler
taking weary roads
where no one goes

i could
be a hermit
hiding away
in a dusty hole

waiting
for you to call me
bring me in
and remind me

all roads
lead to home
to your arms
when we're alone

all roads
lead to home
take me in
on your own

i could be a sailor
on the roughest seas
that no one dares go

i could
be an explorer
getting lost
on the horizon

searching
for the familiar
in an alien
unknown shore

but all roads
lead to home
in your arms
when we're alone

all roads
lead to home
take me in
make me strong

wherever i go
i will find you
whatever i do
my compass
points to you

every journey
that i take
will bring me
right there next to you
because

all roads
lead to home
to your arms
where we can be alone

Friday, November 27, 2015

Ether-real



You are the galaxy in spin
and I am in love with your all
With every planet
that blooms with life within

I am in love with every star
that guides my sight
with the supernovae
that you hold
like raindrops on spiderwebs

You are the galaxy in spin
my dearest love
and I am swimming lost
in your nebulae

I am drowning
in every black hole
that pulls me in
and pulls me apart
as a sugar cube in warm coffee

You are the galaxy in spin
and the universe around it
all creation trembles
with your every lovely moan

And I have fallen
time and again
for every trace of energy
and glint of dark matter
as a cat chasing a light on the wall

You are the galaxy in spin
and all I want
is to spin with you
till we collide
like celestial constellations
and our private big bang
discovers a new dimension

Thursday, October 22, 2015

The Plunge

Every once in a while, a moment arrives in your life on which sails your entire future. It's a change in the tides that forever defines life as it was and the way it will be. Ano domini and before christ, as the catholics preach it. Except, this applies on a much more personal scale.

This decisive journey may stretch for a month, a week, a year or an instant. But what it changes lasts forever. Both the past and the future rest on this fulcrum. The best you can do is prepare for it. Because even if you mistakenly imagine that you hold some control over it, the fact is you have as much sway as a sailor has on the sea. Much like the hapless explorer caught in a storm, all you can do is shift the sails and hope for the best while preparing for the worst. 

These moments aren't immediately visible either. They rise like rocks from a fog which could either sink you or provide a safe shore. The only thing you can do is identify the depth of the water around you and pray accordingly. The key, is not losing hope. The secret doesn't lie in the navigators hand nor the captain of your ship. It is held tight by the winds and the waves.

At this all consuming moment, the way to survive is to become the sea. While there may be sirens calling you to the rocks and the tide pulling you in to certain death, the most important thing is to act like a raft. You may sink. You may crash against the levee and find yourself stranded on unfamiliar isles. But that is the beauty of the moment. The sinking isn't failing. The end isn't the doom. It is simply the way it should be.

Because the point of it isn't to take control but rather to learn how to let go. No matter how long you fight the storm, the expert sailor knows you are at it's mercy. And all the fight expends is precious energy which you will need when the moment passes.

So, if ever this shifting in the tides of life suddenly grips your ship, fear not. Remember the advice as old as sailing itself. Go with the flow. And you might discover after the ship sinks that you never needed it in the first place.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

It's not a race.



What exactly are we all chasing? Life doesn't have to be a constant run to an ideal destination. There is no ideal destination. We all arrive at different points than we originally set out on. Some want to paint but become bankers. Others want to cook but become advertisers. But what they all share in common is a winding road that brought them to a place they never saw at the start of the journey.

Sure, some of us lucky ones get to be where we want to be. But that dream life is a station passing on the tracks. For a few sparse moments, it will all align and you will spend a few days at Dreamville. Each of us go through that happy time. Some are unlucky enough to reach it in school itself while others only arrive at it a few years before the inevitable end. But I sometimes wonder, where would they have gone if given a choice?

You see, the truth is that we can't live in Dreamville all our life. Everything gets boring after a while. Even chocolate. And that's when we get back on the train and get back to another chase. We think, "Hey, I fulfilled this dream. Let me find a new one now." But why? Why do so few of us choose to stay at the closest thing to our dream life?

I think it's because society ingrains an imaginary hunger in us. It tells us to keep going. To keep chugging. To supersize life. To never be satisfied. As if being content is akin to having given up. That there's somehow something wrong with not wanting a career. Not wanting to rise up the ladder of a corporate scale is made to feel like a weakness. I myself believed that. In fact, a part of me still does. But the question mark is growing bigger and bigger.

No rule of modern life is meant for comfort. That isn't something you are allowed to reach on your own. You have to buy it at discount rates from Swedish designer stores. You have to stock it in a can in the fridge until you are ready to be comforted. They attach labels on things and convince you that comfort comes with a bill and sometimes with an added service tax. They con you into believing happiness is always just out of reach and, worry not, you'll get there eventually. IF not, you can visit for a while with this expensive ticket away from your home. They call it ambition and make motivational posters to decorate wafer-thin cubicle walls. They thrust smiling faces from stock photographs in your face as examples of people who've 'made it'. And the whole time I can't help but feel, no one makes it.

Because, if you really examine it, here's the incredible truth - happiness isn't passing you by. It's right there and you are ignoring it like a station on the way to Greater Satisfaction that may or may not arrive. Don't mistake happiness as not being sad. If your loved one dies, there is no happiness there. But, if you pull out and examine the timeline of your life, you'll realise that such sadness is momentary. The greater happiness can be taken by the hands and carried with you.

I feel we understand this fact as children. You give a child a balloon and his life is fulfilled. He isn't happy just for the moment. His life seems made. He doesn't worry that the balloon will burst. In fact, after the first one does, he probably won't care if it bursts. To a child, that balloon means his life is complete. You might argue that it's ignorance that leads to this happiness because the child doesn't understand the world yet. But that only strengthens what I said earlier, that society ingrains it in us. It tells us to be unhappy. So that you can get used to it. It disguises the fact by telling you not everyone can be happy, but the truth is not everyone can be successful by society's standards. And not everyone has to be.

Look at all the successful people in the world who are either depressed or drugging themselves to crack a smile. Because the word on the grapevine says you can never be satisfied. A little birdy comes along and shits in their ear. So much so that they forget how happy the balloon made them as a kid. Our education teaches us to measure ourselves against others, it never shows us our own value. And when a majority of the population is chewed and spat out by this system, it becomes a belief.

So we accept unhappiness as the only thing that can make us strive. We even pull a blanket over our heads and say, "You can only know what's happiness when you've first known sadness. So, I have to get through this and strive harder than the rest." I call bullshit on that. If working harder made you happier, slaves would've been smiling.

This illusion that we have to chase, that life has to be lived by the minute and on-the-move is the greatest lie we ever bought into. And now they've designed the world around it. Fast cars to spend more money on. Fast trains to get you to a dead-end job sooner. Fast internet to distract you with more, quicker. Fast lives because you know that life is passing you by. Look at all the successful people on your friend's list. Look at their magnificent lives with a million Instagram filters. Unless you have that, you won't be happy. You can't be happy. You aren't allowed to be happy.

Because happiness is supposed to be this drug reserved for the few. It lies at the top of a mythical peak which your career has to summit before you are a certain age. And then you have to fight to remain there. We run ourselves dry chasing a dream and, somewhere along the way, we forget that we can dream by simply closing our eyes. We have the power within us and they make us spend our energies in a struggle. And ever so often, they'll throw a few million more into the pit and tell them it's the only way to live. If we can crawl out in one piece, we'll be happy. If we chase long enough, we'll be satisfied.

Yet, when you reach the top, there's another battle waiting. And by the time you realise that it will never end, it's too late. The struggle is the only life we know and casting it aside is like severing a limb. There's a reason the biggest CEO's in the world are unhappy. They have traded their dreams for ultimate focus on one single goal which only 1% will achieve. The other 99 are just there to scare you into believing that anything else is utter failure.

So we chase and we struggle. We fight and we crawl, tooth and nail, to a promised place. To the Ultimate Dreamville where we'll never have to leave again. And in the chase we forget to look out the window and watch the scenery going by. We forget the balloon that made us so happy way back, when we had still had our innocence. All because it's so easy to distract us and so hard to really direct us towards a good life. Because if you think about it, there is no better life out there. All there is, is your life. You can be good where you are and change the world for one other person. Or you can be sad trying to get somewhere else and change a world that, honestly, doesn't give a flying fuck. Because the world doesn't care if you are happy. Only you can. And you have to. The only other option is to keep chasing until your legs give way under you and you suddenly realise that happiness was right behind you all along and, if only you'd slowed down, it could have caught up long ago.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

For darker days



You are enough.
All the naysayers
and storm brewers
don't know you.
All the backstabbers
and chance grabbers
can't feel you.

You are enough.
All the life that leaks from your eyes
All the watts in your smile
All the imperfections
in your cascading hair
cannot hide that fact.

You are enough.
Don't think of those who say you aren't.
Don't believe those lies.
They can't see
with open eyes
the sun that rises within you.

You are enough.
The sky rolls off your lips.
The night swims in your iris.
The world hasn't seen
more glorious flaws
than the ones scarring your soul.

There is delight in your mistakes.
There is laughter in your tears.
There is beauty
in every shadow you imagine
traversing your palpitations.
The blind fools around you
can never understand why.
Can never see how.
But trust me,
you are enough.

Monday, May 25, 2015

Coniferous monstrous



A forest clouds
the path with trees
their reaching branches
kill every breeze.

The leaves here shake
with whispers of fear.
The monsters are awake
their whimpers are near.

Long shadows are cast
blocking each sign.
Vines crowd the path
though they seem benign.

The journey becomes
a trek through the dark.
No hint that it's day.
No rays, no spark.

The canopy hides
birds and beasts of prey.
The hunter has become
the hunted today.

Trunks grown old
sprout faces of pain,
one sight of the nightmare,
and you'll never sleep again.

But worry not traveller
you need no chance to rest,
this haunted patch of soil
will put you to the test.

Though the path seems lost
and fate seems grim
trust the way forward.
Trust your mind and it's whims.

Though the forest seems thick,
with sunlight blocked away,
you're sure to find the light
you'll surely find a way.

This forest of dreams
with its threatening eyes
can't lay a finger on you
won't take you by surprise.

At the other side of this
lies the road green and wide.
Don't give in to the darkness
that much you must decide.

Wander beyond the forest
and you'll find the way you lost.
You'll turn around and wonder
how you never paid the cost.

Of stepping through nightmares
and fears given form.
Of walking beyond madness.
Of braving the turgid storm.

By trekking through this forest
of hallucinating air.
Can you defeat what is in it
and save everything you care.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Rigor mortis



Permanent damage
seems to be done.
By words that were said,
by the absence of some.

An incurable tumor
afflicts the heart.
Insufferable to bear.
Impossible to rip apart.

A cloud of doubt
hides away the moon.
Like a shadow of the end,
a premonition of doom.

Surgery is required
or maybe a wiccan spell.
Is it a curse or an illness?
It's too early to tell.

A fear has set in
like first frost on a lake.
This coldness that creeps
too persistent to shake.

There's a dread floating now
as spilt oil upon water,
refusing to dissolve
or live with each other.

This scar on the soul,
still fresh enough to bleed,
those spiteful insults
must have done the deed.

Sectumsempra of Snape
is cast upon my mind.
Slashing sharp memories
at angles of all kind.

The death of this is looming
as an army on the horizon.
The worst of it is brewing,
even worse is yet to come.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Insatiable


I want to swallow you
with my eyes sometimes.
I want to drink
your every word.

I want to consume
the very air you exhale,
I want to gorge
on all your sounds.

Your movements strike
a pining in me,
at the sight of you
My gut growls.

I'm famished without
that scent of yours,
I'm parched for
a stolen glance.

I want to inhale
all these thoughts of you.
I want to choke
on your mellow sighs.

I want to devour
every memory of you.
I want to feast on you
All my life.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Fool's love



it's foolish to say
that i'll love you till the end of time
when I'd rather love you
till time runs out
so i can grab it by the scruff
and obediently take it back

because it's foolish to say
i'll love you only forever
when the truth is closer
to infinity plus some
not some paltry phrase
that fairy tales always skip

and it's foolish to say
that i love you more
than this world knows
because people are idiots
and their combined knowledge
falls short of knowing this

for it's foolish to say
that i'll love you blindly
when i've never seen clearer
or felt life dearer
than after the moment
you said you were mine

i know it's foolish to say
that i love you like this
till the end of forever blind
because the fact remains
that from all the ways to love
i love you most like a fool.