I win?

When I say
I love you more,
I'm not starting
some romantic competition.
I'm simply saying it
as a comparative term.

I'm saying I love you more
than a sea loves a shore
and I want to kiss you just as much
as they do in a day.

It's just the plain truth
that my love is stronger
that a bird's love for song.
Although sometimes,
I admit,
I am out of tune.

I would still say I love you more
than a dying man loves life
or a drowning man
loves breath.

More than autumn leaves
love the wind.
More than dark chocolate loves to melt.

I think I might even love you
more than dogs love belly rubs.

So you see this isn't a contest,
not with you at least.

This is just stating a fact
that I love you more
than gravity loves to pull.

Because the forces at work here
are stronger than the threads
precariously holding
the universe together.
And definitely
far more mysterious.

So the next time I say,
I love you more,
just accept the fact
that the sun, moon, and stars
cannot even compare
to how bright my soul feels
when you say
I love you more too.

Let it flow

let me be sad
for a little while

let me slit these veins
and let the words flow out
like lightning emerging
from colliding clouds

with fractal roots
to join the ground
like reaching arms
from positive
to negative

because two forces are needed
to create friction
and without friction
there can be no motion

so let me be naked
with these words on white
let me splatter them right
in a way that matters
to me at least

let me rant
just grant
me the freedom
to be incorrect
in any shape or form
let me break
what you'd call the norm

let me shatter
let me feel what is wrong
so i can make it right
and fight
till the page runs out
till the ink comes to a stop
till the pixels cease
to blink and taunt

let me drown
in these foolish emotions
that cause commotion
like a floundering cat
in the deep end of the sea
let me be me

i don't need to be happy to smile
i don't need to know the way
to find
what i may have lost
in a corner of my mind

so let me be sad
for once
don't lift these lips
don't cheer me on
because i will come back
and i will be the same
but for the moment
let me be
insane

Mindful of sounds

silent thoughts
are the loudest things
scrawling and scratching
on cranium walls

they invade the brain
and jostle for space
clanking and clamouring
for a second glance

like skeleton armies
with a marching drum
their footsteps clod
and echo forever

they wage endless wars
for a little attention
flailing and fighting
cacophony rising

with endless effort
they keep on going
grunting and groaning
their constant blare

but outside the mind
not a peep escapes
as the clockwork rumbles
as the machines crank
of a silent thought
never to be heard

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Club 27

Now here i am
Past the gates of 27,
When the idols i adored
Were already in heaven.
No this isn't a rant
About failing to die young.
The Jims and the Kurts
Had had their share of fun.
Me? I'm still reaching
For my piece of immortality.
Not at the barrel of a gun
Or the urge of gravity.

So here i stand
At the gates of 27,
With a life i adore
Bless the devil in heaven.
Past childhood joy
And grown-up sins I've come.
With the scars of others
Beyond the lessons of some.
And I'll still be reaching
Till the soul has its rhythm,
Sure as the shattering of white
When light hits a prism.

So now i step
Past the gates of 27,
To my chance in the world
My kingdom of heaven.
But a question still persists,
Beyond Jimi's tragic fame,
If he hadn't this way died
Would the fervour be the same?
Maybe death is resurrection,
As science fiction suggests,
But too bitter a truth
For any of us to digest.

But I promised this wouldn't be
An ode to death at 27.
The most cliche topic to pick
Talking of those in heaven.
So let me instead wrap up
With a happy-tasting thought,
At least we've survived
All the troubles life has wrought.
So let's forget the madness
And put old ghosts to rest,
Because 26 is over
And the rest of my life comes next.

Unhinged

with you
i lose myself completely
akin to a madman
placed between walls of foam

or a locked up innocent
who chanced upon a key

it's just that easy with you
to understand
what reckless abandon
truly means

until now i believed
it meant the abandonment
of fear
of death
embarrassment
and so forth

but when i stand
with you
it's abandoning myself
in ways that would
earlier seem frightfully
unwelcome

it's more than freedom
with you
it's more than living it up
or sipping from the cup of life
it is instead
the breaking of walls
the being alive in living
and downing
the whole damn bottle
that the gods offered

you've raised the bar
of everything
that the others failed at
so miserably
so spectacularly
and ever so thankfully

and i will always applaud
the string of happy accidents
that led to me
being given the chance
of losing myself
with you

Today is men's day

for the longest time
i've been scared of saying this
we'll get to what 'this' is in a minute
but the reason I've been scared
isn't because of some internal demon
instead it's a fear of being judged
or even beaten down
and thrashed in the street
by zealous activists
who will see my words as kerosene
and choose to light them up
instead of paying them heed

for the longest time,
i've been unsure of saying this
so it's about time
that the length is cut short
because today is men's day
and no one gives a fuck
so i might as well start
by speaking my mind

what I want to say
will be unwelcome to many
and rightfully so
but remember Aristotle
and all his wisdom
that an intelligent mind
entertains an idea
without accepting it

so here goes
the truth i've been supressing
for the longest time
is that your redefinition
of feminism
has gone too far

read that again
it is as slanderous as you thought -
your feminism
has crossed the line

now before you reach
for those Jimmy Choo shoes
and point a heel my way
or pull some pepper spray
from your Prada handbag
and start acting
like a righteous bitch
hold that hand
and hear me out

feminism does not mean
death to man
it should not assume
we are all creeps
feminism doesn't rise
by showing the other gender down
but rather by affirming yourself
and educating others
about the changing times
i've grown up with an elder sister
and a household
probably more 'awakened'
than most

while you were all outside
fighting for female freedoms
in my home,
we had already addressed it
so thrusting your feminism
and the way you've morphed it
into a sickle ready to slash
across my peaceful throat
defeats the purpose
with which your fight began

the way things are going
it's an aura of hatred
being bred around anyone
who is even innocently
favoring any man
as if the only way
to prop up your cause
is to break the legs
of the the other side

because these days it's strange
that your feminism has changed
how people see
even basic acts of chivalry

it reminds of the other day
i was at a party with strangers
and offered to drop a girl home
because i was going the same way
yes, she was drunk
yes, so was i
and yes, it was frightfully late
but she gave me a look
as if i'd asked her to undress
instead of accepting my services
without a bigoted lens
in her feminist mind
my offer was an advance
and my protection
was reduced to perversion
that i would take the first chance
to get in her skirt

don't you see
your feminism
is killing the man i am?
turning my testicles
into some totem of evil
that i carry around
as proof of shared guilt
for the rest of my clan
when you women are just as sexist
and superficially driven
when you drool at Clooney
and scoff when i ask
if you'd sleep with Jack Black

your feminism today
is just a weapon
that suits your purposes
a fashion statement
a golden dildo
meant to fuck any of us
who dare think otherwise
because who can ever say
that women are wrong
or anything short
of superhuman beings
with sadly written roles
who need nothing more
than being saved
from this hurtful society

i've thought this through
for the longest time
wondering if i am wrong
in seeing the way things stand
there is, after all,
an urgent need
to balance the scales
that nature built off-key

no matter how you look
at the way things are
the fact remains
that men and women
are not equal
and we were never meant to be
for even in prides of lions
and herds of elephants
the roles are decided
by the genitalia given
and not by what each animal wants

maybe it's true
that we are an evolved race
trying to escape
what nature has written down
it is most commendable
and probably even
the reason of evolution
to break out
from our circumstance

but your feminism
has changed it all
into a battle of sexes
where both sides feel
they are somehow wronged
except in today's world
no one gives a fuck
about men's day
and every brand out there

from cars to condoms
eagerly waits
for the women's equivalent
to come along

for the longest time
i've tried not to say this
because it is undoubtedly
slightly offensive
you might even accuse me
of being a sexist male
but that's just because
you don't know me at all
i just want to point to the truth
that the scales are tipping
and before long
we will search for a 'real man'
much like we search
for the 'independent woman'
of today

your aggressive feminism
and the thirst for male blood
will eventually result
in a disfigured soceity
where every man must think
twice about his actions
even when it's as simple
as offering a stranger
a free ride home
with no strings attached

maybe it's ironic too
that this will be dismissed
as a testosterone rant
but if a woman had said it
she'd be lauded for equality

examine your lens
you warrior of vaginas
and you'll see the middle path
where there is no need
for you to battle men
and no chance for us
to ever do you wrong
because it's an unending war
no matter how you look at it
just accept that we are
different from birth
and neither is lesser
than the other
until our actions
prove it to be so

Situation 22

There is something very wrong with the world these days. Though it would be presumptuous to blame the globe itself, let’s just say there’s something weird happening to the people on this planet. It’s an inescapable truth. A truth almost all of us have seen but most of us have chosen to pass over like a wet dog staring for leftovers a little too long. It’s a fact glaring at us at every intersection, on every table, in every walk and sit of life. We are addicted. It’s not the needle or a pill that we crave for. We are obsessed with tiny little glowing crystals staring at us from dawn to dusk. 4.1” to 42” HD strips of multicoloured LSD. We are dependent on these screens of flashy information and irrelevant conversation. They rule our lives and we have willingly prostrated our minds in awe of them. Everywhere you look, someone is looking into a monitor or a mobile phone or some digital object. They have taken precedence over the people that surround us. Now most would pose the argument that there’s nothing wrong with this, that these pixels are the future that has arrived in our palms like some glowing ray of sunlight in a Church window scene. And these are the same people sitting opposite you at a restaurant table investing their attention in a 4.1inch display, instead of looking outside their lithium-ion-powered attention destroyer and noticing the person next to them. You cannot argue religion with a heretic. Even if he sees what is wrong with the path he follows, he will still adamantly take every step down that road believing that is the right way. The only way. But is it really?

There’s a difference between using technology, understanding it and depending on it. For most people the first and third are the only steps they take. It seems the acceptance of virtual data as a tangible and real thing might be the root of the problem. True, the digital space has changed the world but it is also true that you cannot live in the digital world alone. We are born as beings of flesh and blood. We die as beings of love and experience. No amount of hashtags or retweets will help you make the transition. It is the quantity of our ‘friends’ that seems to matter these days, not the deeper connection you make with a handful of people. The human want of being connected isn’t fulfilled in a click like most of us believe; it requires a lot more than that, it requires interaction. Deny it as much as you like, a face-to-face conversation will always be remembered better than any whatsapp chat thread. And the warm feeling of discovering a stranger in the first meeting will always be stronger than stalking their facebook all night. There is nothing ‘real’ about the virtual world. What we are online is who we want people to see us as, not who we really are. Because the internet allows us the incredible power of editing our identity at every turn. It lets us change the perception of us. It gives us control over the first impression. More than anything this is it's greatest temptation simply because it is something the real world will never give us complete power over.

By no means does this say that we should boycott technology and go back to the 80’s. This isn’t a cry for the analogue rebellion. All I mean to say is that you have to find a balance between these two worlds. Without this balance, we will be ill-equipped to handle the individuals around us or explore what is inside us. If we remain as addicted as we are. If we give in to the power of editing our thoughts before expressing them, we have already lost the thing that makes us interesting in the first place; our wit. The spur of the moment spawns either genius or stupidity, both of which are better than a measured and clipped opinion. Your reactions make you who you are and even after you grow old and learn to control them in public, they still define you. In a realm where every reaction can be changed to fit the current flow of action, uniqueness and trust were bound to be misplaced first.

Searching for serenity

the life you seek,
that home you want.
it's out there
somewhere.

wedged between
skyscrapers,
built from fears
of premature endings.

the future you asked for,
that vision you saw,
it's out there
somewhere.

it's as near
or as far
as you make it
so just take it.

it isn't built of glass
for you to worry
about cracking it,
by touching it.

the only concern
that you should have
is losing it
by confusing it.

with overthought
and being overwrought
with worries
that have no weight.

that safety you seek,
the dream you've seen,

it's out there,

somewhere.

no map will take you.
no app can guide you.
but step forth with me
and we'll find it.

because the truth my love,
is that you cannot reach it,
for it isn't a place
or mark on paper.

but one you have to build
with bricks of love
and mortar of trust
under a roof called patience.

that is the life you seek,
the home you want,
and it's right here,

my dear. 

Reflex

i moved the tiny icons
on my home screen today
and i ended up launching
minion rush two
instead of calling your phone
by mistake.

reaching you has become
muscle memory to me.

it requires no vision,
no conscious senses,
sometimes, i fear -
not even a thought.

just the other day,
i was on a moss ridden local,
and i don't have a clue
how your voice was in my ear
before the wheels
had found new ground.

i know Skype shortcuts now,
they are really strange on a mac.

but i'm looking at the screen.
waiting for some movement.
while my digits contort
into command+shift+R.

i tried to train Google Now
to understand your name
but my accent isn't
nearly as precise
or as fluid as these fingers,
that need no lessons.

but i'm sure some day
i can just utter some words,
"i'm home" maybe -
and my hands will reach out,
not to find technology
but your touch instead.

When?

It's kind of strange,
how you've changed
the way I feel
about the clock.

When you are here
the seconds split
so that each becomes
many lifetimes combined.

It's a little unnerving,
the way you're curving
my lens of time
into a concave form.

So it seems to me
that reality bends
like a hall of mirrors
effortlessly destroyed.

With you I feel
that minutes dissolve,
like dandelion blooms
tossed to the wind.

But it's really absurd
how you've served
in changing what
they used to mean.

And I cannot shake
how easily you make
me lose both sense
and track of my mind.

Without you it's true
I have nothing better to do
than count the seasons
until our lives collide.