"To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing."

La Boheme

I drove back home, after I've dropped you off
You apologized for the trouble, as usual
Said that you will make it up one distant day
When you get your own means
And I said it was a pleasure, as usual
With a smile
Seems that I don't smile often because
I spend them all on you

Hey, what would I do when you are gone ?

What you don't know is that my heart flutters
When we spend these moments together
What you don't know is that I get lost on purpose
Miss exists and take longer routes, with frequent signals
Suddenly crave tea on the other part of town
To buy us extra time
For our time is running out
What you don't know is that I knew all along
That these moments were counted
That they are gone for good, and we took them for granted
Mid conversation, I'd recall
That you were preparing me
For your withdrawal
Since we met
What you don't know, is that I've been brooding for months
After you told me you wanted to leave
Caught in a vortex :
To be happy for you
To be envious of you
To be unhappy without you
To be hopeful because there is still fire within you
To fall into despair
Because we won't talk like this
Anymore

What would I do when you are gone ?

In a while too short
You will be no longer
And I'll truly
Truly

Truly



Be alone

All these plans for the future
The careless laughter
Your words like almond
Smiles like flowing water
Will rise and mix with the evening sighs
In a while ,too short
The magic of small things that I've regarded so high
Would turn to umber
And I won't be making beautiful things
With you any longer
I wrote about you, you know
And these roses I've aligned unto my lines
Unsent
Undelivered
What would I do when they start to whither
Lose the color of their petals and the sprouts of their zeal
Long drives in the dark
When you don't care for the end
Have lost their appeal
The veins in my hands were frozen red
As I held unto my cone, with the largest scoop
A chilled snake was climbing up my spine
And my heart was quiet
The reel of our conversations was playing in my head
Windows smudged to blindness

My dull gaze fixed at the void

And numbness started to creep

Up the curls of my earlobes 

Painted by the sleepless lights
Of the yawning city

Montmartre seemed sad

And the Lilacs were dead.

Festival of Insignificance

Heaviness

You have always walked
Weighed down by the buckets of guilt
Pulling like retractors
You ought to care
Inquire more, report your affairs
Unmentionables spread on the balcony
Such a bother, having to remember someone
In the midst of your angst
And despair
You dial the numbers, thinking
How hard it is to acquire compassion
Nowadays 
One has to scavenge even deeper
For a tear or two
On the daily, you struggle to find the line
Between a truth and a pose
Divine the vices in your prose
To mold your expressions and adjust your tone
With the skill of an actor
Looking away from the face of your consciousness
Grimacing, about to choke on laughter

"What a lier !
You were sipping on coke though."

The few phrases of courtesy quickly exhausted
And you are forced to digress
You squeeze your brain to find the words
To fill in the silence
It truly has been a while
To know what to share
With an almost, almost stranger now
And their chill voice hits like a train
Strayed off tracks
"Thank you for calling, I have a lotta guests."

Relief

You have felt a load escape your lungs
They never needed your heart
In their distress
Nor had the time to miss your pity donations
Of obliged kindness
Your entire existence is but a spec of dust
Blown away by the wind of neglect

You could have carried on for the rest of your life

Thinking you were bold
For not caring enough
But truth to be told you never really mattered
Some truths are better off not known, though
She hung up the phone, with a dismissal, cold
And
It kinda stung, somewhere

Melancholy

Did it truly cleanse your heart from the blotch of shame
Or did it hurt to realize
That they struggled to recognize
Your voice and name
That you mattered not much
Cold, cold times, the ones we live in
We find it hard to shed tears
We are too scared to vent our spleens
We are too conscious to let them hear
Our trembling voices
And we prefer to talk through rigid screens
Seek the aid of fake faces
As we twinge from the heartaches

Cringe at crude pretensions

In which we refused to partake
It occurs to none
That behind these masks
Of rude candidness

We are but clusters of solitude

Wallowing, in carelessness
Among other solitudes.

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"

Dvoynik

Sad, sad

Was the living Orchid

Next to her twin made of silk

They looked much alike, one wouldn't tell the difference

At first glance

Side by side, they were placed, adorning the corridor of a maternity ward

She had petals white as milk with a purple shade

She had a green core and yellowing blades

She had a bent spine and a few bare twigs

And her scent and charm have started to fade

Over the month of November

Since no one looked her way any more

And she's forgotten how to be beautiful

Next to her peer of plastic flush

Forever flourishing

Forever abiding

Forever pretty

Forever lush

When the lights go off she whispers to her sister

And when the silence prolongs, she opts to pester

"I may not smell nice but you don't smell at all."

"My flowers may fall but you are cold as ice."

When it's time to rebloom, she casts a glance of gloom

At her immortal ilk

Only matched in glory when you look from a distance

Hominid jealousy against indolent indifference

And sad, sad,

Was the dying Orchid

Next to her twin made of silk.

The Bolter

I run away from you

I run away towards you, and somewhere along the mobius track

The difference doesn't matter

Pursuing your back, I sprint
Trying not to plunge into my own shadow, I lighten my steps
At tricky corners
And I squint to see beyond the smoke and the haze
You are ahead in the chase, never looking behind

Your traces in the air, they never bide

Only my anxieties are running to my side, relentless
My faithful companion

I yearn for you

I yearn for you yet I'm wary of your closeness
I stop in motion, petrified, looking airy while terrified
Of many things I can't explain
Of this darkness I'm told it has left my gist
When it audibly wriggles in the calm of the night
How I refrain from revealing my heart
Still lawful and deft
Or escape the kettle when I'm revealed as a brittle

And all my life, I've been running away

From everything
Towards something
From myself
To the arms of someone
This dire affliction
The growing seed of affection
What hides in the blind spot to my right
As I scan my left in alarm

What clots in my veins as I scour my might
A memory, a dream

A past, a future
An unbearable present
The edge of a cape, the invisible route to escape 
A lifelong pursuit of a comfort denied
An endless flight from the rumble of the day
And the terrors of the night
Wasn't so bad
Until I realized
Our time is the fastest sprinter, isn't it ?
Already waiting at the line, with a wry smile

Say, why did you knock my doors if you were planning to run for it ?

For You In Full Blossom VI

There is magic in kind gestures

Undemanded. And rich

There is strength in small acts of goodness

Done with little to no expectations

Sincerity and devotion that disarm and bewitch

The more one reaches out for the deep well

That is a stranger you have known for years 

And years

Yet still, they got countless stories to tell

On warm nights, while resting your palms on the cold sand

Tender sighs coming from the ocean

Confiding. And chill

Love unrequited, yet whole and content

Emotions withheld lest a touch with a vile intent

Would defile this affection

Flowing like a gelid waterfall

Soothing like a lone petal of a rose

Appealing to the nose on its own

More so, scattered gracefully, snowflakes of passion

Adorning the path of your inviolate beau

To your sanctuary.

Gouged Ebony

How I used to dance waltz with words and verses
Thinking I was a conqueror of sorts
Flair and glory sewn unto my fingers
Metaphors carved on the palm of my hand
My wand I swung and fireworks sparkled
The flare gone, the smoke lingered
Inside my head
Yet at the sight of them sealed hearses
Traces of bitterness stiffened on my lips
When I touched the articles bequeathed to their kin
Helplessness hid beneath my lax tongue, like orphans of war
It became heavier, the more I spoke
Or the longer I paused
When my words waver I always let my limbs talk
See, I move on quick to mitigation, casual
And I embraced your pieces a bit stronger than usual
Heard a crackle and
Thought that I broke your bones, now tender crackers
Or what was left of your pillars
Grazed into thinness by the claws
Of loss

"Do seek solace."

I bade, flustered

Much reflection and that's all my butterflies mustered
You stood there, half of your features hidden in the dark
To my mind an aesthetic canvas of woe and affliction
Time seemed to unwind
I couldn't tell if that faint curve would pass as a smile
If it was, it spoke volumes
Your skin, tired though young, was dark like the trunk
Of the oldest ebony
And my chest it shrunk when I traced your gaze

Empty and 

Unaltered

Your long branches faltered 

Your shadow faded, your oval face
Broken faience with a subtle glaze
You knew that I knew
That condolences and shrills
The small talks after, them anecdotes as well
Light reminisces and laughter
Though resounding- like an ominous knell
Pounding through the hall
Reflecting off the pale walls

They don't revive the dead, do they ?

And seldom console the ones left behind
Like guiltless daggers, they
Often dig through bare flesh
Poison the living
And kills them instead
Slowly.

"It was a flood that wrecked this.


                                                     And you caused it."

Note IX

Today I was seized by a MAJOR panic attack at work.
I was asked about my plans for my birthday, and I realized that I don't even remember how old I am (typical).
Turns out I'll be 26.
Twenty years and six.
I'm as old as Hajime No Ippo. No shit.
Oh my God, I haven't achieved anything major in my life yet. I'm still a social mess. I'm still immature when it comes human bonding. My time management is a joke. I can't cook for shit. I forget things and dates. I forget people. I haven't published my book yet. My account balance is 0.00 (the decimal zeros for a stronger impact, wild move, NBAD). I still haven't found the one (though allegedly he found me). I still didn't finish grad school. I still didn't find a job in my field. Soon I'll start to see white hairs and my bones will ache when I exercise too much. Soon the effects of my bad habits during my teens will show on my face and body. My hair will start to thin, my teeth will start to decay, by breasts will sag and my belly will give up.
I'm gonna have to settle for any man just to be able to bear kids and check that box on my list.
Oh my God.
I need a triple shot of Mocha and somebody lend me their shoulder. Ugh I was caught off guard on this fine Sunday morning and didn't expect my life to weigh this much on me.

Smfh why did you have to remind me of how big of a failure I am ?

Summer Rush

I'm hyperventilating at this dark hour because I'm stopped in motion and life is slipping away too fast
Shivering in this heat
Heaps of books and an old Orchid to keep me company
Neo Jazz and flowing poetry
And it dawned on me that it's time to stop saying No and give it another chance
It's been happening a lot, this courting thing, but I'm not sure
I'm afraid that I lost the willingness to give and reach out
And the patience to endure
I've endured long when I'm this young and the mere thought of its continuity is 
Unbearable
I'm entrusted by expectations bigger than my age
They never looked my way 6 months ago, and now he wants to tip the hat he doesn't have
I'm moving on in an alarming pace I might feel ahead and entitled to go
I want to go, I need to go
But a lot of people would kill to be in my place
My muscles hurt, all of them
Extensive exercise and extensive reading
He no longer mocks me, ol'man, but treats me like a peer
He says "brilliant" more often
And it scares me
I feel kinda dead inside and so full of life at the same time
When I'm around people
I talk to God after each prayer but I still feel too far from Him during the day
I want to hide from the world but I'm told that I make it tolerable
My phone rings a lot for a socially anxious person
He lurks at the parking lot when he doesn't need to
He follows me home when he has no business doing so
He never talks to me
I should be scared but I understand. And I don't care
I find solace in loneliness and loud company alike
Baskin Robins at 1:31 am

Hottest summer of my life.