The Lyrical Age

They tell us to dream, aim high and gleam bright
But when we dare to break out of our bubbles of ease
We are crushed like autumn leaves by the boots of reality
They always argue that we didn't wait for enough Springs
Aimed too high to find our footing when we jumped to reach for the lagging strings
Of our innocent visions
No one around seems to know the answers,
So we circle them in copied patterns
And our sweet youth we spent in a daze:
Zealous lovers and frolicking dancers
Velvet dreams and idle days as we spaced out the windows of taverns
We wanted to be a lot of things that didn't make sense
We wanted to stay young, lay around drunk in our inordinate disappointments
Spill our hearts without a care,
Blame it on the freshness of our marrows
And yet we wanted to grow older, clasp the bars we had to hop in order to touch
Not too old with permanent ripples carved on our brows
And sacks of guilt and regrets
Hidden beneath our quilts

Preferably immortals at the age of thirty

We are a lot of things that we didn't choose to be
We are the restless, and we are the numb
We are the fearless, and we are the broken
We are the butterflies and we are the hurricanes
Droplets in the ocean and the castaway scum
But hey, does it count as a quest if you daydream at your door step

For the rest of your life
Thought you perished by famine in the far East of Fantasia
When you have passed on with a gentle shudder in your sleep
If you've hastened to feel and hurried to live, 

Because you got nothing to lose
Not one bit of devotion was left for you to give
Got both masks of Thalia and Melpomene because you couldn't decide which fit you the best
If you took a lifetime to figure the How, failing after, but clasped the Why by the throat
As you plunged into the night, roaring with laughter, to hide the grimaces
Broken many promises but always paid your debts
Made mistakes you could never amend, but proudly owned like your children
Couldn't be a ranger, but traced constellations on the faces of strangers
Never won a race, never demolished empires, never learnt how to kiss, 

But knew by heart how to mend what's broken with a warm embrace
If you never mustered the guts to leave home, or towards home
But still tucked your cases ready beneath your bed

Just in case.

Ode to Scorpions

The world doesn't make much sense anymore
All these abstracts
Frames more expensive than the sentiments
Metronomes of thought so precise and yet no one really knows
How this novel instrument of indifference
Is to be tuned
Only Bach wept bitterly
Humans, wallowing in their chronic humanness
Clusters of solitude resigned to reconciliation with their crooked
Bastards of boredom trying to sing
In a choir of opinionism
It grits on your ears
Or it's just that you are out of sync
After so many years of playing solo
Out of syntax
Out of fad
Out of rhyme
Out of reason

Out of candidness

It dripped from the corner of your gaped mouth
When words started to taste gray
At a festive table, where the sun took seat
Across from you
The earth kept turning
Flirtatiously
And the lonely moon that fell out of track
Unknowingly meddled with the gravity in between
Anomalies grow when they are not contained
Denied of the gleam that you borrowed yourself, you recoiled
To your shell
The moon is just a thief, see
When its not a crag that reflects illumination
Only hailed by bards
And cursed by lovers
Every now and then, you remember
That the children of the night
Have to perish in the shadows
And yet, they pine for the light
When their spines bend like archs of triumph
They pine for the light
The pricks and the grazes
The tingling embraces
Of all that is pure and white

Why is darkness so fragile?

When it swallows constellations
And drowns the novice vagrants
It dwells in one's soul
Makes a hearth of their humble Sternum
And yet it's as coy as a virgin
When caressed by the freshness of spring

They were born in the depths, the crawlers

Urged to peer outside by the nudges of curiosity

To be out there, it drains them, slowly

Makes their pale skin crumble
Makes their faces crack
Their remains seep into the smallest crevice in the pavement
Where a clown once stood, offered his shoulder to strangers
To cry on
So he could cry on
They lurk in there, pieces of the gloom
Abiding
Wait for the sun to find
Them
Or what's left of them.