Love, strangely!

Love has this strange capacity, 

to turn things inside out!

Love for instance, 

turns nothing into everything, 

sometimes over long years, 

sometimes almost instantly, 

making nothing of everything, 

sweeping through all existence, 

like a fire in the forest! 

So, for a very long time, 

I stared at you from afar, 

never saying a word to you. 

But in the silence of that solitude, 

I always found myself thinking of you. 

And then one day 

I thought I'd touch you. 

But when I held your hand, 

I found myself ablaze, 

with an indomitable desire, 

to hold you close to my heart. 

And in holding you close, 

I felt our two hearts, 

beating like one, 

like the two prongs of a tuning fork! 

And so I wanted to kiss you, 

and in kissing you, 

I wanted time to slow down,

so I may lose myself

in that moment, 

and then I wanted to do 

other things to you, 

unspeakable, 

unspoken of things. 

Like kissing with my lips, 

the depths of your soul, 

and drowning my being, 

in the ocean of your thoughts, 

till my eyes could see nothing else, 

but a blinding light;

the blinding light of your truth, 

as you'd want it to be! 

And lose myself 

in the wilderness of your dreams, 

like a gust of wind, 

gasping through the Pines! 

Till nothing of me is left, 

till I'm nothing but a drop, 

in the Ocean that is you! 

That is the thing with love. 

It's this all consuming being, 

that stops at nothing

and leaves not a thing behind.

November the 20th, 2023

Obscured

 Obscured from each other, 

in a celestial alignment

that renders the two, 

invisible to each other, 

they wait. 

They wonder,

how the other is. 

They wish 

they were together. 

They know, 

the conjunction is only a phase, 

and that their orbits 

shall intersect again, 

soon.

Knowing that everytime they meet, 

they will meet emboldened

by suffering, 

and richer by all the milliseconds and light years, 

that they have survived 

to meet each other again! 

And so they wait. 

Awaiting they abhor, 

but wait they will!

Midnight, 18th of November, 2023 

The dying

 That the living know nothing about death, 

is not true. 

Don't tell me you haven't felt 

a little dead, 

every time someone walked 

in that door, 

and looked past you, 

like you were a ghost. 

While you had spent the evening, 

waiting, 

cooking, 

carefully toasting the sesame, 

and finding the finest Coriander, 

to go into the grind. 

Being told what's a tiff 

that gets over before 

it breaks you down to tears. 

Come on, I mean, 

haven't you ever felt buried under the silence

that follows the questions 

that you ask, 

after not having asked them 

so many times, 

for the fear that they won't be answered anyway. 

The evasion, 

to me,  it always left me asphyxsiated

in a very physical way. 

And everytime that text 

of emotional import goes unresponded, 

read but not returned. 

While every meme 

is always noticed. 

Every little word of disagreement, 

turned around into blame, 

and the claim, 

that literally everybody else

is more tolerant 

and cool about stuff! 

Don't tell me,

being denied and dismissed 

like that, 

day after day, 

it doesn't make you dead inside. 

While you keep telling yourself you are happy, 

so you don't appear unhappy to others! 

While you want to show up for yourself, 

and you know you only have this lifetime, 

but you don't, you can't. 

And to know 

it would make no difference

to be gone, 

to know you don't matter

and that you will be replaced, 

before you even know! 

What could be more 'dying' 

than this dying that we die 

little by little by little. 

The dead die, yes, 

but the living, 

how we live death!

October, 31st 

Word after word after word

 So, it's said, 

a word after a word after a word, is power. 

I wonder what a wound after a wound after a wound makes! 

Every wound followed by

a deafening silence. 

Every memory, a dying pulse. 

One dying pulse after another, after another. 

How for years, 

my body was a house, 

to you, to your desires, 

expressed and withheld. 

And everything else 

that you moved in with. 

Rage, contained and uncontained, 

often black and blue. 

And that burning hue of red, 

just before the scar turns blue. 

Remorse, shame, guilt, 

agony, distrust, revenge, 

and that endless search 

for meaning, 

in deceptive contrusion of mechanical motions; 

two dying animals, 

only dying next to each other, 

night after night! 

Endless searching, 

night after night after night. 

Endless waiting, day after day after day. 

The more I think about it, 

the less it comes to mean. 

The more I wonder, 

the lesser I feel. 

The emptiness that it houses now, 

my body, 

the vacuousness of the soul! 

The drowning in grief the heart feels, 

talking about it, 

every word after word after word, 

the helplessness, 

the loss! 

Not all expression is power!

Sometimes it's just barren pain.

October 31st

Waiting

 So here's the thing about waiting, you wait. 

You wait for the night to end. 

You wait for the rain to stop. 

You wait for Sunshine. 

You wait for the rainbow. 

You wait to find the courage. 

You wait to find the strength, the words. 

Nothing happens. 

And then you realize, 

you've waited too long! 

So you find that one friend who'd cry with you, 

and you cry your heart out. 

And you find that one friend

who'd laugh with you, 

and you laugh out loud. 

And you wake your share of nights, 

and you smoke your share of smokes, 

and gathering all your might, 

you pull a rainbow out 

from the cracks in your heart, 

and you let the Sun shine 

through the crevices of your soul, 

and you let the words tremble through the calcified tunnels of your mind, 

like water cutting through stone, 

and though painful, you realize, 

the healing has begun. 

And so we wait, 

only to realize, 

we shouldn't have waited! 

But that's the thing about waiting, 

unless you wait, 

and crumble under the waiting, 

how do you ever know you shouldn't!

October, the 30th

The lyre of Orpheus

 I wake up in the middle of the night. 

Like every night. 

I hear a distant refrain, 

that draws me to itself, 

like the lyre of Orpheus. 

I stare into a vacuum. 

I walk into an abyss. 

Like Eurydice, 

I walk behind you, 

scared.

Afraid, you'll turn around, 

and I'll lose you, forever! 

And so I sing, 

to let you know I walk behind. 

Songs from when we first met, 

in the ruins of the lost empire of Thrace. 

When we had in our hearts, 

a love, so pure, 

so powerful,

it cast a spell upon the lands, 

turning ruins into grasslands, 

and ashes into flowers, 

and wastelands into oceans, 

and rocks into stars! 

Tossing all everything that had been dead for thousands and thousands of years, 

into the raging fire of passion, 

turning it into a throbbing heart. 

But like I, drawn to the music of your lyre, 

walk behind you, 

in my sleep, 

you drawn to my song, 

turn around, 

helpless! 

Every night! 

Just before we could reach 

the ruins of Thrace one last time! 

And when the wise men tell our story,

they say, 

such is the force of love! 

Only lovers sigh and say, 

such is the fate of those who love!

26th of October, 2023 

The Spell has been cast!

 Smoke rises from the reed pond, 

in the far distance. 

A squall gusts through the reeds, 

bringing home the damp, warm scent of the lowlands. 

I fall asleep. 

After many many sleepless nights. 

Wind gushes through the reeds

in aspirate whispers, 

circling the pond, 

as if searching for something

in restless desparation.

I walk, half asleep! 

Bare feet. Looking for you. 

The night darkens. 

Obscure shadows eclipse the moon. 

I open my eyes. 

I lie bare atop the reeds, 

a hundred sheaths cutting the body, 

a thousand blades lashing at the soul. 

A gentle flouroscence 

envelopes the earth. 

I rise above the reed pond, 

above the mountains, 

above the clouds. 

I circle the earth, 

shrieking, 

like the shrill cry of the grass whistles 

we used to make as children. 

Like the hollow wail 

of the reed flute. 

I melt into the night. 

I burn into ashes, 

I rain from the clouds. 

Smoke rises from the reed pond. 

I open my eyes. 

I smell of the reeds. 

The fog clears. 

I can tell I am in love. 

The spell has been cast!

October the 26th, 2023