made to love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6SGeaQrIU8

hey you,
help me.
peel the lethargy from my body,
reveal strips of unblemished skin
transformed under the pressure,
the heat of experience.
smooth.

you, 
wipe these wounds clean.
please.
wash them out, blow kisses with that 
soft fabric, your fingers
feel like peace to me,
my gashes are closing,
your sweet kisses
sealing them.

stroke my limbs,
ease them down,
draw their length in the pull
of your lips,
contour them
in the movement 
of your hips.

rejuvenate me.

my bones,
my bones remember now
what they're holding up
my frame is clothed,
my shoulders covered,
my legs wrapped,
my arms entangled,
in you.

with the air that
exits,
a wish escapes,
a sigh hits the roof of
my parted mouth,
eyes shut,
still awake,
to hear
to listen to the sounds
of your presence
regardless of the form it takes

i will stay awake for you.
do all or nothing for you,
healed,
i lay afresh,
i've been waiting for this.

with patience,
i've been led out of the abyss,
as you tended to me,
your sustaining touch,
holding that kiss.

over my shoulder

in time, i've realised that growing up and becoming more mature are two different things.
in fact, i've seen so many childish adults i used to think this is what was attractive to people as they aged alongside each other. the ability to talk coyly or emphatically put your opinion across, always be laughing and giggly and up for anything. of course, this has nothing to do with how you've really advanced in your pursuit of happiness *winking suggestively*coupled with how wasted you got over the weekend, but check you out, still managed to make it to work monday morning cribbing about the traffic, looking like a star. 

maturity on the other hand, i used to always confuse with nonchalance. but that if anything is absolutely not what it is. to be mature is to be able to let go; dealing with the truth no matter how hard it is. like the times when a conversation is dying and you really don't have the time or need to drag it out longer, to know when a person is pensive and wishes to enjoy the presence of your company rather than the echo of your words, to know when an event occurs that it will pass and that we constantly go through this cycle of regeneration, playing back things that really don't and will never change. 

we can barely keep up with ourselves as we get lost in our feelings and thoughts. and then, like a wisp of smoke, the fourth cigarette i really didn't need to have vanishes, taking with it the fleeting exhilaration it brought  and as soon as it came, i need another tug at the fancy cinnamon stick. i ponder on times when our words flow out our throats unceasingly, never stopping, so excited to enjoy and describe the grandeur of that passing second of fame and utter bliss. and then 3 months down the line, that second is almost worth a penny, collected in a rusty old tin that gets scrimmaged in once in a while, important enough for taxi money at the least.

if i were the adult i'd want to be, and i'm not there yet, but if i were...i would look at each moment like it was going to pass. and that way i could enjoy it for the 5 seconds that it lasted. i could watch it disappear with content, knowing that if i sat pretty enough, another one would pass me by too filling in the void, soothing my anxious trembling to be occupied in mind and satisfied in soul.

honestly, these years between broad waistlines and meagre paychecks, i want to be able to really pick and choose my colours. character is built and not granted. i want to be able to grow up with elegance, and humility. maturity is something i hope God gives me the grace to pursue, because it really is an effort to be confident enough to correct ourselves, our old ways, manners of speech, fears. i realise we have always had the answers clenched up so tightly in our fists, but often lacked the courage necessary to untangle our intentions from our insecurities, to raise our hands up straight and clean, and ask the question anyway, "ma'am, will it all be over soon?"

truth is it never finishes. we either grow bitter or we get better. at ourselves, or the whole world; we all end up wanting more. how different would it be if we knew we were going to get where we needed to go anyway, we just had to work at lasting through the seconds, the minutes, the days, the weeks until finally...we can look back in months and years and know, we did the best we could with what we had.

voldemort

i burned all my diaries.

i tore up anything, 

anything that held you accountable for what you did.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i close my eyes.

swaying my head from side to side,

my limbs follow,

my hips too.

all of a sudden, 

i'm rising away high above the dull grey ground.

flashback,

clock ticking, ten twenty

sweating bullets, as it's getting heavy

burden like a leash on me,

it ain't on my back,

no they took i by the neck

leading me into the dark

with only a tug here, a tug there to follow

my feet don't stop

they take i 

they take i again and again

till the blood drips 

and i cry.

then i look down.

i left that behind.

i left them all behind.

and now, i'm flying.

i'm free.

but the cold air sweeps across my naked back,

and i'm reminded how metallic that concrete pavement tasted,

the day they threw me out.

for trying to help.

for shouting for peace.

i realised then

that i was too small to understand.

i was too dispensable.

because even in the grand scheme of things,

all that mattered was the way they treated each other.

every time they argued,

that leash would tear at the back of my neck, 

making red streams of tears flow,

tears my body cried

against the confines of my mind.

my arms are stretched away from each other.

i lift my head up high, and even though,

i'm losing altitude,

i'm plummeting,

i want it to end soon.

i know i'll meet my old friends again.

but i want them to know,

i'm no longer what they knew.

i take no sides,

i have no say.

i just want them to see,

that i'll be okay.

i'll crawl on without them,

they can leave their chains on me,

but i'll move on with them.

all that matters is how they treat each other.

because my life will go on,

i'll learn to fly again.

but they'll be left there,

alone on the ground,

if they don't learn to pull each other up,

to the skies,

to our eternal home beyond the stars.

where the greyscale of our lives,

the mundane existence we have lived,

ceases to exist altogether.

the scars left by your chains will heal,

but until then, 

when will you rid your own demons?

when will you join me?

i still love you.

i can't help coming back for you.

and every time it ends, with that metallic taste of blood and concrete in my mouth.

can't we make it different this time?

try harder.

please.

This is not psychology

I think time was contracted to run faster as we got older. Or maybe we just got busier, we got heavier, we got slower.

Every day seems to move at a different pace bringing me new things every moment.

Every year seems to whitewash the last, a whole year of inescapable bubbles I found myself in, is pushed to the back of the shelf. Further and further till I have forgotten what those feelings were like.

The people that were a part of my life, the music that filled in the spaces when silence was nowhere around to quieten down the restlessness of a childhood passed from hand to hand.

I’m afraid that as we move into our futures, we lose our chances when we quarrel, when we slur against each other, when we are separated. When we are hurt, we start turning away from the world, we start turning our backs on our parents, and our siblings and we choose to forget them. We forget to take them along to share in our moments.

I know there are some things I need to experience for myself and I will, gladly. Space is something we all crave but at the same time, as easy as we demand it, that’s how quickly we want it to disappear. We try and wish it away, but we still feel cornered by what we have asked for.

I’m afraid that when I look into the future, I won’t see the people I love because I would have forgotten to love them. I would have just gotten angrier and angrier that they couldn’t understand me, how I grew and why I turned out to be the way I am. I forget that I didn’t give them the time of day, I didn’t let them care about me because when they tried, I didn’t explain. I didn’t want to take the effort with them. Instead, I wasted my time with strangers and people that took me for granted. I chose to tell them when they couldn’t care less about me or what would happen to me.

I told them anyway. Because telling them was easier, facing them felt lighter and talking to them, reaching out to them I did quicker than searching for the caring in my own blood.

I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to be detached. We all have to move on. But we don’t have to forget. I want to learn from them as much as I can. I don’t want to have to regret that I wouldn’t know what they’d say or how they’d feel. They are not my enemies. These are people that had lives before I happened. These are people that made plenty of their own mistakes. These are people that tried to be right and sacrificed who they were for me, so I could grow.

Who shut up, so I could rant. Who got hurt, so I didn’t have to.

But I did, I still did. Even after you stood to try and protect me, you didn’t protect me from yourself. I didn’t think it would occur to you how important you were. But now you do, you are what I know of love, sacrifice, pain, and strength.

unnamed

We seem to be living the blur yet again. We seem to be walking the same damn line. Take me back 10 years. Take me back to the summer where we house hunted, where we ran naked through our pockets in search of pennies to pay for a home.

Shelter is not just an aluminium sheet anymore, the rain seeps in, orders. The mattress you sleep on today has a story, it was stolen. Hungry hands grabbed it away, a bachelor turned it into a wedding bed, and then threw it away when a baby was born. When your baby was born, 18 years ago, was your home small? Or was it large, was it too big to hold? The feeling of having to be a home for another being? Another life you held in the palm of your hand, you would be the hand that fed it, you would be the brush that painted the smile on its face, you would take it to school and help it live.

You would show it the world, a world that was too ugly to be rolled into a diploma, you showed her the chasm between theory and practise. You broke the sound barriers when you educated her with those words.

When i write, i talk at a thousand people at the same time, to a hundred people in a single glance and to a handpicked few in a single breath. Today, its 18 years after. And the both of you are here, another came in between to define the prism of light growing in her womb. And it shone brighter and brighter, but she grew weaker and weaker, and no matter how hard i try and save the hands that taught me how to live for the one that still has to live, age has caught up with you. and although the wise one tells me to be brave about death, how can i when your story has yet to be told? I stay away from it all, I’m sheltered by the walls that enclose me, the wings cover me, and so many others that try escape the shrewd nature of the world that lies beyond the walls of barbed wire, beyond the grizzly screens, and further beyond the pictures in the paper, black and white and red all over.

Still in the midst of all this instability, in the heart of this wall of text, there is a beating fighting young poignant heart. There is a point. Sailing across the gulf that separates us, you come to build me a home. I have a few more years left in me, i still have them. All i can say is I can still step into my Father’s House, I can still look up and praise, and I will still look up with no shame until there is nothing to look up to anymore. For that is how I came into this world, with my head thrown back, and my eyes shut, and my hair covering my ears.

Not the pretty way words are supposed to look on a page, no the beauty you bring is when the intensity of your eyes burns life into every syllable of this prose. When finally you swallow your fears and your pride and every single piece of your mortality that remains and you pause. Your stomach churns, because the hardest thing to admit is that you have reached the end of the page. So until then, i’ll put a stopgap in the inflated importance my generation gives to procrastination, and i will shamelessly waste away my days with you, until all we know is taken from us again, and we will be hurt.

And still from the ashes we shall rise.



Golden children of the sky, you golden children of the sky.

muskoca

"you never step in the same river twice"

I remember I used to be able to guestimate the time of the present day, it was a game for children in our school since watches were something only the rich kids could afford. The fancy golden brass strap with those little hands ticking away. Today, miles and miles away from home, it seems that not only do the 's's become 'z's, but the leaves of the trees in Muskoca are changing to their mortal hues...and yet, I remain unchanged. Stagnant. The hands of a watch that doesn't work anymore.

The lake stretches out infront of me. So much water, a sea of submission, the opportunity for immersion, or then there's me, the last grain of salt... left apart to dissolve in a flurry of emotionally turbulent times.

Today, my mind has the advantage of generating thoughts my conscience can recognise, so much so that it cannot keep up with them. I think louder than I speak now. However, there is no excuse for ignorance, and no fatality worse than it. So I'm gonna try and snap out of it, this isn't silence, this isn't wisdom, this is numbness.

This rudimentary page will serve as another one of my many beginnings. Only today, the awareness with which I have to capture my thoughts add the slow effortless punch to the serious cocktail of practicality and sentimentality, of letting go to hold on, of coming age to appreciate the days of innocence passing...all, so that one day, one that lives for the joy of living in itself can enjoy the sharpness with which opportunity kick-starts the future. 

marilyn monroe

"I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't." - Marilyn Monroe


These words haunted me so much. They made that little part of you that still lived in my heart come alive again. You awoke, and you agreed. And inside, the two roses that you gave me started crumpling from the inside with the power of that truth. All I heard of you were little stories of two months in Portugal, or the name of that stranger that was a friend, a sister, blowin' in the wind.

I've come so far. Yet, even in Toronto, I still see your face. Not the black angry eyes, or that cold blunt burning face. I still see your inquisitive eyes, that twitch you'd make with the corners of your lips when you weren't sure about something and you didn't quite know how to express the fact that it wasn't what you wanted either.

I wish you had spoken. I wish you argued with them. I wish you understood that at the end of the day, all that I wanted, was to be loved. By you.


You were my Marilyn Monroe. 

unnamed

It's so easy to walk away. 

To end it all with that extra decibel. But to be silent
while the world watches,

while the stopwatches, and the timers, and alarms

and everything else that could possibly
hold you accountable
for something you
haven't
done
goes off...

that's when the gravity of the earth no longer holds you to ground.
That's when no one else needs to understand.
That is the bliss, of you
and only you, knowing something
like an unimportant secret,

what you
and only you,
can hold inside that clenched fist of yours.

There's so much I had to say to you. But I've always had so much to say. Now, just to be different, I let the foreign silence bridge the insatiable gap between our souls.

There has to be feeling when there are no words left.
There has to be understanding when all we have time for is one look.
There has to be forgiveness when we leave ourselves behind,
so we can find others.   

The words are at the tips of my fingers.
My strength seems to fade at my lips.
There's a struggle in my voice, an audible rasp, before
I give in.

The restraint seems to find me in time. I won't shout out to you. I'll just let you pass.
I won't disturb you.
My fingers still stretch out, and the light dances on them.
I pull them away, bring them close to my heart. Tight, balled-up fists. These hot,
                                                                                                                            angry                             hands are learning Patience.

Dawn is always missed by those that watch the stars -

29 November 2011 00:35