Sometimes it’s all too quick
The way life whirls in a blur
A kaleidoscope spinning out of control
Carried on a cheetah’s back
In bursts of chaotic speed
Only winding down
For a gasp of calm
Rattled by frenetic gales
Shoving the world back into a frenzy;
Earthquakes
Riots
Carnage
Frustration and grief
Rent the air
Shattering the sun
In splinters of red
We’ve had enough!
We want it to end!
When will it end?
Our throats bled raw
Chords snapped and frayed
In sorrow and despair
Until there are no more tears
Left to cry
The doves
Are nowhere to be found
The olive branches
Have withered to brittle twigs
And all that’s left
Are the carcasses of hope
Rotting at our feet
Tag Archives: personal
Finding A New Home
For how long
Will I keep looking back?
Neck straining
Chin stabbing stubbornly
Into the dip of my clavicle
To keep that elusive ingress;
A lambent cocoon
That once held my body
In sight
My mind had found its idyll
Beneath lavender skies and pastel clouds
Where the sun had talked with me
Through jasmine mists
Flowers pressing bashful kisses
Against my ankles
While I picked words like persimmons
In abundance from the gardens
Hedging the brook
That rushed in pellucid streams;
An era of mellifluous equilibrium
I know there is no point
In being so stiff-necked
When I still pocket the seeds
From which a similar halcyon
Could germinate
Yet all around me
Is this dried earth
Infertile paths
That can offer nothing more
Than a mossy grove
To nurture my thoughts
A Glimpse of Cherry Blossoms
The cherry blossoms went as quickly as they came. An ephemeral wink of beauty; as if they had bloomed and taken a singular breath in the delicate flutter of a child’s lashes. The streets were awash in their petals, like neglected wishes that had spilled through the split seams of the air’s thin pockets.
She plucked as many as she could from the ground, imagining clipped moth wings within her cold palms. Fragile and translucent; evidence of hindered flight that had never reached its zenith. And it scared her to think that she could end up like these fallen blossoms. Because life always happened so quickly, its threads weaving and unraveling in patterns no-one could control. But she’d determined some time ago not to let her steps dwell too long in the mire of pessimistic thought.
Her heart was still warm with optimism, though the clouds gathered with a solemn murmur promising rain. She blew the petals on the wind, watched them swirl in a final dance that pushed her wishes upward to find a place – some day – in the tapestry constantly being woven by fate’s deft hands. And she prayed that next Spring, the wind would be a bit kinder and not so brusquely whisk away the serene blossoms that often carried her deepest dreams.
***
A Proper Goodbye
You will find me
In shreds of pencil shavings
Skin smudged
In the clumsy graphite
Of uncertain prose
Rewritten over and over
Until I can taste its dust –
Like charcoal –
In my mouth
Prickling down my throat
To cluster within my veins
Rushing with anxious vanity
To write one final piece
In the fashion
Of a proper goodbye
To these last few pages
Marking the end
Of another precious journal—
Another fragment of me.
A Poetic Ramble
My words have gone —
Lost
In the roil and roar
Of the tide
Chasing mirth
At the bare ankles
Of sandy feet
Strolling the shoreline
Where my thoughts
Have scampered away
On thin, sprightly legs
Into a sapphire oblivion
Without looking back
Leaving me behind
To mindlessly ponder
The exact moment
A small rip
Appeared in my leggings…
I visited an island with my friend and at the end of the day, while we sat watching the waves, I noticed a tiny tear in my favorite leggings 😥
The Power of Words
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about words and the power they hold. Truthfully, they should have been as inconsequential as the pebbles and gravel at our feet, merely giving us that satisfying crunch beneath our shoes. Innocuous and benign. But they’re the fissures crumbling into wide jaws that can eat us alive, without remorse, or the poppy fields which flourish into the idyll of our deepest imaginings.
I have a love/hate relationship with words. Because on the one hand, it’s beautiful in the way it lends itself to art. How it caresses our thoughts and whispers over our mind with an elegance as transfixing as watching the effortless grace of ballerinas. Or how it reaches out to us in those dark places, rubbing away the tears often unseen by others. But in the next breath, like a charlatan, it can become the rapier that rends us to irreparable shreds of ourselves.
More than food, almost more than water, our lives hinge – to an extent – on the words of others. It’s the reason some of us work so hard, for this approval that can get us closer to a desired outcome. But this isn’t meant to analyze what others do, because each of us deals with unique circumstances. In my case, however, I found myself thirsting after someone’s praise and affection.
I needed it to feel contented. Without his words, I became so miserable; there was nothing that could replace that hollowness inside me. Not until he came and gave me my fill for the day. Isn’t that pathetic? Liking someone so much that everything suddenly seems off-kilter, as if the sun is full of mud reflecting bleak and ugly colors, the second you don’t hear a word from them? That was me. Still is, to an extent.
And what I want to do, is find that margin of balance, where it won’t feel as if my brain is fragmenting just because we may not speak. Sometimes he’s very compassionate and endearing, other times he treats me with a noncommittal indifference. And more than anything, I despise inconsistency. But I rationalize these things; he’s only human and this is something we do. Sometimes we have good days, other days we could care less about certain things. Yet, I’m conflicted because, towards him, I care all the time.
My only crutch in all this is that I’ve come to accept I can’t control anyone – only my reactions to what they do. And as a simple rule of nature, the body acclimatizes itself to different situations and can live without something it’s been deprived of for a long time. In the same way, I should learn not to always indulge my need to pick from the fruit of his lips and greedily sink my teeth into the flesh of his words. Sure, it’s nice in the moment, to lick at the nectar and relish the flavor, but such an addiction is never truly healthy.
I never want to get to a point where I feel irrevocably lost without him…
Writer’s Block
She kept going in circles
Frustration bruising through
The underbelly
Of her pensive breaths
As her muddy footprints
Left behind blotches
Of grey matter
Over uneven cobblestones;
A too-often trodden path
Eclipsed in an inert silence
Now leading to nowhere
Without rescue
From the rising sludge
Of spilled ink
If the World Stood Still
She saw the world as a massive steam engine. Its rusted gears and pivots grinding endlessly, sputtering exhaust that crudely chided at the wind’s back. And people had no choice but to be caught up — strung by their hands and feet — in the madness of an endless toil. Like scrambling ants teeming this way and that in contained yet chaotic streams toward some mindless goal that gave them no time to rest. No time to lift their faces to the sun; to be pampered by her caramel kisses and warm hugs, that could melt away the tension within their bones.
And there was a girl who stumbled on the crosswalk, her blunder a hiccup in the rough heaving that always filled the air. But her mortified gasp was lost in the multitude of footsteps, kicking away any pity for her. Apathy only hurried her along to find her place back within the busy mosaic.
This was how it always went. And it made her wonder what would happen if the world hissed out a breath that brought it to a standstill, so it could take another more deep and filling breath?
If people were given the reassurance that sometimes it was okay to just be still and sink within the folds of serenity, would they trust that notion or keep wearing themselves away, day after day?
Why worry?
What has worry
Ever given as a reward
But painful wrinkles
Of unseen decay
And endless ravines
Gushing with putrid streams
Of polluted thoughts
Pinching every muscle
Into miserable scowls
Bones grinded to soot
‘Neath the fretful steps
Of a heavy heart?
And what has worry
Ever accomplished
In the absence of hope
But to squeeze mirth to
Doleful gasps
On a sallow breeze?
I know the answer
That nothing good
Comes of a mind
Stuck in the brambles
Of anxious misgivings
And yet
I cannot help but to
Wilfully stray and stumble
Within its pit of thorns
Feeling Regret
There is but a moment of silence
An ephemeral shimmer of calm
Teasing contentment at my shoulders
Before the pillars
Grounding this nonchalant facade
Tremble with violent fissures
Bursting through with a thousand snakes
Iridescent scales
Stretched and coiled
With mock affection
Before crushing my bones
Without remorse
And though the melodic lull
Of my heart
Strains through the din
Screaming through my veins
I am left restless
Heaving through the miasma
Of this paralyzing pain
That won’t leave me alone
That no-one can save me from
