There's no small amount of desperation seeping out of the cracks.


The sickness within suppressed by sheer effort of will.


The left scars ache with the fires that locked away language of the body.


The right thing perhaps to do is leave.


But I don't want to break from your side,

And the ground screams goodbye.

"You just wanted to hear me scream, didn't you?"

chuckle
Darling, it's been so long since I heard you moan.

I'll just settle for your screams.

Now all the songs speak of your scratched out mosaic.

The crawling of memories bleeding out into the next pool of tears I create.


It feels like dying, just a hundred times more worse.


I have issues.

You issued my execution warrant by the end of our red strings.

Funny. I don't remember trafficking any drugs.

Unless the drug was the feeling of emasculation, disorientation, disrespect, sordid throwing of caution to the wind.

Then yes.

It's a marsh of filth you made me crawl in.

And you know I would do it all again in a heartbeat.


You're pointless.

A continuous wave of motion into the gloominess of tomorrow.

The layers stripped away, nostalgia be ******.

When we reach the end of this road, in the knowledge we've done all we could.

And I'll know the love unspoken, the fair queen unabashed, naked truth spilling out.


Hoist my shield up high, as I soar to your side once more.

The hunger grows.

Patience stretches off into the horizon.

A king can rule alone, if needed.

He'll wait til the fair queen sits by his side once more.

Soft juicy tender lips slide apart for the racking of the meat slab in the cavern of the beast moist and juicy it slides into it and ends up giving up its life essence for majestic theatres that blare into the silent ticks between the clock.

In the first moment of truth there is brilliance.

In the second moment of truth there is clarity.

In the last moment of truth there is resignation ; the tunnel of darkness exploding into light.

The shears I borrowed from you were rusty, I told you about them before.

The sheer dumbfounded look on my face when you told me I could keep it,
rust and all.

Only Schweer's sorrow was left, when Schwerte's last few denizens came to bid their farewells to you, the spinster with her shears.

He shuffled and wiped specks from his eyes, peering into the distance, observing the blue eyes hidden behind melanin.

Picking up scrolls of knowledge unbound, dust devils rolling in his wake.

Drew the curtains open, spilling golden cloth unto his being, as he wrapped himself in the fading of the light.


Lightly brushing fingertips onto cobwebs long frayed, rot and decay spread, accelerating time and tense til only dust remained.

Dust and memories of a time where he too, once sat as an equal to a young lord, his visions guiding the actions of a fledgling nation.


Now, all remained slipped through his fingers.


He took strides to the door, taking no time to rip open the door that held him in exile.


The Seer In White had returned.

We're one with the flame
And we burn with the flame
Til we contract the blame.

I watched his eyes flare up like the life of a dozen young children were reflected in them.

I watched his gait change, and cycling through emotions he started to dance.

His shoulders drooped as mouth began to sag, and eyes glistened over with tears bridled.


He is my friend.


And I write this for him.

It's a sad realisation,

You've pruned your own branches so that you wouldn't choke and die from stretching too far.

You're becoming ash,

You're becoming an effigy.

To your own cycle that you stepped out from.

It's always the eyes that get me.

For a walking black hole of emotion,

I sure keep swirling back to them.

When it's all said and done with,

I've become one of the unthinking majority.

The bones ache again.

Can't seem to dislodge this knife in between my spine, either.

Well.

Almost a year anyway.

I'm not quite sure if my mental strength is eclipsed by the sheer exhaustion just merely existing and trudging day by day.

I'm tired of these circles.

I step out of one to get swallowed by a bigger one each time.

Here I find myself retreating physically into smaller and smaller spaces, my mind growing too big for its own good.

How does it feel to have patterns traced on your flesh, never realising that the more you push

The more you slip

You spin around in patterns in a frozen monument to your failures

These numbers and figures didn't speak as loud as my heart.

Everyone's at my back, pushing me forward.

It's true what I heard then.

I can't be left alone.

This will happen again and again.

The flesh remembered the skin being tugged away

The mind remembered disarray

The soul going back to a long winter


Pull me back to land.

I'll kiss the winter flowers.

To write your name in frozen hours.

Long winter in hearts into brittle flowers.


Our eyes are blind, but we can still see, can't we?

A piece of red string was cut recently,

Even if I didn't feel it,

I saw time itself unravel, unexisting.

O sweet starling, starlight.

Understand we can't reach out anymore

There's a hole in my heart where you left, walked out on me with the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Will I bite the hand that feeds?

Not quite, I believe.

The grief follows rage, like remora with the sharks swimming along.


Swallow the pride and continue fighting.

How long do you want to be moved by your own thoughts which are discretionary?


Pray Hell and high tide never comes for you.


I'll be riding at the peak of their crests, screaming.

I find myself staring at rows of dairy products to no particular reason.

The pleasure of pressure brings no joy

Walking down old haunts against a flow of faces I will never remember.

Drowning sight in rose-tinted glasses

What if I don't want anything anymore?

These crown of thorns sewn into my skull to be a king of fools.

"The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self."


Swept the dusty floor with the steps you taught me, one and half step forward and back.


The sensations caress skin no longer there to feel it, having flaked off time and time ago again.


Where did the time go, if not here?

Where did the sand go, if the tears in your eye weren't caused by it?


We've always been alone.


You made living life a little better.


Goodnight, Lord Janus.

Your presence heralded new beginnings.

And we left the same way we met.

The bones ache, down to the marrow.

Creaking and sighing til you come back.

It's gonna take a while to get the skin used to your absence.

It's gonna be a while before the poison wears off.

Yours is the language of the body which I have to stop speaking.

It's a funny metallic feeling,

A ****** taste in my mouth,

A slight despair filled with minor joy.



You're me.

And I'm you.

Without you there is no me.

Dying for you, dying for me.

Perhaps saying it makes it right,

Perhaps saying it makes it true.


Reach out to me in your sleep.

Walk alongside me in my waking hours.


Shadow my every step,

Follow each motion through.


Marry the left with right,

Kiss the top of each other's forehead.


The king in black meets a foe he has been fighting for far too long.


The seer in white comes out to hold the king's hands with the words he has been waiting for a lifetime to hear again.


"I forgive you."

Your bitter synopsis
A raging storm but quite pointless bluster
Slamming against an echo chamber
Like the empty vessel you are


My practiced charade
Masks and more masks
Hidden away my visage
For my eyes would betray my thoughts


Her eternal solitude
Penance she pays
For the sins never wrought
In permanent slumber.


His silent auction
He doesn't believe in words anymore
Actions drag him closer to the edge
Making a choice he'll never regret


Their solemn vigil
Below neon lights
With smiles long practiced
And temples beyond restoring

Our voices harmonic
As we breathe
With that feeling
Fire scorching nerves
Drowning in sensation
Grounded in the moment
Lost in the space between us.

Hello there.

It has been five years now to the day I met you in person again.

After like, years of not meeting.

Five years plus a few days.

Ah.

If someone told me five years ago I'd be what I am now, I'd probably laugh my *** all the way to the Singapore River and threw myself into it.
(you know I can't swim.)

I wasn't always like this, you know that don't you?

Bitter, bitter heart of mine.

Though it is precisely why bitterness enjoys misery's company : bitterness provides the bleak landscape which misery just sits and broods for days on end.


But then again, I wonder.

Did your coming into my life herald my restart?

Was it the end of my reign of dysphoria, the king in black with eyes that mirror nothing but echoes of yesteryear?

Perhaps, just perhaps.


That one day I made my decision to honour both of us.

To fully enclose myself, wrap my soul around yours.

The warmth of acceptance and eternal patience for one such as I.


I remember how much you hated me writing.

I remember how much you hated me recalling about moments past.

I remember most bitter moments, and wash them with water when you leave me all alone.


But I keep your smiles close to my heart.

Remember how we first went out?


Through the glass, right?



Ah.

So much transpired since then.


Funny how I've become synonymous with you and antagonistic to others.




Perhaps they were the kindling so I could step upon the grey expanse of ash.



I don't regret the choices I made.


Choices imply responsibility.

And all this time I thought I had responsibility over myself.

But I didn't.


She once told me to love myself.
She once told me to be good
She once told me many things, but I never once was any of them.



Funny.

I'm supposed to say something melodic or dissonant here.


Isn't that what I do best, poetry?


But no.


This is no poem.


This is no love letter.


This is no song.


This is someone who has been beaten black and blue.


This is someone who is numb.


Someone who would laugh as the whole world quite literally burns around him and perish screaming, fingers raised in a one gun salute.


This is a confession.


This is me no longer in doubt.


It's a rocky road ahead.


Surprisingly, we taught each other how to love.


I, with my scars.


You, with your demons.


Your feet and mine in a shy embrace.


The difference between us like how one would view the moon and the stars from down below.


Yet fail to notice, the moon and the stars will forever be closer than those down below will ever be.


With a simple task and clear intent, but a blatant disregard for preservation, a malevolent will.

Even though this is all happening, this immolated man spent moments frozen in eternity with your eyes open wide, a circle immaculate, the simplest bewitching of a non-physical drug candy.



With calculated movements befitting the only dance we'll forever do with each other.


For every second crawling by, feeding the smouldering flames between us, harkening to the start of it all.


Happy birthday my love.


Here's to us again.

Here's to you.


Love, ZHB.

Finding the words to say,
Instead resorting to babbling semantics.
Victory so close at hand
Easing all sense of doubt (and courage)

Yesterday even though was rosy
Eased all doubts,
And united us, once and for all.
Restoration of hope, ending heartache.
So, we do the dance again and again.

Love, here's to you.
Oh my goodness.
Love, here's to us.

"So I uh, well. Heh."


"أنا  بحبِك"

Before you were here before,
I didn't know where to look at,
To be standing, being bronzed by the Sun, or to be seated, head held in my hands.


And the orchestral works that ensued weren't unlike bird traps, binding the next one, til I had enough and discarded innards I had enough supping on.


Never did I know the least likely of insidious chapters I would go through,
New beginnings would herald,
Gritted teeth and gratitude ensuing.


Psychosis attacks, mental breakdowns and more scars on the body, beautifully macabre.
I'm all hung up, you were all stuck up,
Til I stuck you up.

I am a machine,
I was a machine,
A war machine.

A pretty hate machine.

A love so brittle it might as well be bound in papyrus.

The faintest of smiles would rekindle it though, and etch more scriptures onto once bony, stony hearts.

The silent tick of the clock
Brings me home to you

The silent tick of the clock
Brings me home, to you.

You are the unwritten sensation,
The unspoken passion.

Held passively,
Arms bound around my skin,

Just the two of us,
In this moment forever.

C'est la vie./Through the glass

We abashedly curled at lips

Swooned at hips

Harkening back to a period of time that no longer existed

(Where is my mind?)

She was-
Is still beautiful
Neither there, just here now.

Her voice echoing ever and ever :

"Hello."

We're fiction as long we're not within grasp
My diction requires your palm on my crown
Your friction may just feed me benediction.


The heart's jurisdiction is a fickle contraption
A not so subtle crucifixion nor constriction
Ensued when I fought against interdiction

You've become my addiction, my mental preoccupied obsession.
A depiction of dereliction's eviction.
Never again will there be remission's nonfiction.

You are to me, like how blood and wine are interchangeable, mutable.

I am to you, the raging storm passing by the coast, cold relief down your spine.


Both together, hand in hand, an addictive desire to better oneself, and the lust for ruination.


You are the ghost I'll never give up.

Deaden my nerves please.
Hold me so tight I cease to breathe.
Let the burn encompass my being.

Kiss me,
Kiss me again.

Love me,
Love me again.


Love me so hard
I cease to exist

He rises
And he takes control of one last joy spreading through my cooling corpse.

On a lighter note,
Love is a striptease that never ends
Even the most jaded will grudgingly admit
And for the notes that struck the heart
Notes that bring synthesia into the gray
Daring the gloom to seep, weeping into life
Enter joy, endless mirth, for it is how things should be.
Rejuvenating, primordial essence for the soul, and a cool wind for the mind.

I know it speaks a lot when the shards that embedded themselves into me still aren't dislodged.

Much like Tony Stark, we're both afraid of what would happen if we take them out, for as much as we would literally die if we don't take them out, we're deathly afraid of the process.

What if it goes wrong?
What if it turns out worse?

What if I become different?
And I lose my sense of purpose, the burning passion, the spark of devilry put out?


What if I'm afraid of change?

"Now, bow, dip, twist and turn."

Now, vow, lip, trust and yearn.


Are you hungry?

Time like a yarn,

Love like a dream, causing fluster,

Making bluster.


Are you in love?

Rhymes like ****,

Love licking off cream, causing blusher,

Making bluster.

Come into my arms

Against my chest, wrapped in my embrace

Nothing seems to matter now.

Through repeated patterns, a sense of familiarity

Rummage we did, through our own senses and emotions

Inside yesterday, we found today.

Perhaps, even today will be worth it for tomorrow.

I'll rather get lost in Hell attempting to find you
I gather that being last in Heaven but walking through those gates with you is fate

Feed the insatiable hunger so that I'm victorious
Lead the sashaying young ones

We're covered by the names of lovers from pages past.

Tattered rags, and rusted chrome chains bond us, bind us.

You're my happiness in slavery.

What happens then, when I run out of things to say?

What happens then, when you look me in the eyes and see nothing?

What happens if I tell you I'll bleed for you, and we leave each other bloodied and broken?

What will either of us do, when words become cheaper, more affordable than actions?


What if three a.m never comes, what if we stay awake beside each other with the nightlight on, no longer craving the contours and sweet of each other?

When it's all said and done, won't I just be a creep?

What if I don't become drowsy anymore around you?

When it's all said and done, won't we just get tired of each other?

I refuse to slow down even once.

*Let the afterburn match the aftermath*

He wandered into her store,

Saunters past while being aloof,

She notices him, unsure but curious,

She fixated on him, as the music grew louder between them.

C'est la vie.

It's six a.m and I find myself thinking,
What would I ever do without you now?

The bones ache without your breath billowing down spine.

The heart cracks, heartbreak reaching out for the last bibliographies you recited.

I'll sleep with the lights on tonight.

I dare not face the gloom without you.

Hit me up for another shot, and another.

You're the pusher on this *****.

And you control me.

With the last few red strands between us, I chose to be enraptured/enthralled/captivated/incapacitated.


With the last few red strands between us, you chose to be choleric/enraged/unwilling/adamantine.


Weaving our strands back together,
We chose enlightenment/humility/symbiosis/nurture.


Stoked my flames
Freed your spirit
In slavery there is happiness
In a bond of two there is freedom
Chains interchangable
Fingers entwined
A mutual fatality
An ubiquitous invitation

For this is everlasting, everlong.

Sun blazes down on the back of morons

Wind tears posture off their feet

Fighting for a foothold on what will never be, will never appear.

We feel so bad. We're feeling so terribly out of    place

So we
          sink

               Deeper
                 Harder


There is a macabre beauty in not knowing :
Becoming apprehension machines.

A spark that explodes

The touch that withers

Fires that never die off

Kisses for eyes that close forever

Feet that lose their rhythm

Salves that never heal

Prayers that go unanswered

Justice that is never served

Hate destroying all we have dear

The perfect drug.

Something odourless,

Something tasteless.

Untraceable,

Near-impossible to manufacture,

With extremely high levels of addiction.

Withdrawal symptoms from mild to severe, ranging between loss of appetite to psychosis.

A most delicate

Almost deliberate

Basic instinct

I don't need a Khadijah.

Neither do I want an Delilah.

A little bit of what Freud said,

And unhealthy doses of Darwinism.

I'm stuck in a perpetual state of being,

I'm stuck in a constant cycle of repetition.


You can't have your cake and eat it.

But for now, the tunes will simmer, strain and boil my feelings.


With the curling of fingers down your face.

Body marked by scars
Heart full of holes
Mind filled with cracks
Soul smeared with taint

But you were the best I ever had.

The loudest of the bunch
With sleeves wrapped down

With multiple layers on
Twinkle in his eye


The meekest of the few
With shoulders hunched and huddled

With nary a word to describe her
Too much of a wallflower


By chance, or by fate.
Just the two of them,

Bound by a moment in time forever.

The boy with his scars,
And the girl with her demons.

Our footsteps,
Not similar,
Yet familiar.
X meets Y in this rendition of love.

"As I live and breathe!"
How goes your latest despair?
Does it say "silent volume"?*
"Or perhaps, a new addiction for every end of day?"

Never looking through glass panels again,
To see how have things changed.

There's no need for the flames to dance across the darkness, no more.
It's seductive, I know.

It's tempting, I.. know?
There's always a need to look back, to learn.
Tell tale signs of intrusion, prevent your mind from being unchained.
Now, prepare for the ambush.
Feed the paranoia.
Fear the abandonment.

Relive.
Relief.

Two words that couldn't be farther apart.


Why does it sound so close, yet too far?

Relive : a small chime slowly drawing you in, to dream of a dream that was never a dream. A drowsy half state of a dead mind, and the best of your heart's desire.

Relief : the guitar strings thudding loudly as the drumming in your breast tolls a bell, that never ends til destinations been reached. The mind singing choirs of devastation averted, and the heart returning back to a slow rhythm.

Feel your/my/our exposed nerves.
Comprehension breaks down as submission draws nearer.

That old familiar feeling.
Flooding back, in tunes you never knew could exist in the space it took for a breath to begin and a sigh to end.

Lightning arcs across your brain, the scars lighting up, rearranging themselves in ****** gold runes.

It's a happy noise.
It's a good noise.

The background rises and falls, in perfect harmonic distortion.