when somebody dies in your life
you take a little sway
you dance like you’ve never danced
you obey desires of withdrawal
the sickness wins and the walls comes close
the average becomes over dramatic
and the awkward things becomes forbidden
the holidays turns into funerals
marches, parades never gets meaning so as
marriages, reunions, celebrations, vibrations, ejaculations
receding hairlines and frail weeks and years
the failure in your genes
the desperation in your eyes
the grasp for air
and the seriousness to continue
you lose it all
ran out of cigarette
will sleep dealing with withdrawal
the last stop
soon enough you die too
not too much
not too little
but enough to live and witness
how you lose the entirety of it all

i once knew a girl from college
whose face looked so
****** up.

two protruding sacks of swollen eyebags
is what her face most consisted of
but her buck tooth was a challenger
but never that noticeable.

her ******* were fairly large enough
for my palms,
her gut, average and slightly
matched her love handles.
her bob cut hair and the ends of it
showed disorder.

some people to me is more noticeable
when they try hard enough not to be.

and this girl just got all the hints
and layers of closet facts that
just needed a little bit of opening.

i wasn’t attracted nor in love
but more of curious,
there wasn’t anything happening
around those days
so i just observed in stale-pretense.

if there’s something i really want,
fickle ******* destiny
wants me to drool for it first
but this time, i tricked her
because i did not know what
i really wanted from the girl
and it just happened:
one night when the class was over
we knew that it was some minutes
past nine,
out of nowhere she asked
us if anyone would like to come
over at her house
to drink since it was friday.

most of our classmates were
plugged in to the system,
next in line before the leaders,
Christians and the like
who never dance,
who never give
who never admit and submit
from their truest form next to humanity
and if a foreign subtance
such as alcohol would enter their
bodies, their oath to the absence
of reason called faith would
be nullified with a stamp
of rejection from heaven.

so only a few of us rusty lungs
came with her.

she had her own car,
it was something,
helped build up
the tick and the vibe
to prepare our stomachs.

her house was mansion-like
and there
we smoked and we drank,
we drank and we smoked
in the biggest breathing-living room
i have ever been to;
she turned out to be
a daughter of a professional legitimate
robber, a.k.a. lawyer.
rich family outside the media.
class.

the place showed a malicious aura
and the lights were dim,
had dark reclining comfy sofas
and the one in the middle
can be setup as a bed.
she had a turtle back guitar
which looked so expensive
though old and seemed
to have been through dozens
dose of the blues for many nights
i’ll never know.

the first layer to reveal itself
off her sleeves was the fact that she
was an alcoholic *******
and what i mean by *******,
she could outlive the limits
of us guys and put us into shame,
leaving us question our
gender and pure existence
of our ***** before the
entire feminine side of her.

one of the guys
showed interest in her first,
checking her out and made
a move
but that didn’t bother me
because i was curious and not
in any vivid form to look for love.

it was funny because she seemed
so oblivious and all she wanted
was to have a good time drinking,
and the guy ended up with hanging blueballs.

most of the guys went in for her
and ended up looking like a loser
but i was the real loser.
during those times i just been past through
some complicated ****
so i never showed anything off my sleeves
but just to be there near her presence
along with the free drinks which consisted
mostly of
coke and *****.

those nights went on and on,
i never missed a night
whenever she invited us.

everything was everything as it was
until the times skipped a lot
of her layers.
as always
she invited us one night after
the examination week was over.

everyone was tired like a ******
factotum like from those
production factories, warehouses and
old attrition-prone post offices
just like how Bukowski described it.

we needed it, her invitation.
things went along as how it has always been
for us commoners at her house,
we drank, we converse drunk,
we argued over useless facts drunk,
we sang drunk, we smoked drunk,
we drank drunk and it went on,.
i was too drunk at that time to even remember
the important details but
in the middle of it,
she whispered something in my ear
and the words came vague to me
as the only word she was able to
articulate well was ‘go in the bathroom...’
so i went in, sat on the throne,
lit a cigarette and waited.
i’m telling you i won’t be
pretentious on this one because
in all sense of my sense
considering i have an inferiority complex,
i knew i was in for a treat...

she came in and closed the door and said,
“******* in front of my face...”
and so i did for the hell of it,
i haven’t been laid for a long, long time.

i worked and worked  
and in the middle of my silly beating
i noticed a change in her appearance,
she was staring at my chinese-descent ****
with compassion and
dedicated eyes that showed longing.
before me and my thing,
she looked divine and beautiful
with sadness all over her face,
it all came to me all at once
minus the drinks and my bloated gut.

she put it inside her mouth
when it got ambitious.
nothing can compare, it felt
right as it felt wrong.

she was drunker than i was
as she
bobbed her head, my hands were
submitted to the pleasure,
i swore i would’ve pushed her head
away but i didn’t

for

i didn’t need to, she stopped
three to four blocks away from the
threshold, her eyes was still on it
then she cried.

from there, i knew i was ******.
a girl crying,
in their bathroom with a guy
her parents would disapprove,
plus her mother was a lawyer
and worse, jail sentence.
i felt ******* and so i pulled my
pants up, apologized and
tried to wipe her tears
then she said something
i shouldn’t be writing here. . .

she confessed that she was *****
multiple times.
i asked her why tell me?
“because i feel so embarassed..”

i did what i should.
we spent more than half an hour
in the bathroom having the
conversation.
comforted her as she went on.
she revealed all that she could

and

as soon as we got out,
we were laughing and
we both knew we’re in a relationship.

it only lasted for less than two
weeks.

i broke her heart for some reason
that was mainly her fault,

she cried for me as she pleased
at some point.

i regretted it at some point,
not giving her a chance
and all that

but it was good.

it was all too good to last anyway
and

we just decided to be friends

and it was alright.

too alright for me
to consider something
to write about
over and over again,
in versions.

if you say that
you don't want
to do this anymore,
the job, the work,
the office,
the spreadsheets. . .

then what else
would you
be better doing?
what else is there to do?
all thoughts are leading
to ending up into a ***
in the streets begging
for change.

it's a trap you see.
everything is supposed
to be free until everyone
started owning things.
they caged us with
most of us not knowing.
it costed us our
true freedom.
they contained us
like gasoline
for their desolate machines
that has no flesh or heart
that no single human being
could ever stop on his own.

where the homeless are
right now is just pure
evidence how cruel
we let things happen.

you wanted to praise Jesus,
and the next thing you know
is that you didn't helped
at all
and you only
helped yourself with lies
to cover up the absence
of reason.
why such terrible things
happen?
leave it all to God.
what is a god?
leave it all to nothing.

honest, i sometimes
think i believe in
the terrorists.
they are like mental
scars left untreated,
bound to do things
their own way.
never again
to sit still in front
all of these established
conformity that was
created for our minds
to submit to,
to unconciously
accept
as the standards
or as the only way,
the right way.
but it's absurd to do so,
either way.

i have these thoughts
out of motion,
inanimated,dead,
therefore i failed
but the tiniest spark
will do
against all odds,
against the
thousands of
your faithful followers
and your statuses
about yourself,
your beautiful self.

when the words doesn’t come through,
by force, the results are raw.
steady typing fingers’ grip to the brain
is loose.

such things to write about goes on
and on and on faster
and dizzy eyes tries to maintain
a steady composure to one of any subjects.
subjects are always the rejected ones,
the crashing bores, like death,
like a deterioration of one’s
mindful head,
little failures, big failures,
the frozen mainframe of progress
bound in the comfort of the non-expecting
life contestants who are impaired by
titanic cost and competencies of life
and the countless bubbles of beer
poured in a titanic glass, a refuge at stake.

it’s a slow progress that takes longer
than the arrival of death.
it’s not appreciation,
not a consolation,
not a recognition,
not a part of history.

it’s more of a contribution to
the records of souls who chose to enter
bits of their time taken against their will.

what urge pushed one to write
reflects a patient in a straitjacket
who fought tirelessly to will’s last,
claiming his sanity back to the ordinary,
claiming the things that lingers around
silent and invisible to the naked eye,
as words of truth
like wings of a hummingbird in motion
captured by the stillness between
the gray-dull moving pictures that hides
behind its natural form.

this is not intelligence.
this is not a man who confessed his
hidden murders in exchange of
his own unburdening, a trick
that numbs the consequences for
comforting lies.
this is the force of the emptiness.
this is not wit and wit is not welcome.
this is either hypocrisy or pretense.
this is not about your judgment and criteria
of how one could be a great writer.

this is,
in all its hide and state,

is a fortress made out of a writer’s block.

they are going
to pluck
all of your
feathers first
before they
set you free.

everyone has
been built
tough,
less human
in UAE
and
even the cats
here, they
stare at you
aggresively
with their fangs
out.

i don't know
for how long
i could keep
the screaming
damp on the
back of my head
as it tries to
escape the fantasy
i made to keep
it asleep.

everything's much
better if these things
were taught in schools
mosques and churches
because humans,
including the bus drivers,
passengers, mall guards,
OFWs with their
life depending on CEOs,
and the people,
the people and the people
though having their
lives laid upon the cycle
and
the system,
still couldn't speak
or write about the
oppression made
natural on their blood.

and i'm struggling to find
an easy way out
the hard way just like
the rest of them...

no God would ever
be so kind and perfect
as they describe him
to let this all happen
and therefore, God
and his other versions
are just motor plugs
to keep the silent
ones going
and

for the others,
flesh, blood and
sweat

and for me
is writing all
the screams
that i could prevent.

on the balcony
of our flat,
i light a cigarette
as the buildings
flickers its lights
harmoniously
like a morse code
in the night.

i look frequently
at the back of the sliding
door to see if they're
back already.

i hope they won't be
until i am asleep.
i am one with myself
tonight or any other
night.
an overdose of loneliness
in a place full of business
and contracts and the years
to come.
it will change me, i fear.

the books i have with me
are all i have,
words from dead writers
whom secret
readers such as i
embrace like a last
source of warmth in a
cave i find myself in,
shivering from a winter
state outside.

so many ideas for a novel
and yet none could be
done, helplessly i cling
to the idea of
these dead writers
as if i converse with them
through the weight
of the book i choose
to read
every night.

if i throw these words
out to another human
being, it'll only pass
through like a ghost
and will mean
nothing as it took
me on a distant
phase once
when i was
wounded by love,
stress and disappointments.

i am a beacon in the dark,
consumed by the dark,
a black lonesome
creature as dark
as coal
and as brittle
as coal.

as dry as the wind of
this country i'm in,
as lifeless as the lives
i have come to notice,
as lives become no
different than clockworks,
worn out tires and
beat up soles.

nothing could be done,
this is how things are,
the lives are
narrowed down
into an organism
filled with nothing
but the same things
over and over. . .

i return to the proper
reality,
the cigarette between
my fingers on my right hand
is grayed out.

below are the neighbors
hanging around,
wearing their jilbabs
probably talking
about something
i couldn't understand.

lives are always under the dark clouds.
little kids who just wants to play outside,
in the sun,
in the rain,
away from the busy streets
of
the city
where childhood
meets
the end of the road.
further and further away,
it’s an endless road.

lives after lives after lives after lives...

no one looks
at the sky anymore
just like the way we did
when we were young.

we’re all in the same picture.
desperate lives,
kids who doesn’t want to grow up,
kids who realized too late,
old living room superheroes with capes
now wearing business suits and neckties,
bachelors employed in to something
they’ve been lied to,
hundreds of the kindest, smartest,
educated beings now demands
order through activism,
current bums in the streets still the heirs
of former bums in the past
the same with
current politicians,
heirs of former politicians.
countries, big ones
racing and paddling tirelessly
with people that serves as their
coal. . . .

it’s all happening and you know it.
it’s all happening but they keep you
distracted every two weeks in a month.
it’s all happening while you’re on your
knees with your eyes closed as you believe
in something you’ve been lied to
which costed millions of lives
through history before
it became what it is today.
it’s all happening;
one proof is that writers from
hidden parts of the world
and of history came to feel its
presence and has written it
as a reminder. . .

and

the one sitting on the dark throne
nullifies their stand
by keeping us occupied. . .

you got hired?
you got a raise?
you got promoted?
your boss recommends you?
your boss sends you gifts?
you got your own piece of the land?
you worked hard for it didn’t you?
for what?
to prepare the ones your worked for
just to suffer the same fate?
what?
i’m crazy?

oh you got admirers?
you just posted the smartest
useless thought that caught a lot
attention?
you feel secured because it won’t
come in your time
and
i’m just crazy?

yes,
like a mad dog under a
restraining order.