Does it matter
How to live
How we die?

The householder
In his bed surrounded
By family, friends

The ****** in the
Gutter all sense of
Self abandoned

The monk bolt
Upright sat
Self-gone mummified

What matter
When matter gone

All flesh decayed
All mind leaked
Away and
Away all spirit
Flown

All dead all beastly

Dead and gone

Sometimes a poet's muse
                            comes

          e
        r
   ­       r   a
               t  
               i c
              a
             l
               ly



like     a
           puzzle
                           s  c  a  t  t  e  r  r  e  d
on
          the            marble
            
        of
                      his
                               imagination
    

       then
                   he
picks
              his     quill
with

                 his
                          witty
hands
                      
and arranges
his  thoughts
into a poem.

The 11th brought rainfall
while the 13th brought icy winds
and on the 15th, the sun surprisingly did glow
but most unexpected of all,
was the 16th's fall
of a deep white blanket of snow
and yet despite the 17th's confusion
and the 18th's dismay
the 19th's joy brought them in unison
and by the 20th they all thought
that the april snow fall,
though unexpected,
wasn't too bad at all

We stand in twilight hues...
Fingers consciously entwined in a clasp.
We speak without vocals
that crescendo between sighs and gasps.

We anticipate...
But we do not look forward...
Not to the promise of freedom and salvation.
More so the uncertainty
that resonate with the *****
of feathered morning birds.

The unknown scares us so.
We know not of what lurks,
in the impending light of day.
We simply bide the ticking seconds...
As we scramble for the right words to say.

When there needn't be such uncomfortable silence.
No need for an awkward stance.
For we've embraced the melody,
memorised the lyrics
and rehearsed the dance.

Yet...
We hesitate...
Even though we've decided that we must.
For what shadow that looms agape below us,
hurling threats of swallowing us whole,
will soon be warded off...
As quick as the errant gust.

The darkness...
Will soon be cast behind our backs.
And all would be committed to memory
as surely as it had begun.
It would dissipate as it would stretch far...
But only if we turn to face the dawning sun.

All of what they've told me were true:
You'll fall in love with a girl even before she falls in love with you.
You might not realise it soon enough.

First, you'll fall in love with her smile.
Then, you'll get to stare at her eyes and see more of her.
Lastly, you'll hear her laugh and it'll be the most precious sound you'll ever hear.

Once you've felt one of those, there's no turning back.

From the depths of my pain,
you have shown me that beautiful flowers
grow in the midst
of the cosmic chaos I was in.

You were the twinkling spark,
the light in the shadows of my sadness,
the encouraging voice that metamorphose
my black and white world into something kaleidoscopic.

You sifted the specks of dust
that revealed the darkest secrets I hid.
You were the sun that illuminated
during the twilight of my incoherent thoughts.

I was composed of the ephemera of depression,
the hushed air between my teeth
when my lips were sealed.
I remember the time you told me,

things will get better.
I sighed and responded,
I don’t think so.
I thought you were going to give up

for I was stroppy, cumbersome teenager
but instead, you smiled;
you morphed my cynical perspective
into a superlative of optimism.

Every time my voice trembled
with the curse of anxiety,
your words nursed my soul
casting me with courage.

Your words I kept,
in hollow crystallised bottles,
like encapsulated messages of importance.
Spilled thoughts were the reminiscent

of my favourite brisk days with you,
filling the fragments of my loneliness.
I seem to be on the sentence
of the last paragraph where you wrote:

things will get better.
written in the crisps pages
of my sad blues chapter,
dipped in ink;

I believe and trust you wholly,
because things do become better, no matter what.
You were always there for me,
if only you knew how much that meant to me.