She is not love, she is not war
     but flames impassioned in the lore
     of the world in mirth and thistle crown-
     bona fide dour endeavour whittled down.

She is not love, she is not war;
     a familiar face in dreams of yore
     in the world where nightmares rage,
     the mellow touch of soothing sage.

She is not love, she is not war;
     soft heart listless in the core
     bleeding crimson, etched in agony
     of silent pulse in numbing ecstasy.

Tick-tock twilight tempest
lone saunter by the beach
neath stars and moonlit embers
Home shies in restive reach

Fake smiles on plastic lips
Prima facie prima donnas
press play on broken records
cheap words on repeat.

'Beauty' preens on billboard prints
as sundown slicker paints the sky
over 'salt-of-the-earth', white-collared wage-mules
and souls too worse for wear.

So they lie, yes, while they lay
in flesh caskets upon prime real estate tombs;
"I've lived the life," they'd say while peering down
on those who lived just to live.

And the world plays this sad charade
in clockwork symphony every single day
as its asphalt veins pump with diesel fumes in streams
from the steel entourage with their precious cargo.

So press play on broken records
for humdinger proof
your sorrowtide serenade
the grovel & groove.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Insomnia;
of hopes and dreams
tethered to the brink of eyelids-
blink and they're gone.

These thoughts they atrophy
amidst the badgering chaos,
the harshest cacophony, yielding
to the force majeure- the zeitgeist.

Every dream
and every waking phantasm
allude to unkept promises
made to reflections.

Oh how a single beam of light,
straight and unwavering,
scatters as it passes through the fractured mirror
wielding phantoms of a former presence.

Alas the evidence is confounding:
coffee cup rings and half-written lines,
tousled sheets in empty confines,
and hollow eyes with empty stares.

These pieces of a jigsaw,
as disjointed as are confronting memories,
are just as they seem: determinants
of a bigger, scrambled picture.

C'est la vie!
These thoughts they atrophy.
Plateau. Patter.
Gone.

Have you seen the girl
down by the beach?
The one in pristine colours;
the one too far to reach?

"If only she knew,"
he mused, "if only she sees me."
Perhaps he's just too far to view
he laughs, "...or maybe it's because I'm 'me'."

He gazed upon her silently,
hoping she wouldn't notice.
Alas his heart yearned constantly
for her eyes to turn and meet his.

And as he sat and yearned and pined,
he heard a whisper in the wind.
A passing thought came up to his mind-
her heart was taken, his fair Fraulein.

Discomposed, his thoughts danced a gavotte
amid mournful, clumsy rhetoric.
His mind got tangled and besot
to read her thoughts in manic heartsick:

In his mind he saw upon her brow lay stolid furrows;
with thoughts unsaid she sings, content, her lullabies.
Streaked with wounding sorrows, hushed, her voice in alto-
she sings despite the callous alibis.

"If only she knew,
but maybe that's just unlikely."
Or perhaps he's just too far to view,
he laughs, in painful soliloquy.

We dream a dream of tomorrow,
of fresh starts and new beginnings.
We wait on sunrise for what could follow
in eagerness for happy endings.

"Tomorrow," we tell ourselves in desperation.
Tomorrow, we hope to be; tomorrow, we become.
So we live today in trepidation
for a tomorrow that might never come.

We walk these crowded roads but we walk alone
towards where destiny could afford us.
But we walk in faith to ends unknown
with hearts on sleeves, and fervent wanderlust.

Time, hope, fate- all singularities
colliding onto each other.
Hold fast the spark of entwined destinies
so we could live tomorrow's adventure.