Two streets away
I imagine myself walking
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes

Waking up with the world
As its beauty is still pale
Not yet mixed with the car exhausts

Two streets away
Is the silver wavy water
As it tries to imitate the sky

Bike wheels floating above the roads
Runners racing the sun
Music spilling from that one headphone.

Two streets away
I imagine my blouse fighting the morning breeze
The benches filled with the flowers' happy tears

The streets hinting of awakening,
As the shy face of the peeking sun
Warms the hidden chilliness 

Simplicity is the key
Without man's rough hands
Everything is just being itself

***** feet,
Asleep on yesterday's damage
Not yet awake to indulge in more*

● ● ●

Lately, all the days have been turning into Mondays,
A job for the sun and a career for the moon,
A pencil sketched world with only shades of gray,
Stuck in sharp angles with no curves any soon.

Now Night is a Canson paper
Static with no signs of life

No room for poetry
nor the power of imagination

It's only a time for hours of sleep,
Eight to be precise

Behind the curtains
Dreams wait for an invitation

So I'm calling for all the stars to come nurse this disaster,
To bring back nights when staring out the window was enough,
I'm calling for them to patch all the hearts that ruptured,
To free those practical minds out of their handcuffs.

We're sitting next to a sunset,
The weather says how are you today,
Staring at the blue horizon,
For a moment you thought it'd stay,
But then it leaves like it always does,
And all the blue birds learn to fly,
Fueled by a sinking fear,
That they might disappear into the night,
When was the last time,
That it was okay, to be so juvenile,
A word lost in a closed book,
To judge life by a cover so beautiful.

We sat and talked in the looming warmth,
The sun's not gone, the waters are blue,
Tracing the peaceful tracks in our mind,
Twilight's shadow cast over the greys we drew,
And the dream was looped,
It started from the beginning every few seconds,
Dooming truths as illusions in this world,
Where memories are made from our favorite color palettes,
But oh sleep unlinked our hands,
As it branched into the shades of morning,
Once again your hair covered your face,
And our days went back to their habit of forking.*

● ● ●

A thought that persists
And deviates too much towards sanity,
That it's in a right angle
With my ever present morality.

Strong sense of grounding
Pulling me towards the roots of gravity,
And whisks my neck,
But I'm too immune to spontaneity.

Am I too right-handed
In my right side brain and my frivolity,
And when I gravitate,
I fall too fast from the towers of insanity.*


●  ●  ●

No one wants to be crowned "Coward",
But the rusty taste that colors 
your tongue after saying too much,
Is not a flavor one wants to have for dinner, either.

The jump that broke your bones,
For just a second, your mind was intoxicated,
And left the control panel to your heart,
But the aftermath is what shall linger and stay.

Maybe it's not about courage,
Maybe it's more than a closed-eye moment of bluntness,
Maybe you like the interior design of your mind, 
And you want to stay there with no intruders.

The water has a sound,
I've only heard
when I was by myself.
It tells a secret
The way the circles
Form and swirl.

Just for a moment,
I never knew you.

And never tasted
Disappointment all too soon.

These vast acres,
Remind me of days,
When it was just me.
The sprinklers
Would cry 
And I would run free.

Just for a moment,
The weight elevated.

And matters of life 
and death were left to fate.

But the sun lied to me,
When I looked at the surface,
I only saw the break of day.
I kept searching and searching
But I never did
Find my face.

Just for a moment,
I was never here.

The earth revolved easier,
The sky had less tears.

Only that tree
Shall mourn my loss
When I echo off of the rope.
The moon can take 
Where I left off,
As my heart shall soak.

Just for a moment,
You won't think of me.

From this soundless world,
I wish you can find peace,
Under the same tree.*

● ● ●

Once upon a September night,
When breaths were taking flight,
To the upper parts of the atmosphere,
Where the fellow stars shine bright.

A soul was looming around a room,
Wishing the navy sky would turn blue,
Losing hope for a while there, 
Till a newborn sun came into view.

The soul then elbowed the eyes,
To take in this overwhelming sight,
Ray by ray the world awakened,
She'd then wait for dawn every night.

Sweat breaks and distraction ends,
The sun counting the time she's spent,
As orange pastels start to melt,
Soul watched sadly where she went.

And everyday the cycle was repeated,
A soul waits, watches as a day fleets,
Her sad sighs the only acquaintance
She's made with the moon beam.

After every sunset comes a phase
When soul and heart start to pace,
Whispering their heavy troubles,
To the dim moon's lonely face.

Acquaintances became stronger bonds,
As more blues started ranging on,
The night spread like a blanket,
The moon always had a soothing song.

Yet the soul remained captivated,
Sunrises and sunsets always awaited,
Till hellos are farewell were exchanged,
She spent the rest of the night sated.

She preferred a glow intense and warm,
Never grateful for the moon's arms,
A moon that forever stayed,
As the sun's always come and gone.

Hidden behind a treacherous day,
Never welcomed nor awaited,
No moon-rise nor moon-set,
Taken for granted cause he always stays.

Soul never knew the truth,
She'd diffuse all her sorrow to the moon,
He'd always shine never dimming,
Did the departing sun ever listen to you?


So why are we so mesmerized by the sun,
When the moon's always been the loyal one.

The night has eyes,
The curtains agape,
The stars have thoughts,
Loops you can never escape.

And by some power my hands
They were painting a morning,
The whites and blacks were missing,
The warm orange, a warning.

Showered by recreated currents,
Meeting my ever dry tongue,
In shallow gasps I begin to wonder,
Where I ended and the sky begun.

**Does it matter if we were one?

Whistles from buses and cabs,
Drivers intimate with their fogs of smoke,
As the ashes of the cigarette
Meet the concrete defeated, devoid of hope.

Today is yesterday, tomorrow is last month,
A chain of promises and complaints,
Necks wearing the chain with devout compassion,
... the fire is smelling faint.

And in the loneliest hour, which is every hour to be exact,
We search for any wavering footprints,
Marching on an array of dead skulls,
To guide us to where the river is. 

We're catching breaths with heads hanging from windows,
But we can't breathe enough, can't grasp much,
So we hang them down ropes of the cheapest material,
Aiming for a free fall to where the silence stretches.

Everyday with red eyes staring holes at the ceiling,
The ringing in our ears comes to life as the devil,
Every night it has a poem of soothing words,
... they sooth every flame, till they turn to lifeless pebbles.

You are no one special

The days make a song out of it, it's just so catchy,
It's the tune played in every commercial,
It makes you believe we are nothing but the dirt we are,
Ideologies are illusions of an anger rebel.

It's every smile plastered on a heavily made up face on television,
The finger pointed in the "right" direction,
It's the words of illiterates that make it on trees' corpses,
It's the thought that gives your mind a detention.

The air is heavy on diseases and illnesses,
It's so saturated that it turned hearts yellow,
It made south north and north south,
It made billboards rules to follow.

I'm sick too, I'm sick of those same words
That I utter at the peak of my revolutionary asthma,
But when I'm good enough to breathe,
I bring acceptance out of my closet and iron it to finish this stanza.

What are we doing stifling flames,
Taming the wilderness with acceptance,
Our breathing is a stale pattern,
Our actions are just where the currents send us.

The river doomed to have only one shore,
And the boats sail to infinity,
But when the drought hits town,
All the sailors part for the sea.

Art became something we're used to,
A design where every curve has to fit,
Bold colors always mismatch,
Cause they just make the eyes upset.

So every candle smells of forgiveness,
Every night a canvas for a new excuse,
But it might be a month, a year, or ten,
When the paper can no longer be of use.

I'm always envious of the way the sun finds its way to the big screen,
The way the characters' eyes would sparkle and their smiles would shine.

Yet this same sun, that has eternally fed our small planet with its kindness
Always fails to find its way to my smile, as if I don't deserve its generosity.

I'm always envious of the way the wind knows the shooting locations,
How it arrives on time, when the heroine needs a little volume to her hair.

Yet this same wind has always taken my breath away, in the literal sense,
It doesn't know that it should do exactly that to the person in front of me.

I'm always envious of the way the waves meet the shore in perfect transcendence,
In time for the opening scene, from the very first take by the cameraman.

Yet those are the same waves that engulf me with their salty scent,
And drown every sandcastle that I've ever fancied visiting.

And I'm always envious of how selectivity sends the moon
To where a fictional plot is taking place, to grace a fictional character from her fictional window.

Yet my midnight has seen no moon, just a blanket of nothingness,
And it spreads to my room where my mind dreams of living eternally on set.

The breeze begged me,

Let me take you away from here.

Bargaining with the arms of my jacket,
And the laces of my shoes,

Let me take you away from here.

And in the eyes of the rising sun,
I watched promises weaving into the sea,
And sipping into each approaching wave.

And I found myself summoned by the breeze,
Forward my powerless feet moved,
My faced splattered by all the words
The water carried for my ears only.

Let me take you away from here.

The breeze teased my line of sight
With a boundless perimeter of dreams,
With each centimeter of my clothes getting soaked,
The bottom of possibilities seemed so near, so reachable.

**Let me take you away from here.

The actors shuffled around the stage,
In a hurry to deodorize themselves of what they were,
New words are getting recreated,
The vapor of the past moment taints the air.

It takes a neck at a right angle,
And a smile at a linear relationship curving upwards,
The machine spilling new pages,
Receiver ends watching standards getting ruptured.

Now you have to pay a ticket, a cost,
To live through a screen, framed by your acting skills,
Because what once started as a perfect match,
Now is only worth a motion picture's thrill.

The patterns that once ran parallel to one another,
Intersected along the way, now sitting perpendicular,
Running low on impulse amusement,
Backstage, the two actors were nobody in particular.

● ● ●

Tonight, as I flip through the world in the fog of the sky,
My brother's coughing beside me, rolling onto his right side,
We're pulling the bald landscape over our bodies of dust,
We won't be dreaming of fairytales, just of a home to trust.

We drank too many tides, the sea is spilling over our bodies,
One day when our hearts explode, our names'll rhyme with casualties,
Along the tribes we race, at a young age hard we learnt,
That the longer we wait, the more of our memories will be burnt.

It's in black and white, the digital world they're fussing about,
We're in one cell of this universe that seeps no sound,
The clatter from the battleground rivals our ringing ears,
My dead mama said, boys were born to laugh at fear.

Through mirrors of smoke, I think I see distant planets shine,
I write to God everyday, can you patch the holes of mine?
At a tie in this war of peace, they bow down to the lion in the cage,
It'll only ever be a means to end, even our corpses will be estranged.

They only ever see eye to eye and claws to fangs,
Under clouds of fire, me and my brother will dance.

Modern age is the time of mediocrity,
It's the age of mildly felt passions,
A time to have lukewarm identities
The time to open the tab with caution.

Spill your dreams one by one,
Computers have limited your capabilities,
All the songs you wrote have already been sung,
Listen to the tracks of your mind so you don't feel guilty.

Draw triangles with your pencil,
Your sketches will never build you a house,
Listening to your heart isn't essential,
Listen to a stethoscope, it'll tell you money's whereabouts.

So you mix some water colors and feign a red,
And maybe rub two bricks to light a spark,
Photo-edit the features to keep the eyes fed,
And run away to sleep early before you ricochet in the dark.

Everyday you are taught about treachery,
Leaving the places that have stolen your heart,
You should sit uptight with your lawfully wedded misery,
And drive off to a pale yellow sunset where the future starts.

So with only your shadow, your being is whole,
But at nine am you're only an uneven half,
You forget your lines every time the curtains fall,
Till the day that you resign, you're waiting for that draft.

Your walls are a sick shade of beige,
You always open the tab with caution,
Mediocrity is the modern age,
A time of mildly felt passions.

We often only relate to negativity,
The blackest of lines
matching our irises where light is an illusion.

Spilling the foreign parts of our souls,
Mixing them with the colors of every stranger's intrusion.

We're way too familiar with every wrinkle that our words posses,
We have a photographic memory for our flaws.

We only see the crumbled itinerary,
Where the moments of doubt come alive to sink their claws.

We can't wear amusement well,
Not when our minds have no reflexive reaction to ourselves.

So that one sentence, that one gesture,
That voices the darkest of thoughts in our tiniest of cells,

Is the one we relate to the most,
In a sea of living sunrises and sunsets,
We can't help but look back,
And stare at that resurfacing ghost.

To the waste land, we tread,
Following the presumptions of unanswered questions.

Rattling the pillars of a gazebo,
Where denial peacefully lies.

Through the glass,
We can no longer communicate, lacking all forms of expression.

Auditions for a silent play,
A fog settles over the redeemed skies.

Gasoline drenches the path,
Where we follow that one cancerous emotion.

And soon the infection is declared,
Images stripped back to their negative film.

The growls of hungry wolves,
Were only the surfacing clones of confusion.

But in the colors of dawn,
Everything was heightened, after a night so grim.


● ● ●

You don't know how much I want to be honest right now,
To show you my hands covered in ink and charcoal,
Take you to the untamable waves where I bargain with life,
And sweetly tell you the tales of my intangible ghouls.

I can imagine you'd be appalled, your features cringing,
But maybe I don't dream of fearless knights,
Maybe I only want you to be the youngest of flames,
To reflect all my unfinished and unedited lines.

You don't know much I want to be honest right now,
To give you the sails of my titanic drawn on a paper,
I'd wear my dullest of my pearls with their rusty chains,
I just need to borrow your third eye, I don't need a saviour.*

● ● ●

The end of the week is tied to the beginning,
And I'm walking in the middle of the loop,
Trying to catch my tail, but I keep on failing,
So I pause my thoughts for a second, my mind needs to regroup.

I listen to the only man walking in the streets past bedtime,
Disturbing the hush of the quietly collected hours,
I don't need a tomorrow to be my ruler, metaphorically or literally,
Snatching them from their stems, I randomly pluck wallflowers.

The paper is anything but crumbled, its corners neat,
But when your pen hinders mine, it's another story,
I fall to the sky-less ground and accept your offer of momentum,
I always have an available casket for my pride to bury.

But when I only stare ahead, I pick that pen again,
I don't compromise, I only climb on my ivy conditions,
Every letter is in pain, as I avenge my sense of being,
Not even in the mirror do I feel this sense of recognition.

By means of my own minutes, I learn and relearn,
How to never color past the lines, and stop when it's needed,
Separate the second chances from the black clouds,
And when the tide swallows me, I will stay firmly started.

● ● ●

Paramedic 1:

"He's losing so much blood."

Paramedic 2:

"It's a miracle if he can make it past this."



Saturday night, and I'm in the back of an ambulance,
But not in soul, just in body, oh and in the company of so many wires,
I can't tell where they end and where I begin,
But the paramedics say there was a tragic accident and some flying tires.

We reach the ER, my stretcher is flying on the white tiles,
And soon enough I'm greeted by more wires than I can count,
They're saying that they want to hear my heart,
So I'm opened up past layers of tissues and my heartbeat is playing aloud.

I'm somewhere in a circus, learning how to walk on a tightrope,
One arm on the verge of life, the other on the verge on death,
And my feet are stronger than they've ever been,
I'm not afraid of the fall, I'm afraid they'll see the mark I've had since birth.

And they do, I see it in the face of those people wearing white scrubs,
Their faces become the color of their operating room attire,
They don't know what to do with me,
As they come to realize what's got me here is not the flying tires.

They see my heart, a land that is home to no one,
Yet a massacre is taking place between the northerns and the southerns,
A border holding together the mismatched territories,
But there is no compromising between two armies this stubborn.

Each side wanting to flood the other, wanting to conquer,
And the small canal that was once an uncharted place of peace,
Is now holding a rowing contest to the mind of the victim - me -
Who will reach it first and incorporate their power with claws and teeth...?

It was the time to surrender, ending all attempts at making amends,
And watch cannibals sailing in rivers of blood,
They think each accelerated beat is a new victory,
Yet it was a far away cry from it, it was a new tear, a new cut.

And when each side invades the other, they claim it as their own,
But they are only emigrants thinking they can reconstruct a desert,
It was only a land of chaos, they themselves have caused,
Where was once life flowing in veins, is now where resources are tethered.

And with no winner, the end approached,
The curtains already sweeping the ground,
Doctors wiping sweat from their foreheads,
Letting the hospital gown cover the battleground.




Paramedic 2:

"Maybe there's a wife we can call, to you know ... deliver the news..."

Paramedic 1:

"It appears, he just went out for a drive in the middle of the night, with no phone or ID... not even his driver's license..."

Paramedic 2:

"Maybe it wasn't even his car..."



THE END

The Present -

She had both arms behind her head,
Her eyes two focused machines,
The soft glow of the lamp light,
A nonfiction book she silently reads.

Just as the clock striked ten,
All trails of thoughts fell silent,
She slept in the middle of the bed,
The sheets smelling of detergent.


- Two Years Earlier -

Twelve o'clock, the digital clock read,
Every light was on in her apartment,
She turned on the right side of the bed,
And stared at the plain cream carpet.

She tried reading something,
But every corner of this place was so unwelcoming,
As if remnants of the past resident souls
Still loomed around, their presence pestering.

With her new keys clutched in her hand,
She so quietly closed her front door,
Once her lungs were filled with fresh air,
It's like she finally reached a shore.

Aimlessly she passed block after block,
Till she found herself in a subway station,
She plugged in her earphones and closed her eyes,
Relenting to her doubts and insecurities in their collaboration.

"Laugh, I Nearly Died. Hmm interesting choice." A voice said,
Yanked from the heaviest sleep, she looked startled,
The stranger smiled, "I love The Stones too, I mean who doesn't..."
She smiled, but it was half-hearted.

She learned that he hated U2 and thought they were overrated,
And that he never slept at night, only slept during the day,
He marveled about how beauty dwelled in the darkness,
And how he didn't believe in coincidence, rather in fate.

At first she was quite, studying his every gesture,
Uncertain of this sudden turn of events,
But she soon found herself relaxing,
Not anymore keeping track of the time they spent.

He commented on how she looked nervous,
She confessed that she has moved into a new place,
And as the stars were lead to be more astray,
They were stargazing at the night's endless race.

The first rays of the sun revealed her lighter shade of hair,
They never once stopped talking as they roamed the streets,
Dawn whispered with promises of a shared breakfast,
But he suddenly smiled once then looked at his feet.

"I don't believe in cell phones, here is my email, do you know how to write an old-fashioned letter?"

He punctuated his sentence with a grin,
And it matched the growing one on her lips,
She was eager to agree but held inside her over-excitedness,
With a nod, she mumbled a yes and took back one step.

Flecks of orange reflected in his eyes,
She memorized their resemble to gold,
And suddenly all she wanted was to sleep,
And relent to her dreams as her reality revolts.


- The Present -

It was ten to six, she'd just returned home,
She sank in her warm couch, pulling her cat in her lap,
The air smelt of her favorite herbal tea,
She heard what felt like the crunch of a paper scrap.

It wasn't a paper scrap, it was something far less significant,
It was the letter, the one she printed and placed inside her diary,
Her cat was the only one to know where the stupid paper laid,
A reminder of a briskly short-lived story.

She detached her cat from her lap,
And detached the reminder from her heart,
It was easy like that, to unwrite a story,
Only in the folds of her mind was it a part...

"Every sailor knows the sea is a friend made enemy,
And every shipwrecked soul knows what it is to live without intimacy."

She hummed her favorite U2 song.*


T.B.C


(Maybe...)

Darling, you could only burst
and explode in the perimeters of a cardboard room,

The least collateral damage you could cause,
would be to the neighbors walls in the adjacent tomb.

But here as I stand, the breeze yanking both arms of my jacket,
I'm embracing a volcano and savoring the heat,

Till all of my senses are saturated,
the soles of my feet well acquainted with the earth's crust beneath.

I take this as a sign,
Close the very last eye of mine.

And drink in the untamed air,
And volunteer my lungs with a prayer.

I** could only ricochet,
The familiar ashes of me washed down with the fireworks,

And to your cardboard room, I'll be a new moon,
Disguised as a sun wearing a blazing smirk.

You'll try to keep track of the collateral damage,
And mourn the burnt pieces you found that once shone,

You'll think the big bang was the chaos of the world,
Your bent neck could never show you that bygones shall be bygones.

What's holding you back,
Letting the tension in your shoulders string you around,
Maybe dreaming as an action wasn't meant to be earthbound,
We were meant to live aloud and die quietly, life is in the sound,
Every step you retreat, will come back at night to hound.

When are you planning your attack,
In the theater of the wild you love to wear the deer's role,
Planting reasons in the dirt till the mutant rain falls,
Maybe you're waiting for further evolution to make you whole,
As you gather around you the corners of your mold.

Your mind is dizzy as you walk the same tracks,**
Revolving around the temples of monotony,
Getting cross-eyed and your stomach is feeling funny,
Your pack of thoughts forever remaining bundled in a colony,
In your world, the bare walls have never felt so *lonely.

Between two shoulders,
Between two ears,
A civil war ignited,
Bones shrieking in fear.

Conflicted pilots,
Sliding down locks of hair,
Liquid bombs,
Dripping from eyes, be aware!

Life was never meant to be easy,
Pebbles were meant to collide with feet,
Every now and then, we're bound to be lost,
We go a million ways to find the right street.

And as more events shatter our hearts,
More glass gets broken, more souls adrift,
We discover ourselves among the ruins,
And get to uncover our healing gift.

We test our abilities, we get first degree burns,
We try a million shades of complexion,
The very first scream of a beating heart,
The very last sound before we tread to the other dimension.

It's played and replayed, it's spring then it's a massacre,
And all the trophies lining our top shelf,
We sweat under the fever before the finish line,
We walk the fine line between loving and hating oneself.

Align your balance,
Before the drawbridge closes,
Between two shoulders,
The two blades are foes.

Separated by a spinal cord,
Arms and thoughts collide,
Stare straight ahead,
Know that this is life.*

● ● ●

"A bruised and battered earth,
We smoke cigarettes made of dirt-"

✒
-*Stop would you, you're dripping your black ink all over the place,
I'm sick of your pessimism, I'd like to see some change!

= oh but what if I don't know how! 
Life is seeping like a muffled sound!

- And again you go with your recycled words,
Stop looking from this narrow corner at the world...

= Narrow corner! It ain't narrow anymore...
If you watch the news, you'll see death delivered at doors!

- Then maybe stop, change the ****** channel!
Your negative energy is changing nothing for the better.

= So I should close my eyes, I should count the sheep,
Should I be thirsty for more blood to be smeared?!

- Facebook is messing with your head...

= Rivers are turning red!!

- I don't feel like writing more of this.

= So I should order my rage to get some rest?!

- . . .

= I'm afraid it's not an easy request..

Peace won't suddenly overflow, if I count to ten.

- I'm afraid I'm of no use, I can't change the world, I'm only a pen...

In an artificial summer fever, grow young lives down test tubes,
A wide variety of mice to be tested, circulating around a loop.

Formulate a criteria, we want the cupcakes all the same shape!
And if the noise spills outside the peripheries, just use some tape.

But switch up the controllers, let Mozart play some metal,
Eyes should try to keep up with the feet on the pedal.

Each half of the good-evil twins trapped in mind arenas,
Let the villain be the one who tries to change the genus.

And redefine a definition for the concept of time,
Paint the sand clock as a monster who eagerly rewinds.

And as the fever causes more volatility, youth evaporates,
Save the ones who hold it together, they're in for the long wait.

In boxes made for shipping, we export the present,
To the Bermuda triangle where time is constantly reset.

Let's keep the players running, the experiment going,
The local fever is in touch with a bigger global warming.

And for the longest time we'll sell this antipyretic,
The world shall be high on a pulse permanently erratic.

With her crumbled handkerchief,
She wiped the stars falling from her red eyes,
She bled her secrets to the galaxy thief,
Till the arrhythmia was reduced to defeated sighs.

Her violet joints matched the constellation,
With a violent pulse flickering in and out of life,
Her twilight breaths of condensation,
Till the planets are asleep, the only thing awake is the night.

When she's done orbiting around his fists,
And he's done burning her with his meteors,
She collects the hays of what is left,
Praying that galaxies could have a shore.