I am the flipper
Rejection of shots
And I don't hurt when I dig deep
And I go underground

I am
'Good with words'
yet words seldom ever seem to fall out
Of my flippant mouth

I am nothing that I wish to be
Borderline rambunctious
And my thoughts constantly spill over
When I spout in a crowd

Flipper is flippantly
Objecting
Objectify me now
I am the silent breather that never sends chills down your spine
Yet you wonder if my calling
Has gone overtime

Flipper speak
Flipper be gone
Flipper take shelter
Flipper don't make a sound

Flipper give you best smiles
Flipper win all their hearts
Flipper give them charisma
Flipper keep all your darts

Flipper tires from trying now
Rusting with time
Have I let my guard down
Or am I at last
Feeling fine?

Call it anxiety
Call if whatever you wish
C'mon call it an excuse
Isn't it brilliant to use?

Flipper: better or worse?
Flipper sets off a fuse
Flipper takes over mind
Flipper takes over news

Hush now stories are dry
For you let Flipper in
Build your walls up so high
Just to keep our your sin

Yet
Humans do lie
Courage comes from within
Sometimes it pays to hurt when you let your heart win

Darling tell me why you
Kept my hopes up for two whole hours
From sunrise to sunset
Neither of which we ever got to see
Together because you were too afraid
And so was I
Of something we didn't even know of
Then again one-sided tales seldom last
Fire and gun seldom match
Just like us
But I pulled out every emotion I knew
And all you did was to give the cold shoulder
Tell me what is worthless about me
I'd gladly listen
That beats leaving without a trace
And tension without reason
And I begged myself to let go
Till the one day you returned
Came back like a gift on New Year's
Made me think the tides had turned
Still again your disappearing act relapsed
You left me lonely with an urn
But maybe all this trying ends here
Maybe this is not what I need
Losing myself for a stranger
Smashing barriers out of greed
Maybe patience is the puzzle piece
To lock this labyrinth
Lovers come and strangers leave
Maybe it wouldn't have hurt as much if I had loved my skin

Crossroads may break ties
Or patch hearts

And as we go our separate ways
When shall we meet again?
With nothing but a map in our palms
And eagerness in our hearts
The time that passes with each passing
Is slow to end though quick to start

Half-world travellers
And wanderlust
Will we still carry
The same old dust?
The stains that plague us
Though we abhor them
Against our own will
Define us

Laughter lines
Italicised
And bolded underlines
Slowly time affixes its mark on us
And the creases make a path

Even then as days of past
Will spirit still be stayed?
When we endeavour to change our paths
Will we find our way back home?

The light is on
As always is
And hope is keeping vigil
Some shall never return
And even if they do
Things change
And feelings pass

The glory days
Have come and passed
And we will never be
As golden as we were
Time can never bring us back
To remedy our wreck

Can we ever move forth
With the lingering longing for the past
To relive days of serendipity
And to find the people we lost along the way
That only begged us to stay

Bravest is the soul
Who can master the tides of past and present
And forge on with nostalgia at the back pushing
While running into the imminent unknown

Perhaps transience is inevitable
But so shall transcendence be
Happiest are the souls
Who are full of hope and vigour

And though crossroads they break apart
Perhaps we'll meet elsewhere afar

Memory is a beautiful thing, is it not?
Nostalgia works in ways
You'll never understand
Innocence
Lost, true
But yet
When I fix eyes with my own in the mirror now
I know
That it used to house innocent intelligence
Days when my simplest of worries
Were counting from one to ten
And my demons could never banish me
To be a mongrel in a lion's den

Staring at the family portrait
I am reminded of days without organisation
The door is half open
Our smiles are half ready
Our clothes are unironed
Buttons unbuttoned
The mantlepiece is overflowing with mess
And even the painting on the wall is crooked
But behind it
Subtle lies
For it was never straight
And for years, misguided disbelief
Like a mimer ****** to sing

Those eyes stare back at me now
The sparkle in those eyes
Never let anyone dull that sparkle
Sparkle is hardly a bad thing at all

Isn't it funny how the world stays constant
Yet time changes us all?
Time slowly charges
To prepare us for the fall
Time comes disguised as wrinkles
Turns a leap into a crawl
And before long we are lonely
Hearts curled into a ball

Growing up you must have realised
That the world is strangely
Not what it seems
All the lies that you've been fed with
Now are bursting at the seams
And when gold is not all that glitters
Truth evades ears like a breeze

Living in paradise lost
Watching fires fight the frost
Feed your loved ones with the lies they want and watch them hurt the most

One night as I crept into bed
And said a deafening prayer
With a heavy head
And mightless weight
I thought about how I'd aged

Flashbacks of childhood days
Began to take small shape
Things I thought I'd long forgotten
Began to return in little ways

With the company of the lightning
Oh what a calamity it was
So calming yet damning
For I knew it was for me
Some transgressions need to be tranquilised

At once I became a tinker in a forest
Lost beyond comprehension
Like the child that I never was
With the happiness I never lived

Delirium slowly takes over as
The pills begin to take effect
I have always wondered
How such little contraptions
Could do so much damage to our bodies
Wreck it entirely
And leave us frothing for a second chance

And as I ruminated at length
As my mind darted from tree to tree
I began to wonder
How I came into existence
And a little satisfaction as I thought
'Why me?'
Oh nights like these
Can leave you hanging
When questions have no answers
To be seen

As the flashbacks ended so too did the lightning
Though thunder stayed to remind me
That wrath and wreckage will deliver
What courage cannot make quit

For years on end I
Traipsing on ropes as thin as these
Living on a trampoline
But what if delusion blinds
And there is no one at the end of the string
And as I hit the ground
Blood smashes me piece by piece
And loudly I chide myself
For my lack of belief
Where is all the hope I used to have?
Though I never was doe-eyed
Nor ever claimed to be
But innocence lost is tantamount
To the human spirit's defeat

And here I lay
Hands clasped
On my chest
How I remember the last time I ever wished so badly
For recovery
How I threw caution to the wind
And expected to be protected
So recklessly
The last time I envisioned
How my funeral might be
Will I be clutching roses?
Will I die without anyone knowing?
Will the silent screams of the sea
Overshadow all my grief?
Or will there be none
As I leave smiling
Happier than I have ever been
And to these thoughts there are no answers
To such wild dreams no reality
My heavy head was not wired
To ever ruminate so deeply

In the span of 20 minutes
I saw my life flash past me
Perhaps not because I was about to lose it
But for the sake of reminding me
That of all the things that can be lost easily
Life
Has most melee
And we are taking so many things for granted
As if they're guaranteed
As if our heart is build to last
In our ribs of helix steel

And this night most of all
I decided I was going to live freely
In the new life that soon awaits me
To be who I need to be

And these pills that foremost mean to heal will guide me into sleep

The moon shakes our embrace
One last time
And for the last time
Our parting shall be sweet
Though our hearts are far
From complete
But grant me one last request
Though I cannot love you again
Let me love you
Like I did before we met

Do we surely become strangers
Like two lines that'll never meet
As they converge for once forever
Then split to smithereens
Like the veins that form our hearts
So widespread
That defects are hard to spot
When one fails to function
Who shall serve to see?
One to many like our loving
Who's to say we won't deplete?

So the next time that we meet
Do we act like strangers incomplete
As if love had never happened
It was just a time of greed
Greed to love and to be loved
Triggered all these thoughts of folly
We were blinded by the kind deeds
Born out of desire to keep

Now you too shall let me go
Like the ones that left before
Before twilight starts to set in
And we break our words once more
Before deliberation breaks the pace
And we concur with objections raised

Walk away from madness brooding
Walk away from penchant gloom
All these flowers will stop blooming
As if warning us of doom

Till all our transgressions come clean
We are faulty to play judge
Of whose love (or lack of) was culprit
That brought about this great downfall

The next time we love we fill ourselves
With reassurance to start over

But you never really do forget
The lips of your first lover

Your love is one that does not age
Like the lilac wine that blossoms Into a beauty over time

Time and timelessness will bind
The vines of this enchantment

A dichotomy so intertwined
Like the asphalt in the ocean
As we float above the waters
In ceaseless beating motion

Our dispositions secure
We live in spates of wake
In homes built with our hearts
We bend but do not break
In a distant possibility
Perhaps an ending looms
Though ours is no exception
We love what we can take
Of smiles and half-creased wrinkles
Of tears and jumping lakes
These ribs protect intrusion
But lungs are built to fail
Yet though the heart is naked
Fragilities prevail

I love you with the ticking
Of clocks that won't rewind
For the first time you left me
Our cross became a line