Congrats.
You’ve done it.
You know that scar isn’t going to heal.
You went too deep.
You lost control.
You’ll have to live with that.
You now bear the insignia
Of the anguished.

As the eastward Monsoon winds blow
Dark clouds hover above
The summer sunshine fading
Dawn and dusk now look alike -
In the same nightly hue.

Inside, my insides echo a nasty white noise
Of the rain birds' incessant caws

Lightning flashing, illuminating some
Darkest corners - wh're I haven't ventured yet
A rapturous thunder, in shocked wonder
I break into a silent sweat
As the pregnant cloud precipitates
My frozen heart aches - in shades myriad
- An unwilling contrast against the crystal clear vapour of a cloud
surrendering itself as the monsoon rain!

The heard wrenches - in agony
With each thawing drop of rain
Of a lost hope and frozen wish
A facade of happiness, I feign.

What unspoken grief
Have you hid in your depths?
What reply do you seek
That, you visit the shore
as a recurrent wave, incessantly?

What is it that you look for?
Bowing down your mighty self
To a shallow wave that wets my feet
And the sand underneath

You roar in fulsome furore
Yet grieve in silence
I cannot fathom
The depth of thy grief-
You are borne out of your own tears

Don't waste perfectly good loneliness.

Don't waste it on the wrong person.
Don't even waste it on the right person.

Don't waste loneliness during the day,
When there are things to be done.
Don't waste it in dreams at twilight,
When there are dones to be thinged.

Don't waste loneliness at night
When your time should be your own
And could be filled with anything
Other than everything you're not.

Take your loneliness
And denigrate it.
Crumple it. Crush it.
Throw it in a blender.
An industrial oven.

Take it out
For a few drinks too many,
And a few more after that;
Lull it into a false sense of security
That congeals with its drunken state
To create a blinding dichotomy
Of vulnerability and arrogant invincibility,
So it suspects nothing
As you lead it
Down a dark alley
And beat it to death with a brick.

Have a too-close-to-call
Fight to the death
With your loneliness
In a public toilet,
With it almost getting
The better of you
Until you smash it
Teeth-first
Off of a porcelain
Sink basin,
Before dragging it
By the hair
To a cubicle,
Where you hold its head
Under the toilet water,
Long after its body stops convulsing.

Do what you can
To transmute
Your loneliness
Into solitude,
And wear it.

Inside-out.
Back to front.
Upside-down.
Right side up.

Wear solitude so well that
It ends up wearing you,
As its skin.

Use solitude to learn thyself.
To feel thyself.
To know thy changing self.

Let solitude remind you that
The existence of loneliness
Begets the existence of
The antithesis of loneliness.

So definitely don't waste
Perfectly good loneliness,
Especially if you're forgoing
Perfectly good hope.

The Gains of Loss by Robert C. Leung

As I begin to lose
my sweet memory
The flotsam and jetsam
and ephemery.

The regrets, the injustice,
the pain and despair
The resentments, the insults,
the hurts and the fear.

The timeless reminders
of not good enough
Pale yellow post it says:
“Hasn’t got the right stuff.”

That time that you said
what no one would say
“I don’t really love you
now please go away.”

Most of it gone now,
I can’t quite remember
It whispers to me
from a foggy December.

Am I better off for it?
Well perhaps in some way.
Have I gained from the loss?
It’s a bit hard to say.

I need no longer sit here
and artfully languish
In all the sad fury
of my piquant anguish.

Like my father before me
I’m one of those old timers
Reaping the benefits
of beneficent Alzheimer’s.

Robert C. Leung © Copyright 2015

Why do I push everything away
I can no longer keep this at bay
Pushing everyone out from my life
This torment of never feeling right

These shackles bringing me to my knees
I’ve built this prison and buried the key
If this was love it shouldn’t be killing me
Release me from the weight of this gravity

Awaken each day with a burning, aching pain within my chest, made from veins, bone and ******* flesh
What a sight to behold
As I watch this anguish unfold
Such a terrible mess
This is distress, at its best
Prisoner to this phobia
Confined to this hysteria
Walking alone fearing my own shadow
Never to know who i’ll become tomorrow

These shackles bringing me to my knees
I’ve built this prison and buried the key

Particles of mist fill the air
Looking through that painstaking glass
It’s me I see from the reflection on the flask
The sun rises as does my mask
Putting it all away, that underlying pain
Hidden away by a laugh and smile, no worry it’s only for a while

The horrors that surround me continues to unfold
“It’ll get better” is what I’m told
No one questions if it doesn’t
Leave me dead and bludgeoned

Numbing the pain through scarring limbs
Darkness grows near, the light becoming dim
My hope constantly wearing thin
When will I find pleasure ever again
The spite in myself is more than hate
Death has always been my fate

If this was love it shouldn’t be killing me
Release me from the weight of this gravity

I won’t waste your time with what goes on in my mind, because I’m slowly forgetting.
Forgetting everything one day at a time
Everyday feels the same, why do things have to be this way, a feeling of happiness never to be regained

Eyes have become hollow sockets
Lungs nothing more than air pockets
Heart empty filled with despair
Mind left with too much to bear

Overwhelming torture and discourse
Drowning every guilt with remorse
Nothing but bitterness and disgust
There’s no faith left to trust

I used to tell myself that I would never become someone else
But I should have told myself
I was going to be somebody

This world seemed so quiet when you were here
Now surrounded by static and noise
So again I find myself swimming to the bottom of the bottle just to block out all sound
Who have I become this time around

English
Anguish