complexities of us:

the unfamiliarity to it
comes off as uncomfortability
in the beginning.
but then i look back,
and i stare, zooming in and out,
grasping—this is the reality.
suddenly, it doesn't feel so bad;
looks okay, feels alright.
only, please, let me keep it all hidden
for a bit longer, bouts of while perhaps,
just for tonight.

what's the perfect opening?
to begin with it—
is it picking out a line from a list of prompts,
or playing music when the shadows swarm?
i believe it's hope and faith misplaced,
out of scope, of happiness and of exacerbation.
some words come to me,
like someone in my head plucked them out
of a locked away, hidden library.
and there are sentences, feelings
that are yet to find their place in a dictionary.
so i hold, and put forward
this ultimate piece stitched carefully.
a proclamation, if you must—
i hope you don't deny
that it indeed was poisoned, misspoken gust.

she's the precious kind
do you mind?





galaxy of masks:

masks upon masks,
just so the real ones are never visible.

where do we plan on heading,
hiding who we are
and watching ourselves disappear?
why cement the original, the real,
to show an illusion people'd like?
we lose our own shadows of individualism,
and still become whatever they continue to despise.

actors are lucky—
can be anything they want.
and even though it's all fake,
that's their job.
people dismiss them,
preach the characters they own.
they can become anyone,
and i can't even be myself.
now that's just forlorn.
they get applauded,
while i get cremated.
i do just the same—
they earn, i protect.
they flash, i burn.

and when you think you're late
that's when you're actually late.
so easy for them to say,
like they didn't need to struggle to live.
despite it all, they continue to pretend,
and so do i,
that i like them.
the smile that can hide everything for me
is something i'm thankful for.
is this the gratitude i'm meant to journal down,
or a selfish gift that i grew up with?
should i not talk about it?





cosmic revelations:

we're all stars.
stars on a big star,
surrounded by many more,
creating galaxies, preaching astronomy.
what were we made for?

i often don't know what to wish for.
is it health, happiness, or taste of the unknown?
so i stand in front of the lords,
hoping to find some quiet.
and peace does exist,
only it slithers away, as if washed off by the mighty.
i bow down, offer my all,
say i'm here, let me keep it whole.
i glance through the mirrors,
little somethings at the back of my throat.
adrenaline promises the thrill
of what living should have felt like—
if life wasn't so dead, furthermore.
the only moments i feel it pulse,
the blood thrums under my veins.
it sulks.

the sun took birth
after a collision and collapse
of a molecular cloud—term it star.
the brightest in the sky right now,
a miracle, like us.
and in your life,
as the biggest star of all,
yet you choose to fall down
after the slightest push.
wear and tear and suddenly we're misunderstood.
the world could end,
the galaxy could burst open
any given day—
you'd wake up, turn into dissipated matter.
and you worry about
that one thing,
or a list of multiple,
and claim this is the end
of your life and your empirical?
loathsome towards the sky,
have you seen how it looks during the night?

observe it through documentaries:
such a small piece of matter,
surrounded by so many
that are alike, yet destruct and differentiate.
even if they don't understand,
you could always.

it's only at a distance that spring seems green.
up close, it's floral, filled with allergies—
and they don't always mention
the bouts of issues that it comes with.
it's only at a distance
that it seems worth boasting.
does spring even exist,
or are we permanently a part of stark winters?
then why does it always melt off the skin—
all that we hide, and all that we wear?
mayflies live for a day,
it's their whole lifetime,
while you waste away.

when you drift through the night,
speeding up, watching the stars align,
you can almost make out how it isn't all too real.
surreality exists in the traffic lights
and cars drifting by.
it's bound to stay all up in my head this time,
so i need not write about how it was to kneel
and claim enjoyment when it lasted for seconds.
i've lived enough—enough to understand
when i've become unwanted.

from lorde's david,
to laufey's lover girl,
the kiss of venus,
and summing up the life of the one—
everyone in this party's a vampire.
so i've put on their teeth,
ready to bite.
except mine barely break through skin,
while theirs leave marks along a rhythm.
they can tell when it's a mess within your head,
but they wouldn't do anything.
make it a ghost town.
they'd **** the marrow of life.
like the blood moon, you'll be looped into hellfire.
i didn't even know how bad it stung,
until i saw the red turning black—
all over my arms, now they account for places.
all the spots that shone the brightest
are now dimmed.
brown spots, burnt.

a person with many thoughts makes fewer mistakes—
that's just a lie, cause the thoughts give out stories
of the what ifs, and of all that is fake.
and i look back a lot.
most of my own
count as actions questionable,
even though i've thought about it a hundred times—
enough for my head to explode.

the tale of nonchalance leaves me bereft.
isn't it like—
you're afraid to be read,
cause what if they don't like what they see?
but what if them not liking you
makes you dislike yourself—
and that's all that you believe.
the moon has craters.
up close, it looks like a giant ball, imperfect,
filled with marks and depths.
and yet every night you sit,
praying, admiring
the same moon, the same hollows that you carry.
if you could preach self-acceptance,
then maybe you wouldn't grieve
someone else's ignorance.
the codependence lies within yourself.
they could or could not—
you're left with you.
that's all you got.
so live a little, baby,
even if you make mistakes.
if they love you,
they'll correct and still accept you the same.





weeds of hope:

often saving up stories, reels, images
that i'd like to keep in my memory.
i don't read it all,
instead promising that one day
i'll either use them
or take inspiration to write my own.
except all that i've learnt,
the crazy crashing innocence—
there is hope within,
even though i might not see.
i could say i wouldn't want to wake up,
i'd want to sleep forever.
but all the saved up diaries,
waiting to be written into,
and through all the saved, shared, linked posts—
hope exists.
doesn't really show in the way it must,
but in other ways,
like saving the cheesiest bite
for the last take.

hope is beautiful,
even though it is never sure—
like the real home is with the right person,
the walls decoration, accessories on bodies of them all.

you don't look back—
that's the key to keep going.
but i do it often,
a way of letting go
and moving.
i've looked back,
when i was sure no one would be waiting.
and i saw tiny figures in the mist of dark—
they were leaving.
for the first time in a long time,
it didn't feel like the ultimate ending,
yet it was the closure for me.
done, complete.

i've been keeping a track of all my greens—
the plants, the flowers, and how they stopped blooming.
the prettiest of extras, weeds they call them.
i watched them grow, unsure if i should crop them.
now they've taken over,
grown to heights the plants could never.
and they seem more in place than the originals—
except in the long run you and i both know
they'll ****, no matter how we look.
weeds have to be removed.

i removed the weeds off my plants today.
prettiest, shadowy, soft, almost as if they belonged.
and now they lie on my desk,
drying away through as the sun sets.
perhaps they'll be stacked among the pages
of my books, as bookmarks, memories and stages,
as people who've drifted in closer and walked away.

even though they weren't meant to stay,
the weeds gave me an idea:
phantoms do stay,
so the leaves as well.
and they might not have belonged in the plants,
but they did grow, and it isn't all too bad.
the plants are alive still.
the flowers might bloom again.

Starseed Divine Essence

 A star seed from a time long ago.

Just drifting in this realm of timeless consciousness,
Awaiting the inevitable collision with its twin –
The unification of the universal contract
And the complete opposite,
Yet of the same substance,
Same composition,
Same cloth.

Maybe it’s just the essence we seek,
The essence of Devine
Just as it is the essence of everything,

As simple as returning to essence,
As easy as it is for essence to return.

Creator: Eljoel Adrian Turpin

Star-crossed dreamers,
Bound together by thread,
Cosmic peaceful bliss-
But lover, that planet is dead.

The wind carries no laughter,
The sun has lost its heat,
Nighttime is silent and dark now,
Its life cycle complete.

The trees have all now rotted,
The soil has long turned sour,
It’s been months since April’s showers,
And May could never flower.

Lover, I must escape now,
The oxygen is gone,
I know you said you’d never be back,
But I was hoping you were wrong.

I planned to stay here,
To fix it in your absence,
So if you did return,
You’d see we could make sense.

Your rocket never flew back,
And lover, I know not where you went,
Trembling in my escape pod,
Hoping where you are, I’m sent.

I sealed this final message,
In orbiting satellite streams,
Hoping the words find you,
Beyond our broken dreams.

I know this was our ending,
And it echos through the void,
Now our world has perished,
Our civilization destroyed.

I can’t look out this window,
To watch our star implode,
But I feel it in my chest,
That sharp sting of letting go.

And while I drift away,
To somewhere perceived safe,
To long forget our planet,
And the evolution we made.

That night,
weary of the crowd,
weary of the human machines that clatter,
I tore myself away from the noise as one sheds a diseased skin.
I left the city,
and found myself alone beneath the warm breath of the summer sky.

I lifted my eyes,
and in that upward gaze,
something from childhood returned —
a sacred astonishment, a soft humility before the infinite.

It felt like falling up.

The sky was wearing a cloak of bronze.

The stars were twirling like tigers of light
that tore through the tar of the night.
Their fangs of fire were gnawing at the dark,
and searing holes in the velvet expanse,
like nails hammered deep in the welkin's bark.

I breathed in the beauty of this funereal veil,
That takes its source from the void that won’t echo,
And that reminded me that I’m only a mote in the abyss.

I stood there—
alone.
Like a moon-fisher
Lost in a sea of wilted flowers,
casting lines into the void.

I baited my hook with pieces of my own heart,
Hoping that something would bite
and pull back from the ether.

And I waited.

I waited for the silence to shatter,
for the night to answer,
so that my dreams stopped bleeding
into my waking hours.

I waited.

But the stars just kept on burning out in silence,
while my dreams kept dripping like open wounds.

I was fishing for meaning
in this night,
I was waiting for its answer
but all I reeled in were fragments,
slivers of light
that faded before I even got to touch them.

The dark stared at me,
daring me to blink first.

And I wondered,
I wondered how many nights like this the stars had seen,
how many souls like mine they had watched with that pale, quiet gaze,
while we knelt beneath their cold indifference
and called it beauty.

And still, they kept twirling.
Still, they blazed,
while I waited,
while I bled,
while I held my breath and hoped
that maybe,
maybe—
the next flicker would light the way,
maybe it would spill some hint,
some clue that there was meaning hidden in their glow,
a reason buried in their fire.

I would beg the stars to break the silence,
to stop their silent spin
and to just say something,
anything.

But I know they wouldn’t,
and that I could only choke on the ash of their silent dirge
that smothers those who dared to look up
only to find out that there is no answer.

And then—
it hit me.

What if it was never about the stars?
What if they are silent because they’ve already said all they had to say
and this eternal silence of the infinite spaces
only existed so we might pour ourselves into it?

I understood why we built gods,
erected cathedrals,
raised cities of glass and steel,
split atoms,
and walked on the moon,
why we loved,
sang,
screamed,
wrote poetry.

And maybe that’s also why I drink so much.
So, so much
just so I could catch flames
like these stars,
to be like them,
to rend the void that doesn't echo back,
just so I could look at myself the way I look at them
and believe that I could make any sense of it.

Science is too short to measure the infinite.
Art is too vain.

But this flame—
my flame—
is all I have.

And I want to burn.

I want to cast off this skin that traps me,
I want to lighten my bones from the weight of the world
bare my teeth at the cosmos,
howl at the heavens,
tear through the ether like fangs of fire,
and scrape the cold black bark with my nails.

Maybe I was born to blaze,
or at least I just need to believe I could,
that I am the beacon,
the dawn that splits the abyss,
the answer made flesh.

That night,
I felt something kindle,
as if I, too, could be a tiger of light.

That I could dare look into the dark
and perhaps even make it blink first.

she walks past the threshold
a meaningless spat echoes forever

she went past the horizon
into darkness

but her visage stayed—
a moment held infinity

and red I saw,
raged endlessly

until her image faded
past the horizon
into the darkness

When I see short dreamlike
visions in my slumber, they are as the beauty of snowfall and flora, oh how those icy fragments of winter and the dandelion silky strands in the aerial streams of the sky chant, if only I could linger in them as an enfold within my limbs in my own cosmic sigh.

like the earth,
i orbit and observe—
sunshine and ghosts,
moonlit secrets put to sleep
in mornings shadowed
by entities of me.

where i roar not loud enough to be heard,
only whispered—
a metaphysical battle of words.

asleep and awake at the same time,
a cosmic shroud,
a star without shine.