Fight the algorithms
that tell us what to do,
to make us predictable,
unoriginal and bankable.

Have you witnessed how
increasingly bland and homogenous
our lives are becoming?

Choose freedom
avoid the diaries of commerce
that riff on the ubiquity of apps

resist the reductive tropes
of our published and circulated,
perspective customer identities.

Fight the algorithms
with their embedded backlot
familiarity, built around class
and consumerism.

Try to understand the
vague, inscrutable and
purposefully circuitous.

Or stop overthinking
and embrace liberating surrender.
That’s the path I’ve chosen.
.
.
Broken People by The Narcissist Cookbook
Talk Down Dijon

I long to see me
As you do,
Entirely foreign and
Mundanely beautiful.
I wish to trace
The curves of my lettering,
Attempting to decode
A message I have already
Memorized.
I have already unraveled
All of my mysteries but you
Still startle at each creak
Of the floor, each squeak
Of the door.
Nevertheless,
That elsewise wonder
Is only reserved for
Strangers.

a neighbour
plays saxophone
somewhere down the street
it sounds like
they are at
an open window
practicing scales
bursts of pieces
previously mastered
other segments
yet to be perfected
those standard exercises
again and again
with missed breaths
and off-note *******
building in complexity
but slowed down
beyond recognition
with their concentration
no doubt
seething at times
behind closed doors
as fingers refuse
to obey
not moving fast enough
assuredly enough
it should annoy me
it usually would
this distraction
while I try
to read or write
the stumbling repetition
of practice failing
to make perfect
but today
there is a calming
in the familiarity
of it all

I'd wish to know, if we're only an idea of tall tales that meet the skeletons in both our closets and thus, it solely goes romanticizing my tarnished land.

In fury, my escapism brought me home away from home and there he was, he's the familiarity I'd wish, I never know.

So dear, he's already 'a home',
I'd live and die at times he's all I have and so this borrowed chance, as to what I afeared of, my love is building; a labyrinth, I'd never wish to escape.

There I was, staring from afar,
is it just the night scene that makes my periphery hazy? Or we're on a geomorphological process of meeting an another celestial body; you were standing there, wondrously daydream- like, as that time came unbeknownst to me.

There is a strange familiarity on you
that changes my animosities— a paradigm shift, and all the long way leads to you.

I used to see cars individually
not as parts but the people inside
those people would be driving around me
and we’d wave to each other
while navigating clear roads
I would recognize their car
out of familiarity
the city has grown since then
I don’t recognize cars anymore
just brands and colors
creating the traffic jam in front of me
as my engine overheats.