Maybe today is not a good day
Still tomorrow won’t be better anyway
No, do I text you again in a month?
But you have that thing on the tenth
A year from now?
You will have something somehow
I was just hoping to talk to you
I wasn’t going to argue
So, do I just wait?
Or, If I said I was tired of waiting
Am I crossing a line?
And If I said I had to stop chasing
Will our friendship decline?

Half-chuckles flourishing in the night time scene
Slow deep breathes connect us
Staring into the darkened sky
We waited

…

In the tender years of my youth, at the age of sixteen, my prayers
soared high, burdened by doubts and fears, I yearned to remain
unseen - I recall the torrents of tears that cascaded when I was
merely ten, for it was in those fleeting moments that I unearthed
my strength within.  

I envisioned a future self, brimming with wisdom by twenty-one,  
a life meticulously charted, a race already won; I dreamt vividly of
a wedding by the age of twenty-three - as a spectacle to impress my
brothers, who loomed like giants to me.  

Once, the shadows were a terror from which I would swiftly flee,  
now they serve as a sanctuary where I sometimes crave to be free.  
I once believed friendship was a vast, bustling expanse, yet I find
solace in the few friendships, where I can truly take a chance.  

And my life remains still unfinished, unfinished as this poem…

Encased, as an oil painting,
behind a plane of glass.
Years of exposure dulling the canvas,
no funding to restore the brightness
of the subject's lifeless eyes.
They lay dormant, cloudy,
From a lifetime of accumulative debris.
Transferred between people, buildings, countries;
Memories on display for brief intervals,
Then packaged and returned to storage,
As if they were never your own.
People shift, distorted, beyond the coffin of glass.
Their movements hazy,
The shutter speed slow.
Colours muted,
Sounds muffled,
Melting into each other.
An abstract watercolour, waxing and waning.
Low resolution projections on a dimly lit screen -
A theatre seating but one.

You told us to hate them
To the very bone
Cuz they were bad men
For reasons unknown

You said that it was for the good
But I knew something was off
But what can a common man do
Than just to play along

A flame touched stick of lavender
Jasmine and something else...

I light it often and think of you,
of eyes that seared a place on my heart,
the curve of your smile,
smell of your hair...

memories striking heavy in my chest,
shorten my breath,
and return feelings for a moment,
as scared and helpless as I felt
every time we've met

it's a race with the blade
of who can sink faster
but my heart doesn't
know what's good for it
so i take the stairs
and search for
my grave at the top

tell me that i don't
have to carve my name
into the granite
that i could leave
the bottom of
this page blank and
you would
fill in the rest

I'm pretty heartless apart from this
Petty pity party I've started on my wrist
So park this darkness into a MAC 10 and reload it
It's disappearing but it'll be back again before you know it
In fact, I'm fearing I'll slip up again and show it
This endless game of back and forth pretend may blow it
My friendless flames - my life's end in my dreams
That's the end to the means of these empty movie scenes