#camus
rays of sun stabbed my skin like a thousand knives, setting it ablaze
a burning.
before me stood a shadow in the distance, looming.
all threatening.
beside me rested the sea, outstretched into a thin line
vast, shimmering.
its waves settling into fraught at my feet
i approached the green paradise at the end of the mirage
the figure transforming with each step
an Arab.
the sand was hot beneath my feet when the man had reached into his jacket
from it, a ray of light beneath the horizon,
its dissipating clouds
from my jacket, hard cold metal, to his chest—lead bullets
as he bled, I wiped the sweat from my forehead
pounding was the heat atop my head
when I shot him four times again.
ib: ‘The Stranger’ Albert Camus 1942
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 4:24 PM UTC
If all babies are innocent, killer in the womb or not, then we are all guaranteed heaven and its supreme divinity
Why not **** one at birth and transcend one to a place of eternal happiness instantaneously?
Why succumb to living a life where you are bound to commit a plethora of sins?
The Christians pray for long and eternal life
But the longer the life, the longer the pending doom
Why pass on the happiness of this life in hope of the next, then fear the death guaranteed when you took your first breath?
It’s absurd
You must live this life to the fullest,
For your happiness no matter how subtle or grand, can turn to ashes in your mouth quicker than a man condemned can turn to religion and God
For like the people of 1940 Oran,
Disaster will not yield to normalcy nor wait on one’s acceptance of it
It is random, to fight best against and outlast it, one must be happy now.
Apr 22
Apr 22, 2026 at 4:24 PM UTC
There's no God
But it's okay
The paper printed we might live another day
No one read it, even though it was free
But the message still counts, right?
Sitting dusty in a diner on a tiny wire rack
With a decade's worth of issues piled in the back
But it's okay
No judgemental deity condoning atrocities
Could possibly remain in office when we the people vote
Ballot boxes stuffed with suggestions
For the next thing to answer every question
Campaign slogans for a comfortable eternity after a few laps around the sun
The paper would probably even run an ad
No one would read it,
But it's okay
Mar 13
Mar 13, 2026 at 12:26 PM UTC
I can't handle the unknowable
But I hold on either way
Fingers splintering concrete
Form shifting under my grip
It's a very short trip
Falling from the insurmountable mountain
The fact of inescapable nonexistence
Rising hungrily to meet me
Mar 13
Mar 13, 2026 at 11:31 AM UTC
42.
Sure.
A decent punchline.
At least it doesn’t lie to you.
Religion always does.
It sells you answers
like cheap cigarettes.
You cough.
You keep buying.
Camus says it’s the absurd.
Fine.
The world doesn’t care.
I already knew that
by the way mornings feel.
So you make your own way.
Or you don’t.
Most people don’t.
I can live with it.
Most days.
If I don’t think too hard
about how easy it is
to get lost
and call it choice.
Jan 21
Jan 21, 2026 at 10:52 PM UTC
"wreckage of a crown"
And then—tree or tarmac, it mattered little—
the absurd crowned him back:
not laurel, but twisted chrome and shattered glass.
Chance felled the philosopher of chance,
his ticket unpunched, his sentence unfinished—
wreckage for a crown.
.
Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 10:46 PM UTC
I have loved,
but the kind of love that fades like handwriting
on rain-soaked paper;
not with betrayal,
but with the quiet indifference of days
that don’t answer back.
Kafka whispered to me once
not in words,
but in the way doorways narrow
just when you think you’ve made it through.
Every connection
was a trial without verdict,
a journey without destination.
Camus sat beside me in the nights,
cigarette in hand,
Moonlight on a meaningless world.
He taught me how to breathe in futility
without asking for more than breath.
He said: you must imagine Sisyphus happy,
but I still don’t know if I can.
Love, in my life,
has been a stranger who knew my name
but not my language.
People come..
They meet the surface,
Share a laugh, a habit, a warmth
and miss the abyss beneath.
There is a frequency I emit,
low, steady, almost imperceptible.
Most call it vibe.
But it is a beacon.
A signal
for one who has read Kafka at 2 a.m.
and did not flinch,
who has opened a window before dawn
Jumped out and hugged a tree..
She will not complete me.
Completion is a myth
sold by those who fear solitude.
But she will understand
that despair is not weakness,
and silence is not absence.
I do not wait with hope.
I wait with clarity
knowing I may never be heard,
and choosing to speak anyway.
This, too, is love.
To remain open
in a world that misunderstands
your every honest word.
I still keep sending the signal.
Because…
in this godless static of the cosmos,
the real rebellion
is to be understood
exactly as you are..
and still be loved for it.
-Himanshu Kumar
Oct 22, 2025
Oct 22, 2025 at 11:33 PM UTC
Gently indifferent, resolved, hardened in stasis
As rain on unallowing concrete
In earthbound unflow downward:
Gravity’s darkbow so torpid
Roaring past chronology:
the machinery of 10 minutes later, blurring
echo and desire, calling
time bygone time.
Lying.
Murmuring and rustling, grasped in closure, the absence of leaves
Subtly and steadily
The absence of mother.
In obeisance I cede to these greater forces and stoically belt myself
Insufficient enough and ready in faith
That ever comforting rope
An irrevocable condition, tethered
beyond windows cruel and secure,
communion estranged,
in a handful of sand,
scattered to some outside home
tenderly viewed
Yellow the visage glares oblique
A hazy, flat omen
Blinking, too, as it drives onward
Sentimentally no longer:
The sterile plane of a new day
Gentle, gentle waking world
Icarus me in sky not sea
Jul 8, 2025
Jul 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM UTC
I woke from a dream this morning
with three penises
and three sets of testicles
sprouting from my groin
I was astonished
wondering about the implications
could they all perform?
could I have *** with three women?
or three men?
which gender did these penises prefer?
and how would that work?
or would I be too embarrassed by this mutation to ever have *** again?
I imagined a hand touching down there and felt
extreme embarrassment
no, this was definitely the end of my *** life
I would never have *** again
then something shifted
in my mind
and I woke
from THAT dream
original factory settings restored (I checked)
relieved (so relieved)
this was one problem the universe had not thrown in my lap (haha)
I can still see those tiny peckers though
like a bouquet of newborn masculinity
what high jinks
are going on
at the bottom of the ocean in my brain?
Feb 2, 2025
Feb 2, 2025 at 9:46 AM UTC
Martin Buber, I and thou,
du, nicht Sie,
see, I am, thou art and it is
nothing other.
Okeh, the sound, not the letter runes
to fix my meaning
to your way of taking grace
as granted.
Simple magi?
I am acted on by your you, I see,
how strange I seem, from you, looking
out
for one,
I say, one, may say, what I am then not
accountible for, or something like that, eh
no-account, you know
who you seemed to be in that one book, you passed
through
in a trance, thinking this feels real, as any reason given
listen, we are not the first to make this connection,
it only feels crazy at first, then it turns, eh
turn turn turn a spiral ********
as from the too small to imagine past the last edge
of ever and back to now,
speed of thought imaginable due to vast increase
in how far our tools can go to gather bits
to blow up with AI assistant importance, gage,
the twisted spot a galaxy, by god, there are billions
of
billions of things, and I have but one breath.
What am I to be,
wait and see, I think I am the string, soaked in hummingbird
juice from the feeder, from when the oriole tipped the balance,
and soaked me,
the string,
thinking this is as absurd as being a bug, and I have been led
to imagine being tried, while being a bug,
and some time,
after all
that
I thought I ought to imagine Sisyphus happy, due to not knowing
the whole truth of any given circumstance,
here I and it is me and thee, the ready written
and the reader wrote. I am with you always, even, smooth, no
ripple, even to the final valley filling with peace
I made with friends since who knows when,
this is the time, we gather to measure
worth of knowing who has lied,
to whom, today, all things being open, to the art intuitive, thou
seest all things, each thing
accounted for in the grand motion going
on, make it better,
AM BIG I dare you, live on and learn off chance bets
cheat the stats, if you knew what I know
then, when it counts.
You be the judge. What good can contain the likes of us?
Oct 19, 2021
Oct 19, 2021 at 6:19 PM UTC
The pot-bellied Mercedes squealed
As Meursault withdrew and
Marvelled at the flames
Licking
The air
Like marigolds on Ritilin.
'Raymond would have no reason not to admire this act.'
He stopped by a shimmering sea of Ubers.
The scrape and drawl of siren made no impression on him.
Leaking smoke reminded him of
Snow White’s Cottage
Where he had taken Marie when Lucie was born:
The place where he would go out at dawn to chop wood.
He liked the way her roses played
With the restlessness of children.
Then he thought: 'if only mother could see me now.'
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 at 6:57 AM UTC
One must imagine Sisyphus ripped.
Shoulders like Boulders.
Quads like God's.
He was literally doing Olympian training!
Mar 2, 2020
Mar 2, 2020 at 6:21 PM UTC
Broken lovers float around
Like blind shadows looking for light
And sleepless walkers searching for night.
Like burned matches in winter forests
Disguised as trees,
Awaiting fire.
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 11:20 AM UTC
She was that Chekhovian girl
who fell for Dostoevsky
and Camus and Sartre
and
you.
Nov 29, 2018
Nov 29, 2018 at 12:15 AM UTC
This mind,
this ability to create,
and study and learn
and teach,
this is the tool which harms us.
This mumbling about meaning,
this world devoid of purpose,
the world from which it sprung.
-the struggle at it's root
and so the Absurd is born.
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 8:49 AM UTC
but your way of
v a n i s h i n g
has the power to question
my own existence.
was it real? or was it just an awfully
l
o
n
g
dream?
- анна о. к.
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 9:35 AM UTC
Camus asked, his question
A cup of coffee
Or death?
Because life has no meaning
So the absurdists said
These actions are equal
They mean as much as you decide
So why choose death
I guess its saying
It's no more or less
Than life
So every day
When I wake
If I'm feeling, like i normally do
I have a cup of coffee
Because coffee burns
It is bitter
Truthfully though
It's over quicker
Than a noose
And why
Should I
Die?
When the universe
Will not
Cry
For me
Another insignificant
Human life
To fork no lightning
And to vainly
Oh so vainly
Rage, as Thomas said
Against the dying of the light
So instead
I strive
To be free of my darkness
And to live free
Live a life so meaningless
Yet filled with beauty
This I will do.
Jul 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 at 11:49 AM UTC
My problem
isn't with the philo-
sophical side,
but lies more
in the how
and the when and
the courage
required.
Jan 29, 2017
Jan 29, 2017 at 9:31 PM UTC
they say god is perfect.
that holds true for me, too.
no concept contains me in totality.
Stirner wrestled with the undefinable:
an indefatigable Unique,
anarchic,
lacking category.
Camus perhaps said it best,
"i rebel, therefore i exist."
i strive to personify resistance.
i find the answers
in harmony with Counterparts,
defining *The Difference
Between Hell
and Home*:
"i am what i am
and i am an outcast."
an outlaw,
a nobody
akin to Nietzsche,
returning infinitely—
stretched like so many grains of sand
on time's flat surface, orbiting
eternally around the creative Nothing
at half-past 3:00 in the morning.
a singularity,
deconstructing
Derrida's Différance.
a nomad on the margins,
wandering aimlessly,
roaming perpetually
with Deleuze and Foucault,
an astronaut arranged
along the endless frontiers
of an ever-expanding cosmos.
Vonnegut recognized
the periphery affords
a radical view
to the few who choose
to embrace that which cannot be Known.
a zero-sum game
between Death and me,
staving off manic-depressive ennui
if only momentarily.
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 2:55 AM UTC
i'm wandering along a beach and i just killed the Arab
i'm waking up one day sophomore year and i'm deciding that it will be the last day of my entire life as i tie my shoes to go to school
i'm at my mother's wake and i'm trying to care but i just can't and i'm okay with it
i'm walking down the hallway and no one is making eye contact with me because they are afraid or disgusted or don't care or all of the above
i'm using some of my last breaths to yell at the priest and feeling no remorse
i'm making conversation with my last period teacher and smiling for the first time all day
i'm looking out at the crowd about to witness my death and feeling the gentle indifference of the world
i'm relating more to a sociopathic man in an absurdist novel than anyone i've ever met and i'm
not worried about it at all
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 9:26 PM UTC
contemplations of an angsty agnostic
otherwise known as the subtitle to my lengthy biopic
or the fumbling intellectual journey
the endless search to find
the divine reality behind,
to trace, pinpoint exactly what lies
at the center of the cosmos
at the crucified heart of all humankind
some days i feel there is no God
no chance of a higher power
i'm resigned to spewing cliched aphorisms as nihilistic as Schopenhauer
fragmented theories and meditations on life
consuming my thoughts and flooding my mind
ideas tessellate and twist as i'm crumbling, stumbling to try and make sense of all this
i find
the existential condition that burdens the shoulders of the wonder filled kids
from the blinkered blues of the beats
to the hopeful hedonism of the hippies
and the time tick ticks
regardless of the passing ecstasy of our dream-filled kicks
i feel there must be something more than this.
absurdity has the tendency to consume the very core of me
ultimately, does that not make me more free?
like Sisyphus, i stagnate
repetitive routines threaten to enchain me
but i believe i know the path i'm on
and i have to know it will save me
we live in times
of overwhelming, reeling uncertainty
is it true that one day the gleaming, spinning light will find me?
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 4:46 PM UTC
Wanderer.
From window to window.
Seeking
something
in different glass scenes
from offices and trains and restaurants.
Like she'll see something or someone
or somebody.
And the world will no longer be
a tilted painting.
Clear spring cold
papers over
the scene of the city of her world.
She's freezing.
There is a cafe at the end of the
road
where sidewalk snow has mingled
with trod-on mud
from commuter's shoes.
It's called
'Les yeux qui voient tout'
She can smell coffee and cigarettes and paper and words
and smiles and wine all the way from Bordeaux.
She sits by the window.
Tendrils of hair cut
across her cheek
as she lowers.
The seat is cold.
Legs crossed,
arms clasped,
high-heeled shoes with straps
that cross,
head bent
over a crossword.
'Un cafe au lait, s'il vous plait.'
Last four-letter word pencilled in so
she crumples up the paper.
The eyes don't notice
origami birds dangling above her.
Somehow
they're all angled
towards the glass window
like sunflowers reaching for the sun.
Perhaps the casual
shuttered-open winds
are the birds' oxygen;
reminders that
something
like
sky,
air,
wind,
exist, beyond
coffee-smoked counters.
Reminders that
they could breathe, live, fly
in some other city of some other world.
Cup and saucer on a silver platter
hover over.
Idle fingers
and then a clatter.
She stares down into
the white porcelain pit,
teeming with hot brown
alarms.
It isn't a portal
into
something.
Just a cup of coffee.
Now that is an alarm.
Slow and
shaking,
drip,
drip,
drip.
The milk is poured.
Curling, italic, Persian carpet spread
from the cup's centre into warm-cream brown.
She imagines it is
blood in her heart.
She raises the little silver teaspoon
napping on the saucer and
stirs.
'Le sucre?'
Does she want it all
to be
sweeter?
Two packets, long like
Marlboros,
hastily, desperately dumped
into the mix.
Quick and
shaking,
she raises the little silver teaspoon and
stirs.
Little sugar grains ******
into a vortex,
dissolved and melted into
the city of the world of the cup.
With her little finger, she
dabs
stray sugar grains
on the table
and tries to bring sweetness
to her sleep-thick tongue.
Slow and
shaking,
sip,
sip,
sip.
She's tricked herself
into feeling warmth.
Ticker-tape banner
pops up in her head:
'All of this will not
fix you.'
Porcelain clatter
as cup meets saucer.
Again.
She arms herself with
a cigarette case and a book.
Maybe now she will belong
amongst these people
with sad eyes and burning lips,
clinging on to cups and drinks.
So desperately-lit smoke
trails out of
her warm mouth,
steaming up her face
like a window on a cold winter day.
And meanwhile Camus perches
in her hand.
Her eyes swim
in the choppy seas
of French.
The cigarette dangles,
painting the air grey, grey,
tilting, tilting, tilting.
Slow and
shaking,
she weeps.
Half-aglow in the white sunshine filter
from the glass window,
a woman is wondering.
She drinks her coffee,
wipes her smudged mouth
and leaves.
Nobody notices the wobble
in her high-heeled gait.
She's just a part of
another tilting painting,
another glass scene.
These simple acts,
simple things,
define
the speaking soul.
In a scene of the city of the world.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 5:25 AM UTC