Listen...

at least...

at...

the end of the day...

I learnt this:


I'm the type of person who

can have everything he wants in the world,
everything (yes, you)

But will jump to give it all up
in one second,
one ****** second,

all for the sake of adventure.


Take that as you wish.

She kissed me and her lips tasted like my French grade:
somewhat romantic, but still mediocre.

Eternity ends when the drinking begins,
even though I have you on repeat.

They said that all that glittered was not always gold
And even your star-struck eyes couldn't be sold
for much of a profit; we were worth a little bit too much
even if half of us couldn't be bothered to give a

piece of the soul to the great big unknown
so you danced to the music and stayed within your zone
but your hips didn't quite move and your behind didn't quite shake
Exam season had you thinking that the last turn-up was a mistake

So you turn't down for everything to become a Top Achiever
and gave your soul to Cambridge because it's clear that you're a dreamer
And that's why your eyes became so suddenly star struck
And how suddenly a past paper was worth a little bit too much

But it was worth it because

Even if one year of your life passed you by...
Even if one year of your life passed you by...
Even if one year of your life passed you by....

...You still wrote your candidate number in sneakers looking fly.

So even though not all of us can become an A*
That doesn't mean that not all of us in life cannot go far
As written in the constellations are the particles of our star-dust
the whole is more than the sum of its parts and so are you my little star-struck

former IGCSE candidate.
See? You really were able to manage it.

There was a time when your lips were painted
bright red-

but this was not when you had painted
me goodbye in the car-park, and somehow
left me grey,

as your little red Volkswagen
rolled softly away.

And then I thought that
those big, endless dark spaces
between the stars in the night sky
had to mean Something

besides

how much nothing is in
Nothing.

Don't.

God lit us into life
and enjoyed us for just over seven days-
when clouds were still white puffs of sweet nicotine
and a volcanic eruption was just another blaze
in a series
of ***** inhalations.

But then God coughed his lungs out
and realized that Humanity is a cancer
which divides uncontrollably into a collective
body without a head to control it; a cancer
that insists on tar-

-ring its own pathways
along pre-existing pathways
of life-giving oxygen
(cities replace forests just as
carbon monoxide replaces oxygen
in red blood cells' haemoglobin).


...Evidently, the pleasure of her eyes was not enough,
so you sought for some clouds and volcanoes.
But then again, the absence of that same pleasure was what
drove you to become God in the first place.

I don't remember when I finally figured out
that racism is real. But when I was much younger,
I think I was somewhat uneasy with how
the white girls
were always the prettiest because
we saw them on TV,
having adventures
in pink dresses.

Of course one had to wonder
where one could see himself or herself
on a TV screen without being made
a secondary character; a black
Shadow.

When we grow up,
I will let our daughter
cry herself to sleep.

That way she will never
need nor expect
for her father's or her stranger's arms
to hold her so that she can fall

gently, gently
asleep.

When we grew up
our daughter never
cried herself to sleep.

That way she never
needed, nor expected,
for her father's... for her mother's
womb to hold her
so that she could stay

gently...

gently...

asleep.

Our dreams were born in a coffin.
You made me promise
to always, always
dry her tears
if I could.

She captioned his heart like she captioned
her own pictures of herself:

seemingly profound but obvious
and unrelated to whatever
touch-screen-camera-phone-app filter she used
to unshade her blackness,
his blackness,
their blackness; with digital
skin-lightening cream.

As if to be dark was a sin.

And so she edited herself
to forgive herself.
Because Jesus had eyes the colour of her contact lenses.
Blue.

Because to be holy is to be arbitrary.
Because to caption his heart like she captioned herself
was easier than to just ask for his soul
through a no make-up selfie.

        Or whatever else she thinks is actually her,
        but still isn't.

Father checks if I'm sleeping; I wake up, and see
little tinctures of nothing night-sky poetic, I see
blandness slathered in a huge speck. Where was
that spirit and excitement and everything that life offered
not too long ago? Who wakes up to do their homework
at midnight?

I feel like an unnecessary pause. In the grand poetry of the universe.

Go ahead, listen
to Martha Argerich
play Chopin or Ravel, and then
tell me that words have any meaning-

they don't.

Just as how a little stick-man could not perceive the pencil that drew him
I could have never seen God and didn't see him when he had molded me
from His depths of clay, profound as a rock- that is to say still, solid,
silent, cold, old, disquieting... All fancy words for 'not much.'

Here's the point: there isn't any, but
just as how this little stick-man cannot perceive this pencil that draws him
closer and closer to the last panel of his, this, comic or graphic novel:
beings of smaller dimensions know nothing
of those so much higher, smarter, and more poetic than themselves.

Does this have to do with why you disappeared onto an airplane
like a bird searching for her freedom...?
Am I, in this mess of metaphors, your little stick-man who couldn't
get out of his paper sheet and fly with you...?
Of course, in existing on a dried white flap, I could not, cannot, fold
my own two dimensions of existence into even one crumpled paper plane;
so I could not, cannot, follow you through your freeing air
and ask you, or beg you, to answer my silly questions...

Because I have both length and width, but no depth;
no depths of clay.

Though I figure the answers to these questions are the same.
The truth is that, in this mess of metaphors,
neither of us got to pick what we didn't want to be, bird or stick-man.
In reality we had only one choice: to hold hands when we could.
So we did.

And when we did- everything became dimensionless;
and Everything made sense because Nothing did.
Because the value of the distance between our hands
meant that Nothing was our Everything.
And from that dense Nothing our Universe was born-
Bang. Thus tiny strings of new Everything rippled throughout old Nothing...
making Everything matter, almost literally.
We then made our stars, our galaxies, our planets; our classrooms,
lockers, and lovers: each other. All of this brilliant Creation until
we only had one last choice: to hold hands when we could...
...so we did...

... again and again,
in the distant dreams of a troubled theorist
who chains together pages and birds of poetry,
looking to find you, again and again,
in the mess of metaphors
of our Universe,

and I did.

                    Almost.

We want to see ourselves
see ourselves
because we're afraid that nobody else will
ever want to capture us
in a camera flash- so we take our own pictures.

Click. Our front camera becomes
the one minute we had hoped our fathers had for us
when he wasn't busy on that same phone, speaking,
not clicking. Without us.

Or it becomes the one minute we had hoped
that our lovers would hold us
before they settled on to someone
with more likes,
more comments,
more friends,
more happiness...
than we could ever wait for.

We are impatient
like the frequency of data on our profiles:
here are our feelings now... here
are our feelings again, five minutes later,
performing for social algorithms
in place of photographers
besides ourselves who
see ourselves.

But our ignited pixels,
and overstuffed inboxes,
and masturbatory statuses,
and glittering timelines,
and social everything-

are popularity contests
that all of us are losing.

Yet still we want to see ourselves
see ourselves
even though we are afraid
of what we know is true...

...Because what difference
is a poem to a tweet
besides the number of characters
that we wish we had to populate our own stories?

Please let us be different,
just like everyone else.

is simply to believe
that some thoughts
are so beautiful
that they could not
not be shared.

Rather suddenly he said:

"What if depression is some kind of middle class *******? Like, for people like us...novelists, dramatists- so we can still write somewhat interesting **** about ourselves even though we don't... I don't know, have some sufficiently dramatic background story? Have you ever figured how many kids in the world are born into armed conflicts? Or survived an encounter in a plastic ******* bag on their first birthday?

We can't write about that because we don't know jack **** about it. But it's really, really difficult to read something that's not in some way about you. Do you know what I mean? So you and I, the lucky ones, we have to write stories that we can read. Stories about people likes us: the lucky ones. And to make **** like that interesting we need depressed guys with psychiatrists.

So yeah... I'm probably not depressed. At the very least, perhaps desperate for a story."

If things don't exist until we see them-
then everything must be poetry.

Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference.


Already absent,
my heart already fonder
for memories we hadn't been able to make yet.
Time is slow. You can sleep, then wake up.
Because of that: I haven't even bat an eyelid yet.

Unblinking in these unholy stretches
of distant poetry where I am God, I  
watch our oblivious universe. Make something of it.
Fashion us a happy ending, if you will.

But you're there, and
I'm here.
So...


                               ...would you mind

                               if we talked

                               about infinity...

                                                               ...tonight?


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
so tonight is meaningless to you.
You see the sun, I see the stars.
But who can say
one of us is more blind than the other?

Who is to say what is wrong
and what is right,
when we live in a world
where I, Romeo
and you, Juliet
can commit suicide
when it's both day and night?

Such things are preposterous...
even more so than I pretending to be God
with my pen of hormones and heartbreak...
Who am I to think that I could  possibly... make something of it.
Or fashion us a happy ending, if you please.

I am mere, and powerless before the rotations of the Earth
just as I am powerless to my impulse
to click the refresh button
over any one of your profiles,
thinking it's somehow better to read 'About Me,'
then to ask about you.


Refresh.


Google tells me it's an eight hour time difference,
and neither Romeo or Juliet are dead.
Though they never lived as nothing more than characters;
we are people. You and I are not tragic concepts;
we are merely circumstance to
an arbitrary mixture of romance films, evolutionary biology-
all subject to the Earth's curvature, the Sun's shadows,
and the mocking Moon's stolen light. Simultaneous.

But because I am self-aware
I can be the **** of my own jokes
rather than the ****-end
of God's lonely, bored cigarette...

...It always has to end with
depressing existentialist philosophy,
doesn't it? More reflections or rejections
of purpose or meaning
of heaven and hope
or whatever will close the golden gates
of happiness to me. It just always
has to end that way, even though I'm not a French writer...

... I could still romance you with my words
and hold you as comfortably as I could my favourite book.
Not too tight. Not too loose. Lightly, effortlessly-
that's how it felt
to kiss you Goodbye
and all of that jazz.

And now after all that, the blues.


Refresh.

I have never written a single poem
that my lovers could understand.

In truth, all my romantic verse is simple,
self-congratulatory applause

for not falling victim
to the virus of sentiment.


I am a gifted liar.

Gatsby's green light was orgastic, unreachable,
distant.
              Mine is a little dot on my chat screen,
also green;

your being in some corner of reality
that, perhaps, is also

                                   looking for stories,
  looking for me.

He cried out to the world and received only the response of his echo. Unlike the many other desperates of life, he did not despair. Instead, in his loneliness, he cried out "I have a ******* awesome echo" and sat down to check his Facebook messages.

That was that, he thought, as he waited for you to wake up and say hello.

It was a very cold and unfortunate place to be right at the top of, here in the mountain of his friendlessness, right here on a Monday morning; but... the sun was rising and the day was coming- even if you didn't get round to saying hello.

Thesis:


There's an easy way to disprove
that ignorance equals bliss:

                              Your eyes

were puzzles of space-time,
studied through conversations
fervent in their background noise-
where I looked for one single oddity
in what might have been the ordinary,

except it wasn't. Space-time
distorts around things of great

                                        gravity

and your light-consuming pupils
pulled me towards you. Complexity,
hidden in some unsuspecting darkness
that I was dragged into...
things I didn't understand
until I reach our event horizon

      and you and I are one.


(As for my thesis: what great Nothing would we have been
if I skyrocketed away
for fear of the unknown?)

Your locker is empty,
much like how I imagine
I and the concept of you and me
will be.

              You're going places;

unmistakably graceful
in your already absence.

Meanwhile
I'm trying to find a meaning,
a point
              in my stasis.
                                     I'm stuck

looking for a purpose without a you.

When I put
this drink can
against my mouth,
and the liquid flows past my lips,

I am reminded
of a moment,
of a closeness,
I'm not sure I should still feel

but do.

This morning I figured:

(1) The reason I'm so thin is because sadness kills my appetite; I'm a love poet.

(2) I keep thinking about how, in order to complete the aesthetic of a damaged artist, I need even longer and even messier hair and a never-ending supply of cigarettes. I want to be the black Albert Camus.

(3) I'm obviously very, very bored because I've never smoked anything in my life.

I.

In a world made of glass
I am your home
and you have begun
to throw stones...

...because maybe you forgot
that you can still see the world outside
without breaking me.

Not only that,
but your home had a door.


II.

Science says, that as glass, you will do a number of things
to my white light.
Let us assume then, that you are prism.
Let us also assume that it is a coincidence
that 'prism' rhymes with 'prison.'

Regardless:

When I go through you, my white light
will scatter
into a rainbow. While together
we are momentarily beautiful...
...one cannot help but wonder
about my sacrifice.

I've been torn apart into different colours.
No longer myself.
Just so you could have this poem.

YOU.


  I.

I enjoy the simple things:


kissing You Goodbye
since that's the only time
when God will let me have You-
when I can't;

the occasional glimpse of this God
when Your skies meet my eyes
since that's the only time
that I'm allowed to have You-
when I can't;

Your hands on my chest
and mine on Your waist
all until the school bell rings-
since that's the only time
that God will let me have You-
when I can't.

Which seems to suggest
that no,
I cannot have You.


No,
I can't.

No,
I won't.


  II.

Once upon a time


when eyes and skies met
and ignored the sounds
of lockers closing
bells ringing
and other people talking-

an invasion would flood our vision.

A friend of Yours', or mine's, hand
would cut across the space between
eyes and skies
and block the exchange of poetry
that I liked to imagine
happened between our souls.

I was perpetually asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
And perpetually answered:
"Yes, I do. But can't I have friends?"

Then suddenly I understand
what 'perpetually' actually means
when You tell me
that in a few months
You'll be off in some plane
going somewhere
for some reason.

(Question:
is it thus
too soon
or too late
to say that I love you?

(Or do I at all?))

Therefore there was perhaps no choice-
You and I momentarily disappeared
and we momentarily came into existence
in the briefest of
separate deaths
then
singular birth
then
singular death
then
separate births.

Separate all again, perpetually

asked:
"Don't you have a girlfriend?"
Then perpetually
answered
with nothing.


Well,
then I did,
now I do,
tomorrow I won't.


  III.

We are together now.


Sometimes You talk
as if in an expository monologue
in the grandest and most acclaimed of stages.
Sometimes You don't-
and the threatening silence
makes me wonder if I should go, or stay.

I was attracted to the mystery of You
and am also now angered by it:
I have no idea what to do
and often don't even know
what to write.

Prose and verse often fail
when the author has nothing to write of.

(What I'm really saying is:
Do You plan on maybe
replying my messages
anytime soon?
Preferably while we still have
any time left

at all?)

And then, hours, or days
later.
I still have nothing to write of
so I instead write
this.

I also write how

"I will never know what structures
exist in Your mental architecture: You couldn't
bring Yourself to give me
even but a blueprint."


You still won't.


  IV.

Exams are over. School has closed. We near our finale.


Of course what about
those fights that You and I
never had. Perhaps
we should've. Perhaps
we would've. Perhaps
there was no point in anything. Perhaps
there is no point in everything. Perhaps.

See, that's why I asked You
what You thought of Yourself,
Because I too would like to know

Who are You?

But then again...
I've changed my mind
about the end of this...of our...
literature. Let us instead say that

Your eyes are the stuff of poetry,
but look at the title of this-
it's only just... You.
And that's all I want
to talk about today.


But...
we won't.


  V.

I count the days until the airport.


Take note of what I will say tomorrow:
"Listen, for I am…”

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.

"...a poet missing his muse;
who wished he could have told her,
everything he could think of..."

The Beast that shouted “I”
at The Heart of The World.


Even now,
I can't.

Even now,
I won't.

MEMORIES OF A PLACE I'VE NEVER BEEN TO.


Let's pretend
that her name
is
was
foreign

'Darjeeling'

like the tea
from a sunny
faraway place
of colour
and taste.


I mean that
this girl
is
was
sweet, spicy

and warm to the lips

like the tea
from a sunny
faraway place
of colour
and taste.

SECOND LOVE.

Hand-holding as the stars sing:
I think I am getting older.

I don’t believe that’s the roar of God out there,
it’s probably just the wind or crickets, who don’t
burn so bright and distant; screaming in the dark.
Sound doesn’t travel through vacuums anyway so
it’s funny

that I can still hear you
whispering through my phone.

Didn’t that conversation happen a week ago?

You’re under-cover in your bed-sheets,
hiding from your parents while mine just watch TV.
Again, this is all just memory
where sounds cannot reach us,

but I’m sure you can still hear me
as I tell you that, yes,
I’ve finally written words for you, words for me.

What will happen tomorrow?

A GOODBYE MESSAGE.


When the last girl broke my heart, I had died a romantic
-Shakespeare was getting old anyway.
Sleepless and young, I withered a while
And tireless sweat formed dewdrops on my skin
-I see you.

Wait,
what I meant to say was...
I died for nobody's sins
and came back for nobody's hopes...
nobody's hopes but mine.
Hoping
that I could and can still see you.

No.

I don't agree with the opening line
-it really has nothing to do with her.
What I'm trying to say,
What I'm trying to say...

Is that it's better we talk over the phone.

See the last time I broke my  heart, I had died a romantic
-I thought Shakespeare was getting old;
But it was really me of course.
But God you look so timeless right now
-I can still see you dancing in that dress (right now).

And the turns of your heels are kaleidoscope
-You shift from one dress to the next.
Or is that just a way of saying
That my inner clock is a slideshow of you?

I had died a romantic
and was reborn a realist,
and I'm very, very lucky
Because there's nothing...
nothing that's realer than you.

Though

what I' mean and I'm trying to say...
what I mean and I'm trying to say...
is that it's better we talk over the phone...
that I like it when we're on our own.

Goodnight Darjeeling.

AS WE THINK OF WHAT TO SAY NEXT.
                
                                    
…


The quality of this silence
   is as grand
      is as wonderful
         is as eternal

                                           is as everything

as the sudden crescendo
of a piano on the moon.


…


For words are useless
when it comes to such things.

Tired.

I had been able to close my eyes for a bit and even went as far as letting the blanket of black envelop me. Strangely, it had held me like no one didn't. In short, I was alone. But this time, content with being so: I could finally enjoy the voice inside my head.

And then tomorrow, once a concept that didn't exist, existed once again. Then my chest began to hurt. Exam sadness was setting in. It was thus the time to write insincere essays and meaningless equations. All for a certificate that will say I am qualified for something. For what, I do not know. All I know that I was once able to smile...not too long ago.

I said goodbye to my blanket of black and said hello to my gentle heart attack. And afterwards I logged onto more emptiness on a screen: dreams and seens. I didn't, I don't, understand anything yet. All I know is that I am suddenly not a child anymore.

HIM, LOOKING AT HER.


She is subtle.
A face hidden behind an iPad;
Only silent eyes are left-

they speak:

-my world is here.
i choose here, i hide here,
i like here.
see it shines?

-my world is here.
pictures picture pictures
the river my news feed;
a status a raindrop;

-my world is here.
and we are the cloud:
condensing, condensing, collapsing
relaxing, relaxing, relapsing

-my world is here.
so send me a message  here
don’t look at me…they're watching
     send me a message

please.

-my world is here.
i choose here, i like here,
i hide here.
so why…
    
...why do i keep looking at you?

outside.

MY BED PAST MIDNIGHT;
YOU ARE ASLEEP.


The presence of you,
next to me on my bed,
is gentle and existing;
ethereal as you are.

And,
soft as you are,
it is nothing deep,
nothing carnal.

And,
cold as we are,
in needing warmth:
we cuddle,

with
hair quietly tangling
in the background
of our bodies;

with
blood warmly murmuring
in the background
of our hearts;

with
our tired eyes talking,
when we’re silent;
saying things
they weren't supposed to say.

I know
that we’re online
in the pixels, of my screen,
and type to tell you
that I wish you were here;

that my bed is empty, despite me,
as it always was;
that you'll only see this message
when you wake up…


But


The presence of you,
next to me on my bed,
is gentle and existing;
ethereal as it is.

Night Lights.


At midnight her heart, a vulnerable spark,
looks for some warmth for fire.

There is something warm, warmer than herself;
something to keep her alight.

She speaks in shortcuts; '***!'s and 'LOL!'s,
and in pictures; smileys and stickers...

Hoping he will  love her quicker;
Hoping he will love her at all.

But at midnight a heart, vulnerable spark,
is tired of looking for fires.

There is nothing warm, warmer than herself;
nothing can keep her alight.

She'll fizzle and freeze into cold blue hues
and shortcuts and pictures will fade...

But he had just loved her slowly;
In hoping she'd love him at all.

CLASSROOMS.


When eyes meet, lifetimes flicker
into brief birth, in seconds.
They then disappear, switched off
fading from glow as they look away.

And those small daydreams,
memories and ghosts;
diffuse off, dead.
Like momentary winds or clouds
shadowing the sunlight, sweetly.

...or the times I should have
talked to you but didn't.

Instead we had then looked away.

ONE WEEK AT SCHOOL.


Its a Monday morning when
I'm still trying to make out with you.
It's about half a year earlier,
and we're both late for class.
But nobody's looking; nobody cares.

It's a Tuesday afternoon when
we're walking with other people.
It's a few months later,
and of no consequence any longer:
I've written everything I've needed to.

On a Wednesday evening your sister is now
asking me online why you cry into your pillow:
what were my intentions, what did I want.
I'm trying my best not to tell her,
that I really wish I knew.

It's a Thursday morning again
when I still tried to make out with you.
I see you walk but we're both sure I can't.
Soon enough, no one would have ever noticed,
that in these spaces we occupied anything at all.

Then it is Friday, late afternoon when
I call you to tell you I love you.
You don't say why you won't say it back-
I am suddenly too scared to ask.

So now I am writing
everything I've needed to.

AN INBOX.


I watched our brief memories shatter before my face,
          and wondered

About our inherent chaos and implicit shapelessness;
         crying now

Before me. I meet grey scars in your heart-broken eyes,
         cataracts,

Singing a siren’s song that drags me to drown with you-
        I hate you

For bringing me back…my head had just broken through your waters…
       I miss breathing…

                                      ...so, so much.

WAKING FROM EVERYDAY.

The chords of your laughter, unexpected,
echo from the clouds above me
and scatter
like fragile light; dancing
across the green tips of grateful trees.

Briefly, I shuddered. Behind the bricked wall
of the cemented dreams I have of us-
I had head your little song of life.
But now I am smiling.
Your fragile light has made me grateful

to see the world in colour.

LIGHTBULB.

Lightbulb; the moths flutter
and beat themselves to death against an idea.
A thought, vivid like glass, bright like tungsten-
glows.

I am reaching out to my mind again,
my wings burned and burdened...Wait.
I have lost track of my metaphors again...
But then again, like the moths,

I have lost track of many things-
except for the unknown light in front of me.

THE SCIENCE SECTION IN THE LIBRARY.




Why is it hard?

To suggest to me, you;
that I do not love you,
as Einstein and Newton
glare at us from their spines,
in truth and in shelves,
here?


Because when months pass you’ll be both here and not here
like a creeping silhouette: a black cat in shadow
-though within the boundaries of bookcases
instead of inside some sad quantum box.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
I begin to notice- the bookcases expand…
…leaving space for more spines to glare at me.


Stupid, stupid questions;
curious, unanswerable.


Why is it that

I will then hear your name,
as rusting papyrus
is turned by young fingers
crossing yellowed ruins,
for truth in these shelves,
here?


Because today passes; you‘re both here and not here
like how light makes your tired iris amber-
by absorption of all visible rays but one,
which when reflected, leaves the rest forgotten.

Because when I am here, you will always let go
again of my hand or may not. Regardless,
memory is vacuum; you won’t hear me choking
in the Brownian motion of reality.


Thus the library is such
an awkward place to break up




*T.W.T Mulalu