We say we have given up and yet we hold on,
How did we get here and when?

Sleeping with one eye open
And keeping the porch light on,
Not even knowing what for

Cause no one is coming,
No one ever does for people like us
So why do we hold on to this self abuse?

Take limbs by limbs out, Till we are nothing but a mass of puddle laying on the floor. Why after lots and lots of trying we can't love ourselves? Why do we look at others for a nod of approval, or desiring validation? Why don't we believe that who we are can be worth being, too, no matter what the little voices in our heads say.

We go to bed crying, overwhelmed and wake up empty, drained and we beg others; we snap, weep and yell, just to feel anything, but there is nothing to be felt.

It is like screaming from underneath an ocean. You try and try and try but no voice reaches an ear, or, maybe the world has long gone deaf to others' wailing. This is not how you thought your life would be, but that is how it is, that is how you have made it.

And how you wish some nights someone would hold you and sing a lullaby that will suddenly make you wonder why, all of a sudden, is wind giving you caresses so soft. But you have to understand before that happens, you have to get up now, and sing yourself to sleep.

Because we will find what we reflect and you don't want to seem too clingy, you don't want to be the mat that everyone stomps on. Because, you are worth more. You are the sea, you are the hurricane and why should sea care for the castles made in sand? Everything external fades, and you know this all too well.

All your life you complain about the fleetingness of a moment but you are here to stay, how could you discard the thing that will stay with you throughout the life?

Radiate the love you always wanted to have. Try and try and make the trees envy of how you take care of yourself and gently let go of the parts that no longer aid.

which breaks the faceless crowd
a gush of blissful warmth
soothing as autumn sun
fiery as raging storm

the earthiness of fields
and scent of blooming slopes
the wilderness of sky
a bustling city's soul

she is the riddling key
hint of a dreamy life
window which breathes the sun
blesses my being with shine

a nebula of birth
crucible of synthesis
my sermon on the mount
my fall into abyss

complexity of life
simplicity of smile
the fleetingness of wind
purposelessness of time

a father's solemn wish
a mother's selfless prayer
immortal as the sea
lover's listless despair

patience of dormant seeds
the certainty of death
innocence of a child
preciousness of breath

vapors of firmament
helplessness of loss
a tease of sun and clouds
the curiousness of God

she is the judgment day
a dream of languor warmth
the solace of my pain
cast in a fervid form

for she is all there is
and all there'll ever be
an era of romance
the reason for my being

as tranquil rainbows dim
and stars bestow a treat
my muse forever sought
i yearn the day we'll meet

There are those who’d curse the paintings
That held the highest beauty
For being formed from something
Impermanent as oil and paint
Intangible as light.

There are those who’d curse a romeo
Cast in stone relief
For such vanity, and hubris
For how could such a man
Begin to know such beauty and
The truth of open feeling?

There are those who would cut this holy wire
That tethers us across the world
For fear of some lurking evil
Some banging in the dark
That’s bound to take our souls away
Some lack of love or depth

There are those who’d see the flesh on flesh
And cries like angelsong
And **** it for it’s fleetingness
For their father’s love was purer.
For their father’s love was strong
Their poor and lonely fathers
Cursed to loveless love

Oh brave new world that I have seen
That has such people in it!
Who cry for long-forgotten men
Yet **** the ones before them!

drawing, soft grey lines against off-white paper
scultping his face with delicate arcs,
the stroke that tells a story: an artist
that fell in love with their subject

that was the plan.

twelve of the longest minutes of my life
tipped half upside down,
face pressed into metal bars—no, not a metaphor
actual metal bars.

left arm wedged between body and bed,
heartbeat hammering in my throat
echoing in my head, pulse jumping
in my neck. stop

playing hop scotch at the hinge of my jaw

i remember the shape of your teeth,
passionate, possessive,
marking me as yours.
but here's the truth

as reality faded around me
save for the thrum of my existence
and the caress of piano notes,
i was alone. my own.

i've never belonged to myself more
than just there, half on my bedroom floor
dissociating from everything but
my scattered thoughts and

proof of the life in my veins
pumping and beautiful but
also ... pain, so much of it
acknowledging life and its fleetingness

swift and soft, that's how i want to go.
i lost myself to my own head for an hour
wondering if life is as grey and removable
as the carbon collected on off-white papers

huddled together between a fold of black leather,
a universe with a beginning and an end,
both are black and definite as each other
are we linear or rounded? are we exploding

every billionth year, a billion billion billion suns
burning so far away we have to call them stars—
maybe that's why you're my star light
and i'm the darkness you keep bright

and hopeful, maybe

this wasn't supposed to be a love poem
but it feels like one anyway
who are you? i don't know who i'm writing to
i just remembered

see, i dissociated again; i don't mean to forget you

"you can't think while you're faded"?
i'm telling you i can
can't move, can't live, but think?
i sure as hell can, sure as hell do, sure as hell

it's hell sometimes
though not tonight.
i didn't feel quite so turbulent,
listening to my bloodstream and

okay, there is a limit, i'll give you that
i admit i lost some time
i wish i'd lost myself in sketching but
i lost myself in my mind

i only knew it'd been an hour
by the time stamp on my timeline
who says social media is useless? not i
i know how many minutes slipped into the void

oh how i envy them,
thoughtless and forgotten and empty of feeling.
i'd take my brushes and paint me into the sky
if i thought it might take me to heaven

artist i am, fell in love with my muse
but my mind's a two timer,
slipping off to spend time with darkness
even as my heart screams in my chest

*"what about your star light? what about your life?"

Two scholars discuss life in a gray library.
They dissect beauty into precise compartments,
They speak softly of fleetingness of time.

Outside a breeze is blowing through green paddy fields.
A clump of wild flowers have blossomed early.
A goatherd lies in the grass with nothing to do.

Time is passing fast in the dusty libraries.
But in green fields Time lingers, half in love with spring.

Diptesh Ghosh

An immortal flame
Absent, yet enkindled
It resides in me and you
An awareness we gave
eachother when our eyes met
When our smiles opened
the windows in our eyes
and we could see the same candle burning
How could we forget?
We never have
It's just the drama of going through birth
The fleetingness of life
and the wisdom of us as a child
that was washed away to time
Because let's be honost
we both were a long way from home
But our candle still burns my dear
And our home is still ours
let's spend some time together
I've missed you and I wonder how your day went.

In the midst of loneliness, all I perceive was darkness.
Forever was thought of seeing you in the hopeless idea that I was born for you.
The butterflies brought blindness for my thought that you brought forever but fleetingness

Every word that I wrote is every you that I thought.
Every moment feels like serendipity but your words screams agony
Yearning feels like me that you bury

Clandestine roads to leave me hangin' and bleedin' was always predestined
As the prophets gazed, you had yourself effaced But the archers illuminate that the tragic fate was engraved

Would I want to live forever?
I have no idea
for the beginning.
For the furious joy of discovery,
the hunger to peel back the universe’s every secret,
to taste, touch, and name each flavor of wonder
as if the world were an orchard that never stopped blossoming.

I would chase knowledge like rain across endless fields,
fill my lungs with languages,
fold centuries of music into the marrow of my bones,
become fluent in every art and ache
to feel the ecstasy of what is possible
stretching wider than my reach.

But is there a point,
a hush after the crescendo,
where the newness curdles into routine?
Does the thrill dilute with every repetition,
each first time replaced by a thousandth?
What is the flavor of a sunrise
when you’ve counted ten million mornings
does the awe become an echo,
or do you learn to love the echo itself?

Perhaps meaning can’t survive in the absence of endings.
Perhaps it is the brevity, the fleetingness
the trembling urgency of the moment
that sculpts joy from raw experience,
that makes one lifetime,
finite and fragile,
so deeply enough.

And yet I long to outlast the ticking clock,
to savor infinity,
to taste every possible shape of being
until the hunger is replaced by a strange stillness,
the pleasure by a quiet ache.
To see if, after everything,
there is a new kind of meaning
in having done it all
or if immortality is simply
the art of learning how to let go
of wanting more.