“I want to kill myself”
or at least I wanted to…
never mind these old wounds
Wait—no—maybe we should
Mind them
what Shattered became me
I couldn’t breath like I used to
never wanted to crash like ever before
just straight nothingness
It’s not polite to speak so bluntly
in a gentlemen’s society
But in truth
Who else is going to point out the unfairness of it all?
Someone comes by and starts
my life
Smothered me in the way it is
it traps me, by the burdens of its weight
a hundred years of suffering
so
no
no more
I sang to myself
I wanted to go
So much
take the shot and go
but yet here I am
speaking to you
appealing to you
let the darkness float by
let it rush out like the trains you want so badly
let it drain out like the toxic waters you so thirst
let it dissolve like the pills you carry
let it wash away like the floods you yearn for
take this moment with you
yes, you
And breath again
Stay with me
Stay with me…
Mind these old wounds
We should
Duality
In these murky waters
Where the silt rises but never falls
Where the branched shadows curl
And grasp onto your throat
It is here that absence sits
And it is here that its twin nothingness
Flies below in freedom
With absence, the darkness does not recede
It warps the world
And all falls through the void
With its sibling, in nothingness, there is presence
A mystery of existence
Letting go means having substance
A clear water without silt
And branches that produce
Even in the temporary
The blossoms of today
Memories of the Rain
I remember when the darkest clouds were receding from the rain. The rain had launched an assault on the buildings, and it peltered all of the small world underneath it. The hungry clouds had taken over the sky, with black vengeance, wrapping all of us mortals into its fury.
But even as the storm blew through as I was at the high school tutoring away, I had not paid much attention to it until I went outside. By then, the rain had started to retreat, just a little bit. A few stragglers came down as I stepped out, but by the moment my bus set out, the sun was starting to shine through. The rays of light found their way out of the labyrinth and tenderly reflected off of the pools of water that gathered on the sidewalks and roads.
As the bus arrived at the first intersection, I saw through the drips of water, an infinite rainbow in each. On one side of the sky were the dark receding clouds and the other side, the startling evening sun. Spring had arrived by then, and each leaf carried on top of it a thousand liquid gemstones, slowly rolling off one by one. On the roads themselves, the passing cars left wakes in their tracks, each wake of water splashed onto the roads created a rainbow, perfect and magnificence, but temporary as they all were.
This world was painted over in a new light. Here was a road so traveled and old to me, but now I was seeing the most colorful and brilliant diamonds scattering all over the asphalt. The twinkling world greeted me as I rode the bus home, and it left this feeling of awe and inspiration. I’ve always loved the rain—the smell and the sound of raindrops on windows never ceases to soothe me. But it never was so beautiful as it was that day. In a few moments, the rain clouds would disappear and the sun would overtake the sky. The distant battle of darkness vs light would be over until nightfall. The orange glow of it all would slowly fade away as but a memory of my childhood. I cherish it always.
A Witch’s Guide to the Universe
As the ruling Coven of the 100th fold, we were destined for greatness. Rest assured, we took great care to honor humanity. We only turned them into giant apples to be eaten. Their sweet crunches were music to our ears.
As one could imagine, when we located the capsule from the depths of the Hellfire Lake with the absolutely voluntary help of one hundred slaves, we had high expectations. As the hexes were carefully disarmed, we dreamed of the dark magic unlocked before our eyes.
The smoke knocked me out the minute it opened, and when I woke up, I suddenly found out that the sun, which was covered by our darkness spells, actually came out for once. Miraculously, the pitiful humans passing by were not slaving away anymore to our bidding but actually thriving and—dare I say it—laughing at me! It was intolerable. According to the juicy taste of his last words, the greatest spell of history saved in that time capsule was a disastrous spell that inverted everything except for me.
Why would our ancestors make such a time bomb and rid us of the joy of human apples? I can’t tell. Maybe a certain snake might know…
The blackened end smoked out its last ebbs of wood. The candle flickered in the background, but the bitterness between us soured the air. She gave me the match to light up the ancestral lantern, but all I wanted to do was to stab its dead flame into her arms. Lighting the ceremonial ancestral lanterns is a custom of our culture, but this honor felt degrading. What was marriage worth if it was not settled over physical confrontations?
When we first met, she was looking for her friend at a cafe. She made the mistake of running late to their meeting, and her friend was already halfway gone without telling her. She was not the type of friend you want around, but she had no choice but to stuck with her only friend left. I caught her attention by shifting close to her and asking about how stressed she looked. Her entire body jolted when I spoke, and it was later on they I learned that relationships have never been easy on her physically either. Perhaps it was this guardedness that warped her view on relationships.
Her black hair fell down to her waist, and her eyes were the coldest blue there was. It should have been a warning sign, but no warmth could have convinced me that I was making a wrong decision. She wanted to leave me behind the moment we talked, and it took a good half hour before she relented and gave me her number. She wasn’t pleased with me, so I expected a random person on the other side, but to much misfortune, she answered.
The flame lit up only when she started to imagine what a good life it would be to marry a surgeon. No more career work—just be a stay at home mom. Her interest in me exponentially increased when she became aware. She wanted a family at the most minimal cost her lavish lifestyle. I thought meeting her expectations would be in the true warmth underneath it all.
We engaged, and when the day came, I always threw up due to anxiety. No one interrupted our ceremony, but some days, I wished some random homeless guy just ruined it all. It would have given me enough time to reconsider. Loneliness may have been more preferable than this.
In our culture, it is looked down upon to divorce, and even as the flames died so quickly and her smile became more cruel as we discovered there was no hope for kids, we stuck along with each other. I was the stale bubblegum stuck on then bottom of the school desks. I took the burnt match and smelled the dead essence. I twisted it with my hands, threw in the grass, and wished the lantern of the dead carried me away.
To Move Forward
Nightfall
When the rolling waves do come in
So do my steps fall back into infinity
This moonless night befalls me
The only light—the glimmer of my tired eyes
The ribbons have frayed
The papers burned away
The fragments pierced together
Crystals—
Time has pressured them as they lay
So I thought that can only be the way
But alas
This last puzzle?
A meaning trapped in paradox
———————————————
Midnight
No questions nor answers tell
The moment of its trigger relinquish
No tears nor silent scream
Register when the bell tolls
Of gears and cogs
This heart of issue
Rolling around
Can emotion ever be divined?
Toy nor prison
This last maze of mind
Attempt is failure
But failure never tried
No entrance nor exit
But victims all the same
What shall I make of this
Am I even sane?
Does the threads of my tapestry
Begin or ever end?
Do the patterns of this flat painting
Ever storybook the frame?
———————————————
Late
Each rounded layer cracking
In the edges of this black stone
Do the waters cry through
Summons of the past fading away
All blank canvases now
To tell no more of you
No traveler will find me
No weary hero will see me
No specter of the future
Shall haunt me
It’s just me now
No stars to guide
The whispers of the gardens
No longer sound as sweet
The monsters of my childhood
No more than anger seethe
What trails that I walk
Now have me as lead
Lonely frontiers
I understand you now
So too does the silence speak to me
———————————————
Asleep
These last years shift the seconds of dreams
No edge nor boundary
The brushstrokes blend
These bitter hues
Turning back time
To where I began
Meant running toward
Frail eternity’s land
Struck—
The hymn codas once again
But the notes carry no heavenly repose
My own voice carry the lows
The lonely and final repeat
Weaving these impossible measures
For some grander symphony I will never know
Stepping in time to this mad waltz
I thought I was doomed
To this
To me
Suffering fate’s loom
———————————————
Dawn break
But fate and faith are a duo
Light and life within
Darkness divided
The rays come true and through
It’s just me now
No stars to guide
It’s just me now
The dawn burning eye
Never will I know the truth of this
Even as the puzzle falls apart
Beneath it lies another mystery
Layers of perpetuity
But as I sing the memories of the past
The future so faithfully comes forth
The Harmony of the End?
No—
Of Tomorrow
Not for me nor for you
Of the days of all of us
———————————————
Mourning
Acceptance of the laughing tragedy
Are smiles so bitter
Sweetness in lieu
But once began
Even with no end
Do the kinder words
Come falling through
Paradox me this
In the deeper waters
An answer in riddle
So shallow but so simple
But all the more true
Even as the silt did rise
The waters never did forget
Of the darkened stone
Do fall apart and drag away
Did the clearer rivers flow
For another today
A bygone conclusion
A solution so absurdly obvious
For happiness, for peace, for serenity
For me and for you
All of us
Humming within
———————————————
Zenith
The story shifted
The narratives transforming
The past ever so gentle
The present writing
The futures of blue
Where the sun shines
My brighter eyes
Goodbye nevermore
As the stone rolls away the waves
I do say
Hello to another form of you
Even when all is lost
We never do lose
The permanent junctions of
Crossroads formed
Where others came to you
And you to them
Where the path taken
Is a thread woven
Perhaps gold and green tomorrow
But never without its true hue
Our histories speak
Of the words of the present
Showers of wisdom
Brought colors of yore
For Hope
Of wings and feathers
Aeternus Deus
From me
From all of us
I’ll never forget
My promise to you.
Starlight
When I opened the door to the night
The darkness rolled in and enveloped me
Outside, while the trees swayed and the wind yawned
A thousand pieces of stars came showering down
For each fractal cutting into the night air
Fire captured and floated in spheres
Rainbows caught in the moment,
Shining down—these ethereal creatures
A last good bye to the visionary
A sweet night befallen
Journey
Once upon a worldly time
She came into being
She sat at the bottom of the world
And saw nothing but the sun at noon
The sunshine told her that she could
One day embrace a better world
So she climbed and she climbed
And one day she saw the world
For the first time
For a while the sun did shine
And she danced on the plains
She yelled for joy
And sang the praises of the world
And one day
The mirror broke
A thousand pieces shattered before her
And she was back at the bottom as before
For an eternity she mourned her loss
And for an eternity she cried
Only after a flood of tears built up
Did she finally climb out again
But the mirror was broken
Things would never be the same
So she pieced together what was left
And said goodbye to the sun
She sits on the plains at night
Breathing in and out
And embraced the quiet moon instead