by

401

i may not be an especially bad person.

but i am a terrible human.

or terrible at being human. whatever.

I try.

but it’s all trying.

like having to remember to breathe.

like having to remember to breathe.

I’m tired.

I’ve been tired for so long.

I have somewhere to go now though.

Some place to walk towards.

And, I might be crawling, but it’s only and towards The Light.

The shadow to my shadow.

god, i miss you so much.

sigh.

how many more nights must I stay up?

(before I can see you again…)

.

.

.

(401)

by

losing my mind over palestine, again

i feel like it’s deliberate.

bombarding us with pictures of bombed children.

it’s messing with all our heads – anyone with any empathy or humanity left in them anyway.

and… feeding the others?

but is the purpose weakening us who would oppose them? or strengthening their supporters? or desensitization in general?

is it to increase despair? or normalize killing anyone that gets in their way?

or am I overthinking this, and they honestly just don’t care?

like, this is something they’ve always done, and it’s just that social media now prevents the complete control of narrative that traditional news media used to employ – remnants of which we can still see in how the West is reporting these war crimes that we are witnessing almost live through shaky phones next to Instagram and tik tok reels…

and who stands to gain?

is it just the death throes of a declining empire, a last tantrum of the US of A? the military industrial complex disguised as a country, unable to survive, let alone thrive, without creating conflict after conflict.

is this just the logical next act of a consumer capitalist nationalist world stage?

or is it something even more sinister?

all i know is that yesterday I watched another child’s shredded corpse being discovered by hopeful rescuers, and today i saw her smiling face as she ran down an empty dirt road with a friend, the happiness so palpable, it hurt more than all the pain.

god, what will it take to end this?

and how can we ensure that those responsible aren’t allowed to get away with all this senseless destruction of precious human life??

what kind of society goes after children??

and what does our inability to stop this slaughter of babies for months now say about us as a species?

what will it take?

if even this isn’t too much,

isn’t enough,

what will be?

by

i miss U

everything is too much

nothing is enough

i am terrible

i am trying

i am not

i am

tired

being

here

i miss you.

you are all the light I have ever wanted.

you are all the love I have ever needed.

burning glass, shattering ash, drowning blood

hating red roads paved with their stained hands

clinging to that which cut deeper and deeper and deeper

coz at least bleeding extinguished some of the flames

and the pain felt like paying a necessary price.

but that was a lie I was caught in

a moth circling a fire

with the inevitability

of a planet

around

a star.

there were only ever two exits

but you were my third.

you are

my third path.

and my first love.

a second chance

& the last song.

thank you

for finding me in the dark

for sitting beside me in the park

for showing me your scars under the stars

for offering me more fire instead of only blood

and for giving me water when I didn’t even dare ask for it.

you make existence worth it all.

i wish none of this separation was necessary,

but what’s two years when I would wait two hundred?

lifetimes, universes, eternity

you alone are worth it all.

time IS like a wave

things WILL be

forgotten

but not

you

never

you

i will

find again

and until then

know that i miss you

so, so much that it consumes

but i don’t mind it one single bit.

after all, you are the one who

took my hand in your own

when i was drowning

in spilled blood

whispering

let it burn

and now

I burn

only

for

U.

by

dreams and guilt

there’s too much.

to think of, to worry about, to rise above, to go under, to drown in, to shake off.

there’s words, work, war.

dreams, love, the maw.

i sink, deeper.

deeper,

deeper.

i feel guilty even for my nightmares

because i get to wake up to safety and drink clean water

even if i can’t go back to sleep

knowing my nightmares are someone’s reality

choking on smoke i can see only through the screen

tasting blood in my mouth that doesn’t belong to me

hearing screams in my head so loud that the silence only makes me crazy

and all those children’s faces haunt me

their blank eyes, whether from death or pain or misery

or from hell fire that has sunk till the bone

i once wanted one of my own

but that was before I saw the world for what i now know

and i would rather die than give this world any of my children

i would rather die than give any of my children this world

but those children, someone’s children, loved children, little children, they already exist

or did

fuck

it is hard not to hate, I agree

but also easier now than before, at least for me

because hating requires anger

and now when I reach for my notoriously relentless rage, all i find instead is grief

drowning me

like the water they don’t have

like the blood they have too much of

like the dust that always floats in the air like poisoned snow

and i’m just so

tired

for that too, I feel guilty

and there is no peace

without lying to yourself

i won’t lie to myself,

I say, knowing through it all that the fact I can think that coherently and not dissolve into tears, slowly drying up like the fields over which a layer of dust lies so thick, not even all the bodies can fertilize it…

means that I already am

lying

again

always

i want to leave

but there’s nowhere far away enough to be

and for this too, I feel guilty

because I am not the one being bombed out of my home and everything I know and love

and I am not the one doing the killing

but what am I doing to stop it?

there’s nothing I’m doing to stop it

what can I do to stop it??

And if there is nothing, does there also have to be nowhere?

I wish I could go live on the moon

where no one can hurt anyone because no one else exists

and I want to look at earth from that distance and go insane from loneliness

not from grief

not from helplessness

not from guilt.

empathy is the enemy, he once said

all his friends are dead

so he probably knew what he meant

all I know is that I don’t really care about anything

I don’t want to water the plants or raise children or rescue animals or save the world

raise plants or rescue children or save animals

raise animals rescue the world save the children

i just want someone to do it all so I don’t have to watch anything suffer

i just want to go somewhere where existing doesn’t hurt

and I feel guilty for that too.

because I’m not hurting. not really.

just going insane

rendered incapable of anything but pacing in circles until it’s time to lie awake for hours, listening to these cries that I can’t separate from things I’ve seen and things I’ve known and things I’ve dreamed

no place left for things I’ve been

let alone things I am or could be

i… still… am

tired

guilty

sorry.

.

forgive me.

by

231019 at dawn

once,

golden tendrils of light crept into a lilac sky. the darkness lifted, the night ended. mornings weren’t pleasant, but each one was a sign. another night survived, another day earned.

it’s different now.

the dawns remain the same, but everything else changes.

even the stars are different now.

the light does not creep here. it burns. in oranges that eat up at a muddy blue sky.

I no longer count each night. some. but not every. and, with time, everything fades.

everything.

that’s the worst part.

that’s the best part.

that’s the worst part…

I’m fine.

life is worth living.

and death is worth dying.

there’s time for both. so, maybe it’s okay if you get confused sometimes.

but while death may be worth dying, life is still worth living.

there will be time enough for oblivion. time enough for reunions and reincarnations and paradises to be gained and lost. lost and gained. time enough for purgatory. time enough to exist as dispersed atoms of a once collective consciousness, haunting the earth for billions of years, and the the universe for much longer. time enough, even, for nothingness…

but, until then, there is life. there is light, sometimes creeping, sometimes burning, no, always burning, in one way or another.

and there is also the dark.

there is time for everything.

actually, there is time for nothing. but there is a time, for everything.

and, if there is isn’t… well, hey, what can you do about it, eh?

stop worrying so much. the future, like the past, is a dream. so, find your own present. the past can only haunt and help. still, live. long enough to find out. but, trust me. future’s gonna be okay.

(look at the mirror, and i see no pain)

it’s okay.

and, if it’s not, it will be.

everything is going to be okay.

everything is going to be okay.

everything is going to be okay.

maybe not forever. but enough for you to be thankful you survived.

so, survive.

until you can live.

I’ve got you.

by

change

is the wind made of words. or are words made up of the wind. I think both.

but words can also be so powerful. like a storm. devastating.

but as capable of feeding as of ending. take fire, for instance.

i have been the fire. nurtured and destroyed by the same forces.

the wind is outside, but the fire is within. we cannot control the things that happen to us. the winds that hit us. their intensity or intentions. none of that truly matters.

what matters is how it affects your fire. and what steps and structures you can incorporate within yourself. to either enhance or diminish the impact of the wind.

every breeze, every storm. every whisper, every song. however long it takes.

of course things go wrong. miscalculations are made. things are expected that don’t come through. while other things, once unimaginable, like miracles, come true.

the world is a large complex puzzle. you are a piece. but a piece that can change and evolve to either fit in where it is needed, or grow out of places you don’t belong. regardless of whether you once did.

if we stop changing, we stop living. stagnation is death. life is change.

so, change. no matter how scary. you are alive. and things must change. if you don’t, then you fall out of the spaces in the world that until now we’re holding you up. or back. or down.

there is no good or bad. there is no correct or incorrect. there is only this moment, and what you need from it.

getting what you want from it is a bonus.

but, in every moment, take what you need, give what you can, and move on.

whether it’s forward or backward, up or down, better or worse, move.

change.

it’s the only way to live rather than just exist.

so, change.

by

the escape

I wrote out our names in both blood and sand

Not knowing that all you wanted was ink

I told you that I did not understand

But we were just waiting for us to sink

.

Ink fades, blood stains, and sand shifts with the tide

Nothing true is real, nothing real is true

For you, we know, I would have gladly died

But I just would not, could not, live for you

.

Under drowning moons, upon burning seas

I danced towards an edge you could not stand

You dragged me back, with chains around my feet

But I was never made to crawl this land

.

And so I waited until darkness came

Even though I swore I wanted that light

But not at the cost of a cage built of blame

I’d rather burn, free, alone in this night.

by

Change is the Only Constant

There was a moment, once upon a time, long ago now, when I thought that i could belong. Ever since and ever before, I have spent every waking minute well aware of how alien I truly am. Feel.

Feeling, maybe everyone feels this way. Maybe we all feel we don’t belong, and do increasingly insane things to try and fit in. Inside boxes that can never contain the circumference of existence.

Existence, does that make sense? A sense of being? Or a sense of forever trying, and failing? So how much more of a failure am I for never even trying? Not because I didn’t want to. But it would have been too easy. And it would have been too hard.

Hard, because I was too far away, and even if I were to make it, leaving is all I have ever known. Easy, because all it requires is self mutilation. And I have always been so good at self destruction.

Self destructive used to be an insult. Much like the feeling of being trapped in a tower on the moon. Not one person understanding that the cost of meeting them halfway, or any way at all, necessarily involved falling and crawling and falling again, crashing through the atmosphere in flames that were my own as much as they were not.

Not that I knew any of this in the beginning. I thought I was trying. But from that beginning, it was always a given. That if I had to cut and burn pieces of myself, I would rather destroy what I didn’t like, rather than what other people, constantly changing, forever fickle, perfectly imperfect, just like me, didn’t. And I learned to instead pride myself on being true to myself, real. Real.

Real. As if something like that even exists in this world of ours built on lies and illusion. From the biological to the astronomical, from the living to the endless, we are all caught in intricate webs of lies spun lifetimes before our own. Even the idea of immortality assumes a beginning.

A beginning is inevitable, after all. Because it’s easier to imagine forever stretching out ahead of us into an as of yet mysterious future. But the past is a separate matter altogether. We have none of us ever experienced the future. But we have each one of us come unfailingly from the past.

The past, past the edge of today, lurking below, an ever changing shaky foundation of differently remembered, differently perceived, differently being. How can we stay the same when nothing ever does? When nothing ever can? Not even rivers or mountains or planets or suns or stars. For everything must change.

Change is the only constant, it is but inevitable, but what does that truly mean when even the inevitable constantly changes? For there is no real end. Just ghosts of things that existed once.

Once, I used to think I could belong. But for a long time before that, I knew I never would. And an even longer time before that, I did belong. As atoms and star dust and particles of carbon matter, made up of the Universe.

By the Universe. For the Universe. And once everything is over, I will inevitably belong again. Or perhaps I will always only ever pass by. Everything is a happening, after all. Humans, yes. But also rivers and mountains and planets and suns and stars. Forever.

For ever. But what comes after? What came before? We do not even have the answers for these questions when it comes to our own lives. How naive to believe we can comprehend eternity. How ambitious. How human.

I do not feel human. Maybe that is what makes me so. Maybe there is no thing as human. It is only a symbol, after all, a piece of fiction, a fantasy spun from our minds and collective consciousness in an attempt to make sense of existence.

It doesn’t make sense to me. But, sometimes, when I catch the sun right before it sets or rises, when the moon hangs bright in the dark night sky above (or is it below), when I stand at the edge of an ocean pulled ever deeper into its vastness, my perspective shifts, and I understand.

Understand, even if only for one fleeting moment. And I belong. So what if that is too but a happening? What comes before and what comes after is too. Everything is. And so nothing must be too… For everything must change.

Change is the only constant inevitable. But what does that even mean when the inevitable constantly changes? What does anything ever mean? To you. To I.

And I know why it matters, but how does it?

Does it?