Detox.

3.24.15

I've heard of detoxing your body of unwanted harm consumed,
From the bloodstream where chemicals consciously swarm
But how about detoxing your brain and your subconscious dreams
From images and vision unwanted and harmful?
From opening your eyes unto a facade--a mist of horrors
Of wondering why they never gave reasons for good-bye,
Of why people die--why kisses, hugs, and whispers come and go.
These visions of the unseen and of untimely death
Implanted unknowing; nestling inside my head. 

Did we have an understanding?

1.15.15

Maybe I don't understand.

Whenever I feel like the shards of our relationship have been picked up

re-buffed, re-surfaced and finally put back to compliment each other's contours,

I realize at the other end that the entire picture remains cracked and disformed.

Our relationship is of the utmost expressionist art,

even though it lacks all but expression,

and whenever your eyes lie and make me believe our broken pieces

do make up a total, somehow, in some way, and in some time,

I realize all we ever really were is in itself just totaled.

The stars may tell us otherwise,

But we were not meant to be.

In the end, in the beginning, from the first blush to the last kiss,

We both knew that the sharp parts of our broken pieces
 
clashed with those that were blunt,

And the numerous times we tried to fit these pieces together,

neither of us could find the words to end the pain.

To end the hurt.

To stop the silence.

To tell the noise to go.

Silence ensued by fear.

Nervousness.

Capricousness.

You give me problems. I killed you with my kisses and you kissed me with your kills.

The rides home, songs over city lights, touches under the moon were all magic

under the spell of mixed feelings.

The drinks didn't help us. Neither did the coffee.  Nor the cigarettes.

We did the damage to each other. Shards spread far across the floor,

falling into cracks. And these cracks lead me to you and you to me.

In the end, I think it comes down to this: even if it lacks reason in itself,

and it may seem a poor excuse for both our faults and misconceptions,

We are too young to be dealing with people who treat us like shit.

On the Art of Staying and Going.

12.29.14

Christmas, eight years ago.

I met a composer from Finland and I've never really let him go.

You may think faces from a magazine or daunting idols on the Internet are a passing fad.

For me, this was never the case. Ever since 10 years old, I was a loser for talent, artificial beauty, magnificence and the fame that was awarded towards it.

Maybe it was my cursed, ever-ambivalent relish for love and admiration.

Maybe that was all I ever wanted to be when I grew up.

Just another face on the paper, a done-up doll on the TV or YouTube screen for boys and girls to swoon over. I wanted to be that idol. I had dreams every night about being that idol.

It was always the last thing to subconsciously linger in my mind at night. All I ever daydreamed.

Well, dreams come and go. But composers from Finland never do.

My dogs were my best friends when I was locked in at home to stay. Dogs whose personalities I fictionalized into juvenile delinquents and rowdy human beings. Dogs who went out and got themselves beaten and killed. Dogs I hung out with every night, listening to music and watching the stars.

Pets come and go. Composers from Finland never do.

So even after my pets' funerals, my music remained always with me, the requiem to my loss, the fire to my electric-adolescent dreams. Imagining the impossible without realistically thinking them through. I never really learned on how to even begin, or carried the ambition to carry out just the start of these dreams. I didn't know people. I didn't have friends.

Well, excuses come and go. Common sense and ambition comes and goes. Composers from Finland never do.

Eventually, I started realizing my talents and lack-thereof to establish and consummate the journey to reaching my achievements and dreams. It was music. It was always music. After that Christmas I aspired to become this Finnish composer's protege.

 I bought the piano. I even had the recording software. Even up until 21, I still carry the inspiration and overcome the laziness to just walk on over to my piano, plug in a few chords, and just hope I press the right-keys on the computer recording software. Manuals are too laborious a read. I have better things to daydream about (sex, fuckboys, whether or not I should buy the cigarettes or eat that caramel on the kitchen counter).

The muse and vice constantly comes and goes. Composers from Finland never do.

You'd think that some familial inspiration lay behind the spark of my ambition—the conscious journey through melancholy and the inspirational creativity that ensues out of such emotions. Past deaths impacted my life and outlook on life as a whole.  The blame was always there, I've always figured and believed.

Grandmothers come and go. Composers from Finland never do.

But throughout my teenage life, even though I was alone, I was always in love. Idols across the pages of a magazine, marketed towards the gullible--media feeding off of ethos (loud, angry, but splendidly magnificent music). They gave me reason, drove me forward, gave me challenges to conquer, new talents, styles, and techniques to emulate. Music was always my hobby. It was my passion for a time.

But hobbies and passions come and go. Composers from Finland never do.

Then the journey towards materialized (but, nonetheless, still artificial) love commenced in my later teenage, early adult years. Crushes and love interests were human men walking the sidewalks and sitting beside me in classes I just wanted to get through to to achieve, very indirectly, my one ultimate dream: being on a stage. Being in a magazine. Playing my keyboard in-sync to my own recording in a music video. Feeling glorious, loved, and on top of the world. On a stage without any fright, to an audience full of darkness and lit occasionally by lighters. I had the music. Some was recorded, some in my head. I didn't have the people. I didn't have the live experience. I just had the dream. And the boys beside me deterred me once in a while, but I put all my focus into my coursework just to get that A and feel, for once, some substitution for the glory I knew I would feel one day after I took a bow before a screaming audience with my bandmates, sweaty and tired, reeking in a good way of booze and excitement.

Alas, good grades and hot classmates come and go. Composers from Finland never do.

Enter my 20s. I know passion for the first time besides music. And it was this that fucked me over. Literally. Even a fuck wasn't as fulfilling as finishing a song—in full, touchups and instrumentation on point. But even this I couldn’t appreciate when the boys and, eventually, even girls ignored me. When I fell to the ground on a concert floor (in the audience), drunk and dreamy of the moment I'd be the one on stage, like my Finnish hero and all the others before and after him. Throwing up in the bathroom and on my shoes. Wishing someone was there beside me that I actually wanted beside me. Forgetting about my songs and those musicians I aspired to be, performing without fear and only guided by passion, discipline, self-respect, responsibility, and daunting ability on stage. That all fled from me the summer I was 20, and nothing else mattered.

Fuckboys, silly girls, and drunken nights were meant to come and go. Composers from Finland never do.

Christmas, 2014. New muses. Some realized, some unrealized. Some very far away, few very near. Some still on the pages of a magazine, or a CD booklet, or on the blog of some website. And still there is something seemingly replacing the muse of everything I ever dreamed of. Something so tangible and very much real (which love is not), very much a part of me, that's replaced this other man who was always my hero, almost a father figure, someone I've met only 3 times in my life and who's let me down once. Only once, as compared to this other real substnce, which or who I have more memories with, which or who has let me down numerous times. Is this killing the muse? Is grown-up, real love (for lack of a better word: think more along the terms of insane obsession) a replacement for the dreamy, forward-driving, but always unattainable love? Has this part of me died? With my grandparents and dogs long dead?

Is my longing for this real person, place, or thing any excuse to substitute my longing and love to attain that other person (or idea of this person) who was the reason behind all my dreams in the first place? As unattainable and unrealistic as they are in theory or reality?

Or does it just seem impossible because the idea of this very real man is eclipsing what the imagined, magnificent man has always whispered to me, through his music, to forever strive for, accomplish, and achieve? Is it right to claim that only one of either of these men saved me from killing myself one or two times?

Well, first-loves and thoughts of suicide come and go.

Composers from Finland.

Never.

Even.

Came.

Cold Autumn Day Trilogy

Here is a set of stories I wrote in the autumn of 2006. Please keep in mind, I was 12 going on 13-years-old, heavily influenced by the the cheesy dark vibes and emo-esque counter-culture of that particular year (artistically), and tried my hand at writing an original plot that spans three short stories.

They are sub-titled as follows.

Part 1: Cold Autumn Day (Link to story) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx7Ov_SEOJc9S0lQNmRPb0Z4ZUE/edit
Part 2: The Gathering (Link to story) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx7Ov_SEOJc9T3hmQjEtcFcxSzg/edit
Part 3: Kingdom Come

Part 1 and 2 were edited and revised just this past summer, of 2014, and will be published here. Part 3 has yet to be revised. I will get to it when the time comes . . . It was quite interesting to revisit the pre-adolescent mind of myself and the conversations I had then within myself . . . as writers, isn't it just a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia? Aren't our writings just an opportunity to share with the world the arguments and predicaments we fabricate within our various personalities, within our own minds?

Afterlife.

12.8.08

“Where hath all the pain gone?”

my heart wonders aloud;

I see it there, all so clear,

but vulnerable my heart isn't

to it anymore.

I merely read the symptoms,

the aching of the heart.

I merely remember what hell is,

but feel, I cannot—though fibers of me

do tingle from the fear.

Still, I don't feel as though everyday is normal.

But then again, what defines ordinary?

Is it just a day in the afterlife,

just living past my death?

I scold myself, “Why can't I feel?

I'm not happy, so why don't I feel sad?”

Maybe all the other poems

were only complaints of some hidden tide

Deep inside, I now I cannot accept this.

Living through another's tears and not my own.

Not a drop for the pain of the past six months.

Still, when I see him, then I understand

why it felt like I couldn't live, had no point.

The ghost of him is all that this is

My numbness has grown like a pearl

over and around him, like a silent tomb.

He was a stumble in my life.

A fervent light blocking my road.

I have grown stale and cold, molding,

swallowing him whole like the way he

clouds my nightmares and dreams.

And if I have truly grown used to him

not being in my life anymore,

then my existence has eroded on

the distance and darkness:

Life's bitter realities.

The Big Dipper

8.27.14

I still go out at night, when the sun has just taken its leave and the sparkles are just starting to wake from their own sleep. They make their way into the sky.
I still go out to find the pattern of them that marks my memory of that night. They bore witness. They watched and laughed and danced. The shape they still make, holding hands at a distance, somewhere up amidst the angels at the crests of our galaxy, is what we perceive as an astral play and dance of some sort.
This shined above us as we died that night. The first of many nights that my breath was taken away forever. The night I died, and you with me as I dragged you down, deep under the surface of where the stars could no longer touch.
You killed me with the swift brush of your lips. And it was final. I was final. I was ecstatic as I choked on my tears and death took me, with you and them there. I am only now coming to accept the asphyxiation that happened there and then. Everything that's happened since, in the seeming afterlife, was still in the denial and mourning stage. I am past that now.
I am dead. You are dead. Our hearts collapsed under our fingers that night as the stars in that constellation suffocated with us. They went out, and came back brighter than ever, marking their dance and temporary home in the night sky ever more strongly. They were born again.
But here, still and cold, I still remain.

Dreams and Ashes

8.9.10

For each dream

In my head, I recite the lines.

Moments with a ghost

The dead of passing time.

For each tear

A promise that I break.

For each dreaded day

An oath of death I take.

What to do

When there's simply nothing left?

For comfort I long

Besides that sleep I dread.

I once loved

The escape under closed eyes.

But now there's no time,

Oh eight was the last sign.

And I tried

To wake up with commitment

But how I've failed,

Making everything meaningless.

Besides this

Is my aching, yearning state

For the star, the night

The moon that was mine as of late.

You and me

I promise, together

Our charred skeletons

Will lay in the dust, forever.