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.

Negatives

7.23.10

“I will wait for you.”

Whispers lost into the night.

All devoured, lights, hopes

All I once dreamed of.

It kills me to see me

Stooped down so low

Strange days of gray

Dust filling our mouths

Disposable love

Transparent eyes

Tears fall black, ever

Tears falling forever

The more I try to get away,

The more in love with him I fall.

I find my days in the past

Bring me something like

A hidden message.

Like a song finally listened to

At the end of an album

Bought years ago.

I hope I can get myself

Out of this, long out of this.

But I know all hope is dead.

Take my hand. Don't be scared.

We'll fall into this labyrinth of darkness.

Together. Forever.

“Relieve me, finally, of life and love.”

Unnamed

Circa March 2010

Ambiguous absence of noise. Then, cataclysmic.
All. Nothing.
The chill-invoking roar of angelic
And yet so hell-inspiring tunes of harmonies.

All stands still. Atmospheric.
Colors
Of white and gray. Isolation.
Is there any way out?

Snowed-in mountains
Trapped
In by all of them . . .
There is no way out.

Just stand on the side and
Watch
It all glide through.
The beauty. The freedom.

The lust and desire you feel for it all.
Yet
Captivated they all are from you.
They're there, on display
Like
A painting at a museum.

But everybody can touch them
Though
They are kept back.

Everyone, except for me.
Stars fall.
But he never will.

Dead Fair-Weather

5.1.14

This isn't a death wish.  It's merely a coping mechanism.

Maybe it'll be easier to think of you as dead.

My fair-weather friend.

To imagine your existence depleted

Instead of imagining what things you are up to or doing.

How you take your coffee in the morning.

How you sigh after your last cigarette in the evening.

Who you may be seeing.

Who may be gazing into your eyes.

It will be easier to recite each song written for you or that reminds me of you

As an epitaph of your passing rather than the revival of some faded dream.

I can live with the thought of you being no more.

For your being to be gone like ashes in the desert wind.

And not making people smile or

Lighting up someone else' s day with your words or presence.

I can live with the idea of your demise.

Of no more possibilities or opportunities,

For you dreams or mine to come alive,

For you to rise as I sink.

I can wake up every morning and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face,

Knowing that it will not create freckles on your own cold skin anymore.

I can rest easy knowing you aren't wandering

Into something extraordinary and new every moment.

I can sigh with relief, after my last cigarette, knowing

That you lie still in the ground, never to be touched or seen by anyone.

Knowing that your lips will never be on any other's ever again.

I can sleep and know that you'll rest comfortably with me,

Beautiful and young and shit.

Just as I will remember you.

Far underground, out of my head and away from everyone else.

Yet, still seemingly mine.

The last beats of your heart will save me from insanity.

And your last breaths will be my revival,

My fair-weather friend.

No more will I wonder, no more will I imagine.
No more will we dream, or exchange words.
Rest easy now, and reside in my mind as ghost.
In my heart as a moment lost in time,
For what is dead cannot be brought back to life.

Bicycle

3.19.10

The clouds rumbled in the distance as I rode slowly on.

Rain met with the dirt often, and all around was gray and memories of damp summers.  The fields of weeds and joshua trees surrounded me.  Only asphalt kept me from the end.

The wheels beneath me rolled slowly on.

Verses of a four-piece cult, led by a Scorpius, lingered in my head.  The bats fluttering around instilled deeper into my mind the songs of the graveyard.  Pumpkins, gates, and trees filled my wanders, from the backyard to the pen.  Everyone was so pure back then, so original.  The posers where they belonged and the true ones standing tall.  Branches cut into skin, then blood beads.

The wheels squeaked faintly under me as I pedaled slowly on.

The hills, the mountains of rocks.  The shadows on the concrete, caught in the moonlight.  To walk was what I yearned.  Walking everywhere.  What more beauty could there be than this?  If only people didn't change.  If only time never changed.

I rode on slowly into the night.

Wishing Well

7.16.09

Oh, solemn wishing well
If only you could hear
The cries and thoughts within my mind
The sadness growing with each year.

The pain and losses I have held
And the joys and happiness
The former I fear outweighs the latter
So pain is akin as caress.

The things I wish I can go back and do
And the things I have already done.
Things I wish I'd never said
And the darkness still to come.

The years I've spent in happiness
Have passed now, and grow farther
Now it seems time is frozen in this state
And this emptiness grows larger.

The songs that saved my life those days
Do none but make me worse
My best memories and good times in all
Do naught but feed this curse.

Still, in those days, all seemed taken for granted
I couldn't see beyond the light of the sun
The things I wish I had and said
The longing I still feel--it's never done.

Torn apart inside; I can't decipher what I feel
Hate is minimal, pride is none
These visions that send sparks down my spine
Feed the sadness and joy into one.

The echoes still ring from moments past,
In your well, and still all comes to its end
Which is beginning for others, this daunting cycle
Has left everything burned, nothing left to send.

The life I've known has been "live and let die"
No second tries exist for me anymore.
Those feelings and moments I chase in hind
Are lost like memories, like tears fall to the floor.

Desert Rain

7.6.09

We sat in silence on that dark night on Earth. Wind blew in the orange trees, and the full moon illuminated the scenery before us.  The wind whistled through the rocks, revealing the irresolvable calamity of the hidden ones.  Unrevealing what I was meant to say to them . . . Rain pounded on the pavements, and hope and despair filled the air at once as I felt the tables slipping away from me.  Ungrasping those silent moments, forgetting to exhale when confusion smothered me.  Standing in still silence, as we waited for the start, the stars shining down on us.  Ardent sparks filled the hole inside, and city lights shined on through the stagnating darkness.  Preternatural was the feeling of the drive, the dark and deep wound pulled wider as all came crashing down from sky-scraping buildings.  The cold dotted our visions as we walked, as if through primrose and thorn bushes, ignoring, forgetting, unbelieving.  The carved roads and painted skies were bright with innocence and hope as we walked those sunlit days.  Camaraderie with the sun, the breath-taking reality.  The lives it took with it each dusk.  Solemn were those days, when I forgot and never saw the light at the end of the road.  Still, we laughed through the winter, the cataclysm from the fall thrown behind our backs and never seen again.  The snow fell like the afterwake of a fire from a previous morn, and we danced and wrote poems in despair.  The streets always grew darker as we all changed and never noticed; as time passed and we never changed.  The beauty and enchantment of those solemn days walk on in some other dimension.  Where salvation and hope exist.  Exists.  Walking down the dirt road, we inhaled the scent of rain on a desert night.  And of it, we saved nothing.  We said nothing.  We felt nothing.

A Short Story: "Once a Month"

Written 12.19.11
Here is the link to the  pdf:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx7Ov_SEOJc9dEtVRlE1cFRja2s/edit?usp=sharing

Yesterday

10.13.08

I wish today was yesterday
When colors seemed much more than grey

I only wish to be less human than I seem
So why won't these feelings leave me be?

People smiled back then more than now
City lights were gleaming, below the rain clouds

We were one day younger, yet we've seemed to change
Skies weren't bluer, but they didn't seem so grey.

And we were laughing, so much more to love back then
In the harsh cold weather, but the gloom hadn't seeped in

And he was there with me, my lovely friend.
In that enchanting place and time.

With promised words, we shared and laughed
But still he seemed so far from me.

I wish today was yesterday
Today, the skies do seem so grey.

And pale leaves, they fall astray
Chrysanthemums aren't blooming today.

Inside's so empty, the absence I mourn
Yesterday, he was here, that once-lived day

And now he's gone, so far away
Oh, how I wish today was yesterday.

Stars, Roads, and Ashes

11.6.08

Woke up from a dream today
The stars had turned into bats
Million flying in frenzy,
They chased me into a trap.

These years, so full of wonder
What with the new years comes?
The trap I was lead into
Left me with two roads ahead

One road leads to contentment
The places I was meant to go
Where I sit among mere mortals
Nearly equals controlling me

The other leads to kingdoms,
The places I want to go
Full of dreams and desires
The chance to become a god.

Full of will, full of despair
Can I trust my own trust?
In choosing the right road,
Can I handle what I'll walk into?

So fickle, no commitment
The desires up ahead
Never stable, never happy
Until my sword drips with red.

Will I see the end, does it come near
When the moon and sun collapse?
Will I do everything I want done
Will I be remembered, or my name be among none?

Should I sit among the gods,
Or do I walk this world alone?
Shall I decay, become dust,
Do I deserve what I want?

Still, in my heart, there gapes a hole
Through and through, it empties my soul.
And my will and ability are suddenly nothing.
Failure as my ashes join the bats in the stars.

On All Things Long Dead

2.13.09

Without you in sight,
my vision grows weary.
Without your presence,
my days grow dreary.

Without your touch,
my fingers grow numb.
Without your feel,
I am no longer one.

Without your support,
I drag on through the days.
Without you and me,
there is no other way.

Without our hideaway,
for me, no more escapes.
With only memories,
the emptiness grows great.

Without your songs,
there's no more soul in my days.
Without your light,
darkness, to me, does embrace.

Obscured

10.20.08

I wish to feel that sense of relief
Of the weight being lifted from my shoulders
For months, I've been living in a nightmare
It'll turn to years, time won't run slower.

I wish this impending threat can be removed
And make the world so much brighter
Am I paranoid or mad, as the sorrow decayed me
Is my mind going out, a dousing fire?

I wish it can all be over at last
And I could look forward to things again
What do I want to end? Why is it I am scared?
Why can't I fabricate into words this threat I wish to end?

Frozen Plague

10.22.08

Sitting in a chair, so that I sat straight
Right across from the window, staring
At the snow as it fell.

And as I sat, I started thinking,
Plagued by personal demons, the fires
They set within.

Pondering at how the older I become,
The more I realize that the world isn't
What I thought it was.

And how each time my eyes cross a mirror
The more I want to create cracks in what
Is staring back in me.

And how everywhere I look is like a puddle
Of water, and I see things that remind me
Of how much I don't like me.

No stamina, no charisma, no strength found in me.
Everywhere people's ignorance plagues me
Yet I'm just the same as them.

And what's worse is that I'm worse than them
For my existence is nothing to no one.
My consciousness merely wanders.

And still the snow is falling, everlasting
Never changing, it never fails,
Out in the fields.

Covering the world in white, it never stops
I raised my heard from my hands and
Shuddered: “So this is life?”

Eternity

10.16.08

I walk into the night, moonlit
The autumn chill biting at my skin

This night it's I who will decide
The path in which my destiny lies

Tonight I choose when it'll turn to day
Symbol of warmth and love, so far away

As I walk beside the pumpkin patch
I wonder if this stroll will turn to be my last

Tonight's my night, for me the sun will wait
I roll the dice, this night I choose my fate
And as I walk alone into the night
I wonder why they're all so pale . . .

I walk into the silent forest
It says, “Hearken, child, come near.

“At night I such on your mortals' blood 
To keep myself alive.”

Its arctic lips close to my skin
Its arcane gift I couldn't resist.

And so I gave my life that night
The story I'll live on to tell.

Forever and ever, I'll love forever
But the dead ones that miss me will rot.

And so I'll live on, with sorrow and guilt
For it's with them I never will join

But here I'm eternal, I'll sing and dance
This time, the world's at my hands

Tonight's forever, and for me the sun will sleep.
I rolled the dice, that night I was set free.
And as I flew on through the night,
With a pensive smile I knew,

“With each dreaded second, I'll never grow old 
And that's why they're all so pale.”

Debut

9.15.08

Dreadful dawns, hourless days
Hollowed in my heart, hauled on through the pain
Last words from a friend, true tears I've cried
Living through nothing, watching days turn into nights.

Sorrow in my heart, in my mind, in my words
Terrified of time, no voice to ever be heard.
Wishing the world can stand still and wait
Still I feel betrayed, anger, fear, hate. . .

Seeking for a friend, or the ghost of the remains
But my days wills stay silent, recall the smile that he gave . . .
And still I smiled back, through the shallow heart in me
But inside it meant nothing, chains that won't set free.

Do you feel, do you know, that such yearning for one person
Can turn into a hell, into a nightmare, a daydream that has worsened
My love, these years won't be worth living
No more smiles, or sunlit days, as flowers turn to withering.

But still I'll live through my calamity, through this fuck of life
Don't love me, my friend, no more closeness to cause strife
Yet I can't help it, and I love, through this fear of growing older
The nights I'll cry, I'll wish, I'll look to the stars and wait.

Moonlit scenery, last for a second.
Time will pass, time is up, the sorrow I'll let in.
The pain is eternal, because of him . . . (I miss him) . . .

Because the world I knew shattered before
my eyes as I felt him slip through my fingers . . .

Elucidation.

So coming along are some of my first "poetic works" . . .
I dabbled in poetry first before I commenced my songwriting expertise, which came along shortly after.
Personal note--around the time I was 14, I encountered this creative uprising in my life, what Friedrich Nietzsche would baptize the "Dionysian" as I have come to understand it, where certain negative influences or instances that occur spark "creation". What follows is the "Apollonian," expression of what any teenager is capable of fabricating into any sort of literary style--that is, the afflictions, complaints, and realizations dawning on me during the end of 2008.
Another note of importance . . . The male pronoun behind the "he" and "him" who is constantly referenced to throughout these works symbolizes my personal notion of nostalgia for childhood and buoyant past, which is clearly realized as a loss in my writings.