Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray
by Michael R. Burch

It was not so much dream, as error;
I lay and felt the creeping terror
of what I had become take hold . . .

The moon watched, silent, palest gold;
the picture by the mantle watched;
the clock upon the mantle talked,
in halting voice, of minute things . . .

Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings
scored anthems to my loneliness,
but I have dreamed of what is best,
and I have promised to be good . . .

Dismembered limbs in vats of wood,
foul acids, and a strangled cry!
I did not care, I watched him die . . .

Each lovely rose has thorns we miss;
they ***** our lips, should we once kiss
their mangled limbs, or think to clasp
their violent beauty. Dream, aghast,
the flower of my loveliness,
this ageless face (for who could guess?),
and I will kiss you when I rise . . .

The patterns of our lives comprise
strange portraits. Mine, I fear,
proved dear indeed . . . Adieu!
The knife’s for you.

Keywords/Tags: Oscar Wilde, portrait, Dorian Gay, journal, ageless, face, youthful, unchanging, rose, thorns, *****, vat, acid, acids, dismembered limbs, violent beauty, knife

29-03-2020  23:49

Seven hundred kilometre away from my home,
Constant depressing news each morning,
I in this solitary city of Delhi speculate for the future.
I now feel what it meant to be free,
And what freedom meant for those who were enslaved for thousand years,
And why they fought ****** wars to get it.
It was all bestowed on me and now I realize.
Staying home all day by one's own volition
Is not similar to being ordered to stay home.
But why I complain about the necessity.
When Socrates was asked, "What does a man learn in his life?"
He replied, "Complaining, Glaucon."

I don't know when all of this will subside
What and who will be spared to read this, like I used to read
All the ****** wars in history-
WWI and WWII, recessions, depression.
Now I feel the psyche of people after WWII
And why Existential Philosophy evolved from it.

Going out to buy essentials is like walking on a tight rope
only a touch here and there and you will fall in the abyss.
Yesterday, I heard the news, a man locked for two days came
running down the street naked and bit a woman to death.
Will our psyche be affected by it?
What changes these days will breed in us?
The exodus of migrants are walking back to home amid lockdown
and walking not for 20-30km but 200-600km.
The fear not only of dying with the disease but of hunger, malnutrition is looming in the remote villages.

Turn your neck whichever way,
the talks of this disease everywhere.
How did the dark ages fight the plague?
A few weeks ago, reading the plays of Shakespeare,
I read in the introduction
Theatres were closed for two years because of Black death.
How trivial it looked to me reading from the distance of five hundred years.
But now when I see the cinema, parks, roads, rails, airways, closed in my own world-- I feel the magnitude of loss.
Have we really progressed?
Will the future generations will read this the same way I did?
Yes, Distance dampens the magnitude.
It's pretty late now, perhaps I should sleep now.
This quote
of Whitman is ringing in my head--

"How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and re-
ward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same
great purchase."

Good Night!

San Francisco, 1977
I sat by my window and listened
to the crying of Carlos Santana and the wind
His guitar told stories
of home in México and how he yearned for it
and the wind kept howling along
as if it tried to bring him back
and I wished for Carlos to be home
and I wished for the wind to carry him there
and I wished for myself to be somewhere else
where the city isn't as big
and the people aren't as greedy
and the love comes naturally, not for fifty bucks a night

So I sat by my window
and listened to the sound of Santana's guitar
and the wind crying
and I understood
as I wept along.

Someone asked me recently
What drives me to write in a journal,
Just a page or two each day.
I have been waiting to answer this question myself
And was amazed that an outside social-media voice
Prompted my response.
Here's what I had to say:

"I want to remember the person I actually turned out to be at this point in time and not let poor memory resort to stereotypes to describe my 20s. I made a mistake I think not writing earlier because there’s a lot I don’t remember from the previous decade.  I want to remember the ordinary moments and to record where I showed my humanness and where I failed. I want to remind myself that, as swelled of a head as I can have most times, that I am human too and I’d like to be that person who has stories and moments that can relate to what people consider embarrassing or wrong so not to shame themselves for actions and words stumbled across by people left and right. It’s one thing to feel guilty about something; it’s another thing to feel like the world ended because of one moment, like how I have treated a lot of my own life moments."

I don't journal for myself entirely,
Yet I do take pleasure in that time of concentration.
To live in the present is the goal,
To live in the future is understandable,
But to remember how I lived in the past
Reminds me I have been human all the way up to now.

Sometimes I wonder if anything has sense.
I don’t feel like it does.
I wear so many bruises and so many scares.
What if my cross is too heavy and my back will break at some point. Will I jump when I will be standing at the edge of my life.
Will I step up to the occasion and make my final decision.
It’s hard when you ask me.
But you don’t.
You don’t care, just talking about yourself, with your head underground, just ******* on your own kind with your sneaky little voice. Have my nails to hurt my skin to not think about the words that are cutting more than sword and leave my mind in a deeper hole,
with no sun and no wind, no clear sky to look upon and just hard ground to fall upon. Little voices in my mind telling me that those weren’t lies, try convince my little head to destroy what I’ve create, try convince my little heart that is time for the last jump.

awoken missed calls
to another eight hour stand
body pain and mental strain
say it's needed and
call this really living

call it present call it future
call it time forever further