Though it was not a time of religious musing,
it was an escape from the spirit bruising
of the telescreens and jingles,
the buzz of invisible,
the noise of the motorways.

We could natter in the pub,
on a Pilgrimage, of sorts;
to sort, to find a beginning.
Or at least to open a book up
somewhere near the start.

Holding down a button
Until everything turns
Black as pitch
Is just like clutching
Someone's throat
Until they can't
Move another inch.
So much life and vibrance
Flashes across this screen,
Yet it seems to tear
happiness apart
At its fragile seams.
Technology is quick,
It's capabilities are ample,
Yet my mind has gone slow
From ingesting only samples.
As such,
It is time for me to quickly depart,
For using you has made me
Everything but
Smart.

We're forgetting the art of talking on the phone for hours and hours
It was better than texting because you could hear each other's voices
in near real time
without having to show oneself
Now you can hide your voice too
and overthink everything you say

It's texting or video chat
You're either the most remote
or as close as you can get
from a near human reaction

You're yourself after you think long and hard?
Not who you trained to be on impulse
Who trained me I wonder?
Me, commercials, parents, environment, or destiny

It's my goal to be a fractured self
that can immerse themselves in the entrails
of any one of these cubbyholes

the stars won’t shine here
and it’s more than some can bear
a whole world mutinied and started living in Clouds
monotony scaled trees until it screened the firmament


yet there’s one left behind with the rot
pondering the theft of good health
the kind that improves the lot
shallow as a bath

Sunlight braids rained onto the dusty folds of our parking-lot-like schemes,  'cross the gaping leaps between our sentenced deaths with the occasional intervals of blindness; lighting the path torrents for black light on black, and the little hopes, still held back.
Pocket poles and bullet collars decorate the walkways to the stockyard, where we piled our words and promises before; we stood bare and helpless to the passing winds that swept the misty passages empty, through the urban woods of vanity and fair.
Still the overtures sound light carried on the sealed whispers of the distant dream; that we would live! And portions of our existence rest down the wasted years, on the rocky crust pavements of a river. Floating streams of living things that pass down into oblivion, with their faces cold, and impotent smiles alike.
Perhaps the fading wonders of the breeze one midnight would sweep me away too; perhaps it will take me on to you.
But this that extends down through the rot and the veil of beasts, in to light the flares of a broken heart... It was not you! It was something else, something awfully lovely; it was totally something new!
A father's dream set into the breed of a pointless purpose also set into the wilderness and into the vain colours of a feint folly for greed; as the vacant corpses pose the prose for fortune bring, and for the songs we sing.
Beatitude in the sense of a crime for the sake of a lesser scream; a voice through the void that echoes against the street lights shaping the crossroads to hell; the tolling bell! The little left, gone and strew.

A.r. Bazian
*Written in 2012

Plaque..
lingering on the
outermost surface of
my fingers,
palms,
skin.
nothing new.
coming of age
in an era
of grease, oil
***,
patriarchs,
the third wave,
followed by
a tsunami,
soon to come,
earthquakes are
too prevalent
for this not to be.

my hands will soon
be washed clean of
the sin that was placed
on them,
--not on
my own accord,
but on theirs.

"God is so dead"

          -Post-postmodern Nietzsche

"I came across a lonesome face,
among the figures stuck in traffic,
Someone there, somewhere,
Longs for a distant place...
A place, of dreams and magic.
This ageing scent, of dying breath,
And history, is just too tragic!

The wandering braids,
Scout the town,
Hoping, things will come around,

And as early risers greet their way,
Their faces Pass, and fade away!

The stones and old homes,
Fill space Between,
fiction, And the stories we tell!
They reek through the alleyways,
With reflections keen,
Mixed with an old familiar smell...
Of Passages dusty and features a-print,
The smiling pales of concrete mint,
And the fellow grin, by the local inn,
Who's never had a tonic and gin,
Unlike those of London...

This,
I can barely define,
stories-high, as we go by,
simply left behind!

But passenger light,
Drops in flight,
In the hours of eight 'till five,
I caught the melody sung in sun,
In our hour or so long drive...

Still I couldn't tell,
Of this old scent and smell,
and all that it's not,
why This raging ravel still, seems so forgot.
Although they've bettered it,
in some sort of a way...
Today, I think...
With all hopes a-still,
there's little much left,
and less be will...
Little still floats, and little is wet!"

A.r. Bazian
*Jan 14th, 2012

With the house they are selling their childhood and adolescence, five funny brothers and grandmother's sweets, late night dramas and the unattractive maids they inherited, cigarettes they puffed secretly and lessons they learned with jackfruit pulp. Now the roots are being pulled and I wonder what'll be left. I wish people live there, generations come and play on its front yard and I hope my ancestors understand new generation urbanism and modernity.

My new medium
the Sanskrit pen
that makes my words widen
I wish the upstairs was more silent
I'm afraid of waking them
I return from the carriage quarters
where I blew off smoke
sending quick wisps through rings
and I closed the six doors of the four chambers
to arrange an exorcism
The smoke must dissolve
in only haunted rooms
and not reach the vents of elders or newborns
cause they'll certainly frighten
thinking demons abound
Numb as the ******, depersonalized
but realizing it (wanting it)?
What's my name?
I won't tell
but if you know it
could you say it aloud?
I swear someday I'll know myself