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Debopriyaa Dutta Apr 2020
it seems that the only antidote to the poison of existence is to write. to write, like our forefathers did - purposeful seclusion, months of trance-like writing, like a murderer maddened by the idea of salvation - writing, with ink-stained fingers, aching joints on the same old, trusty typewriter; writing, while wallowing in the deepest pits of despair, stuck inside a shabby room, dishevelled with books unread and re-read countless times…

to witness the act of writing - be it a staged enaction, wherein  an artist just slips his malleable soul into the garb of the prophet - to witness the act itself is a travesty, an ache on the roof of one’s mouth: out of reach, foreign, uneasiness swirling. nothing soothes, or quite imparts the strength to digest reality like the simulated sound of a virtual typewriter - the old, familiar clang that sustained generations of kindred souls, the tolling of the bell that eclipsed the knell of death, of betrayal, of a life cut short by cruelty, of unrequited love, of angst, of abuse - that of others and the self.

our modern machines that make life so easy, appear as a hindrance, an obstacle to the realization of my true self. or is it just incompetence, meandering as un-bloomed fantasies, that have been thwarted by none but my own futile sense of pride, which, in the very end, is nothing, but a pile of dust, that glints in the sunlight, and appears like the first pearls of dew-like snow?

beauty seems to be the only parameter for any semblance of human emotion we are willing to spare for another - beauty, or rather the bastardization of beauty, has rendered us barren, so dreadfully ugly. beauty consumes those who fawn upon it, destroys worlds, invades peaceful colonies, robs the poets of sleep, and urges the beguiled to sin.

my disfigured mind, once a slave to beauty, has broken its shackles from its dastardly regime. in the process, I've had to encounter my own ugliness - both without and within - bloated egos of the world that match my bloated skin - but it is dissatisfaction that I’m bursting with. dissatisfaction at the absence of prodigious blood in my veins, the kind that can foretell worldly events, conjure multiverses, concoct reservoirs of colors undreamt of, and feel the fabric of the world, the way one obtusely feels their own skin shielding their inner darknesses. ennui mingles with narcissism, flowers bloom at the edge of deserted lakes - the forest nymphs weep and wail under the blood-red moon, and the lovers die, without loving one another - alone, forlorn, their death a meaningless crease in the fold of the universe.

staring down at the unimpressive rising and falling of the telltale buttons - the very mechanism that allows me to stay afloat - I choke with tears that do not quite justify the source of my misfortune (perceived?). the faint, dull wail of the automation keeps me warm, but the sudden silence fills the home, no, just an apartment, with thunderous, ominous vulnerability. my bones ache along with the foundations of the house - the parakeets have made a nest among the polluted shrubberies, unlike their usual design to avoid large, empty cities. they screech , in imitation of my acute helplessness, mocking my hapless complaints, rendering me completely alone, while being surrounded by blood of the most coagulated, and thickest kind.

the neighborhood cats feast upon leftovers, as I look into the window of a world unexplored , ridden with darkness visible, and demons that admire your flesh while you  are half asleep. the walls twist and boil over, while i savour, in disgust, the heaviness of my existence, the meaningless lull of my name, called out by someone who brought about  an acutely unwanted genesis. the cries of the parakeets fade away, and the automation starts crawling around my skin again, enveloping me in a almost-comfortable embrace…the spell is broken, by the vision of my forefathers, on their animal parchments, and blood-like inked etchings, their truly broken hearts and the deceit of my own.
Velvel Ben David Apr 2020
Life isn't sad
It's just the way things go
It's all you've ever had
& all you'll ever know

Believe for believing
Whether truth or lie
If life's not for living
Then life is to die
Saint Audrey Feb 2020
I wish I had your eyes. I really do. I wish I could see all the colors that you seem too. The vibrancy that I've been missing for so many years...

He looked up. Same walls. Always the same. Gray paint, chipping away. Water damaged brickwork. He glanced upward. Same energy efficient lights adorning the same stained and faded ceiling tiles.

One thirty am.

I wish I had your mouth, I really do. Wish I could string words together like you can. I wish I could find the rhythm that your heart beats too.

He looked up at the furniture placed carelessly around the room. It's sparse. The room feels almost empty. A bed tucked away in the corner, half hidden in shadow. The sheets are wrinkled. He hasn't bothered washing them in a while. He's been sleeping on the couch. The cushions are getting threadbare. They were already worse for wear, over a year ago. He remembered what it felt like to drag it inside. How he almost pulled a tendon trying to get it through the door.

I wish I could fly away from here, like you did. Cut all my ties, burn all my bridges. I wish I could embrace the unpredictability like you have.

He looked up at the walls.

I wish I could clean all the filth off my hands. You always did have such impeccable hands.

He looked up at the walls. Same cracks, same cracks. Looked over at the can of paint. It'd been there since he'd put it there. He'd left it there the week before he'd moved in. He'd been meaning to touch up a few spots.

I wish I could rid my mind of these festering insects. I wish, I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish.

It was quiet. Too quiet. Always with the buzzing static filling up the endless quiet, never quite masking it. Always with the static, ringing in his ears. It was always quiet, so very quiet.

I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish.

It's so quiet. He couldn't think straight. He couldn't think straight. He looked up at the walls. Sixteen strings, dangling down, one fragile spine impaled in a back that it won't fit.

I wish I could see through your eyes, hear through your ears.

It's so quiet, he'd never hear a thing again. Sixteen candles blown out in the breeze. One untouched ice cube left in a glass on the coffee table, so mundane, so unconcerned with the sun soaking in through the window.

I wish I could be as hauntingly beautiful as a raven perched on a telephone pole in mid November.  

He looked up at the walls. His hopelessly outnumbered little diatribe barely holding its own against the cascade of static, swelling, thriving in the void left behind by the silence. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

If only I could enter your mind. Swim through your deprived notions, your sensations of pleasure you derive from nothing good at all. Things we all keep hidden.

He looked up at the printer. It's sitting on an orange crate in the corner opposite the bed. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

If I could wish at all, I'd wish for this eventuality. It's harrowing, you know. Wishing for things. Knowing that all hope has so carelessly been squandered on things you couldn't care less about.

He'd left a soda can sitting on his desk. He picked it up. It's still a little sticky.

I wish I could be as free as can be. I want to be free. I want to be as free as a bird. Not a sacrifice, please.
Four cycles I neither nourished nor idled
As I pondered the sameness of it all.
Heard Solomon’s voice.
Shrewd as ever, but varnished with sorrow
Like mine.
Could it be?
That once that filmy overlay,
So seemingly inane,
Has been pulled back — the vacuum seal breached.
No longer sustenance in enterprise?
But in repetition one must sate?
No!
The story of man is not a tragedy!
Of shackled ankles and nine to fives.
But a dialogue with God!
Where the audience jests and heckles.
But is moved again
And again to silence
By a mere visceral soliloquy.

Today,
From our cells of subjectivity
We shout and dance for progress.
But is there a better way
To breach the barriers between spirits
Than by rediscovery of the known,
But ignored,
Forgotten,
The pathway to our wholes?
Are we then just fools
Wandering eternally through a mist?
Have we once again shed
What’s most precious?
To reveal what?
But our shameful nakedness.
For what Solomon knew is lost today
When I interact with the world.
All is vain but the path.
Till full circle our story begins anew.
Bard Sep 2019
Absurdity is not real
everything means nothing
and nothing means nothing
nothing nothing nothing
…… hah it aint no thing
Charybdis Sep 2019
Nihilism crawled into me
At first slippery and silently
Charismatic
This lack of empathy

Maybe it first saw me when I was thirteen
Burning my hands to make dishes clean
An angry father talking family
No gas no groceries just soap and steam

“I’m going to beat you” my father said
There’d been a dog In the coup though no chickens dead
My brother weeped and clutched his head
My hands sticky with feathers ripped and red
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
Everyone's been talking about how
the universe will either expand
indefinite cold star death
or collapse and then repeat itself

meanwhile i'm a slave proper
in every sense of the word physical
bound to the elements hunger
a criminal for speaking my thoughts aloud

a loud or a soft noise unheard
unseen and unknown and unthinkable
still I would try to define it
humanity, always effing the ineffable

i'm one and apart and the same all the same
the universe cloaked in name after name
every man and woman a star
in their own drama melodrama how dramatic

i am in a word addict
again you might say i'm back at it
rhyming with rhythm but static
sense or nonsense and i've had it
Justin Aptaker Aug 2019
it's ready to happen
hours count down to launch, but the burners hum already
the structure is taken up
siphons slowly into the bloodstream

the catalyst, the moment
the agonist, the imitator

the perceptual set is set, and it's famished
not even lit, and it's waiting for more-
the stimulant, the ignition
the doctor, the system

like inlets of blood, the freeways carry us to the city
like carcinogens, like poison medication
like aluminum, like exhaust

i too am carried
and when i reach that center
i am deposited, and begin to take effect
while i wait for my own poison to take hold of me
blood within Blood
and
poison in Poison
medication in Medication in MEDICATION
we make sure all of our cancers are medicated

it has happened already
but i am waiting for it to happen again
the freeway now quiets itself in anticipation
a new day to repeat
the city is ready for more
Written ca. 2006
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