The Great Struggle

What does struggle mean to you? No, I’m not talking about the ‘trying to find a job’ struggle. I’m talking about the ‘trying to figure out your shit’ struggle.

Everyday I write, read, trek, ride, laugh and cry and love and hate, yet I feel hollow. I feel empty. I feel like I’m trying to live a life that I don’t believe in anymore. I feel like I don’t want to wake up in the morning anymore.

I find the material world superficial. I don’t believe in my job even though I enjoy walking into my office everyday; I suspect it has been the one keeping me from finally losing it. I find society despicable; religion, moronic and the everyday struggles of getting to work on time, trumping office politics, eating pizzas and celebrating birthdays of colleagues one cares nothing about to be simply a futile effort by the 21st century humans to stay occupied till they pass on.

I feel that we can satisfy the body, the mind, even the heart but how do you keep the soul happy? Do you simply keep deceiving it till you die? Do you keep it in the dark, prevent it from asking questions ever or do you just force it to believe in the half-arsed answers that you say everytime it questions you?

You see this is why I’m struggling. I’m unable to answer the question that dwarfs every other question. (No, it is neither the existence of aliens nor if the earth is flat; goddamn flat earthers!).

Why do we exist? Why do we have a conscious? No, humans are not born just to procreate and fuck off. What is our purpose, both our collective one as a society and the individual one? Is it just to run a 100 metre distance faster than any other man, be happy with a piece of metal with a personal belief that being fastest equals being better, or is it only to use paper bags and plant trees and call out imbeciles and racists at every turn?

Can we do more? Can we be more? What are our limits? Can we go beyond the horizons of what we know and hold important, and look at the bigger picture?

Days like this, I honestly miss my innocence.

That day

the kettle tipped over

water fighting

the fire within;

organs set ablaze.

Mind

under duress

of the etched memories

trying to salvage what’s left

of the once green innocence.

The wasted tea

of thoughts

flowing down the abyss;

letting go

all what was held dear.

Healing yet

the plasters fail to hold,

the cracked kettle

shattering in my vice;

pieces thrown under the bed

in places

beyond my reach.

No way to sew them

back whole.

I sit

in a windowless room

pondering

wishing for the sun

to burn us to the heavens today.

Maybe death is all we’ve got to live for.

All parts of the above account are the work of the blog owner and has not been plagiased from any source online or otherwise.

The Demise Of The Escape Artist – A Short Narrative

I have always been an escape artist in everything I’ve done, or not done.

I ran and ran from every situation. I hid my shame. I hid my disgust with my life. I concealed my emotions and true my feelings. I never said what I intended to say. I chose to walk away from situations and people instead of facing them.

Everytime I was faced with a situation where I had to bear shame, embarrassment or someone’s disappointment in me, I tried as much as I can to distract myself from feeling it. I told stories to myself stories where I did not have to face shame or embarrassment; stories where I was happy and everyone was happy and life went on.

I sold myself surreal realities. I told myself fables of kings and knights where the righteous won and everyone lived happily ever after. I transported myself to worlds within my minds, structures and narratives carefully sculpted by me to not face the situations that I was faced with. The more I did, the more I got disconnected from my life, my realities.

When I started getting disconnected, I started seeing my hurdles as mountains I needed to cross instead of the pebbles they really were.

But I guess life always finds a way to get to you, to teach you lessons. It did for me. When I came around, my fables were waiting for me. With time, all my alternative realities, the actual ones and all the escapism I performed over the years finally caught up to me.

There was no running anymore, no shadows to hide in, no crevasses nor safe abodes to wait out the storm.

Now I know who and what I’m. I know what I’ve done for years. I know the damages that’s been done to myself, by myself. I tried to go back; thought back to all the times when I had run away, tried to figure out how I should’ve faced them in the first place. But there was nothing to be done. I regretted everything that was said and done, I wished with everything I had to change my past.

But, its all over and done with now.

What matters now is what I’m doing from this day forward. Life, once lost, can never be gained. Ever since my realisations, or to put it closer to the truth, my pockets of realisations that I had over time; over a varied series of events that happened in my life, a kind of an uneasy chaos seems to have dawned upon me. Its as if I’m not me anymore, what I’m feeling is not mine anymore and that I’m empty within. Without the stories, I seem to have nothing but a pale emptiness washed over my soul with this melancholic echo of my soundless screams resonating beneath the skin ceaselessly.

Its as if I’ve descended into madness and all the cacophony around me is slowly taking over.

How do I fight my way out of it? Do I believe that I even can?

I don’t know yet. Only time will tell I’m afraid.

I’ll be a man of the world and on the inside, it’ll be a battleground with a thousand horses, red hot hooves galloping endlessly.

I’ll know when I’ve won, or done.

The above is not a fiction and is as closer to the truth as a narrative can be.

The Yang (or probably the Yin); The other one is the previous post

My last post wasn’t supposed to happen. This poem below was originally set to take its place. But in the middle of penning this down I had a kind of an epiphany and got myself into write two poems at once! Yeah, it doesn’t happen so often is all I can say! The closest I’ve ever come to such a weirdly productive poem day was when I dreamed of dreaming about a poem and waking up to write it down. I know. Sounds like some crazy, Inception level stuff but I swear it happened! I wrote it down and spent the next hour after that from 3 AM to 4 AM wondering how it even happened.

My sister, for reasons unknown, called this poem and the previous one: the Yin and the Yang, the exact opposites, the contrasting accounts. I for one, cannot with all the gravy in my head, see why and how she came up with that but I’m going to run with it!

Perhaps not the kind of prelude one would expect for a morbid post as this but, I had a really good day (surprising!) and as a result, I’m in a brilliant mood! Just sharing the joy along. Pay it forward right?

Without further ado, here it goes!

“Walk this way

Where cars seldom ply

and dreams come to die.

The wasteland,

windows shuttered tight;

rising heat

and the howling winds,

like a battlefield.
The devil’s path

we must take:

broken resolves, and hearts left to rot

reeking of eternal damnation.

Open road.

Nothing in sight.

Endlessly traversing

to the distant mountains,

like dots on the edge of a book.

Yet we keep hoping, keep going

beyond the life we see;

to the embrace of the endless bloom.

For all that matters is to

live strong and die peaceful.”

PS. My sister usually does the punctuation and proofreading for all of my posts as I’m bad (don’t even get me started on it!) at it. But since she’s ill, I’ve been doing them myself, mustering all the bit of grammar I can come up with!

Let me know how it is in the comments. Shout out if you feel it better to let my sister handle them for me going forward:)

Cheers! Again, I’m sorry for spoiling the mood of the post, growing dumb by the verse I can say!

To that little birdie within all of you

I guess when you have a low, you have a high following up right behind it. It doesn’t always work that. Sometimes you keep plummeting but at times you get the opportunity to pull yourself up.

This is as much for me as this is for everyone else. There are times when we have the luxury of taking inspiration from the events around us. And then there are times we would need to dig deep, struggle to find it within us. This is a little attempt of mine to find it from within me.

Maybe it didn’t work, or maybe it did. But, I know that I tried.

‘Fly away, little birdie

Fly as far, as high,

As possibly can.

For the world ain’t an oyster

Ain’t no diamond necklace either.

It is dust and sorrow and smiles and lives.

Fly off, high above

Forgetting all you know and have been taught

Eat the daffodils and play with the stream

Let the sunbeam guide you everyday.

Fly so hard time would tremble to toll

And the oceans echo your shadow.

Glide with the wind little birdie

Nestle in the stars

Let tomorrow

Be rain and snow

or sun and bloom

You’ll be too far above floating with the clouds.

Fly so high little birdie

Because you can

Also because everyone sneered you can’t

Fly into the sunset, gloriously

Spreading red and orange happiness

To those grey souls below.

Fly little birdie

Because life ain’t a rarity

Living is.

A Moment with Midnight

This won’t do justice to my love for quotes I know. But it’s a start. It doesn’t exactly say how I feel, how my body cringes, heart skips and my eyes well up, for those split seconds when nothing else matters but the absolute beauty in you.

I know I probably shouldn’t say this but I’m jealous, of people who are able to write such heart wrenching quotes. If I ever were able to, I’d spend my waking moments in your tight embrace, not that I don’t do it already!

So short, sutle
You won’t even notice,
If you don’t look hard enough
Yet a world in them
Through the right looking glass
Seldom cited aloud
Yet the chill you feel
When it hits you
Wave after wave
And you wash away onto the shores
Of reality again
Intimate moments you feel touched
By the very essence of life.

Again, a piece of my mind. Why don’t I make a change by doing this routine when I actually plagiarise rather than when I’m don’t ! Honest to God and to myself!

My Human Side

This here is a little something I conjured up a few days ago. Let me go ahead here and tell you that this is not about anyone. On the contrary, it’s about a little thing deep inside that’s been nagging me for quite something now. And perhaps this thing is more alive to me that any individual. It’s this shadow that follows me around no matter where I go. It’s there behind the curtains when I’m all happy and at the cusp of living. It’s there wrapped around me when I’m down and needing. It’s something I’ve always appreciated but never quite understood just how important it is my life.

It’s about man and his love for words, beautiful, powerful words that, incredibly have the power to say exactly what I feel.

This is all about showing what you truly mean to me.

I crumble,
At the sight of you
Into a million pieces.
At a glance
My mind rages
Like a stormy night
Tossing me to the edges,
Into the eye,
And back again.
Holding on, desperate
Pushed to the lines of insanity.
It’s always a fight,
Between life and death.
When I chance upon you,
Bundled up neat
In a cosy little book
Or thrown at will,
As bulletproof thoughts
Cherished like a daydream,
Thorns ripping me apart
As I hold you close.
An addict i’m
For the beauty in you,
And the pain that follows
You are the one true comfort
In my abysmal living.

The above is an authentic piece of my mind and yeah, sure I get inspired by works but how I use it to shape my own, that’s purely me.

Be Brave

Remember the dialogue in the movie Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne says hope is the best of things? Yes, that be the word of a man who was gonna rot in prison probably for the rest of his life. Yet he got out and made a life for himself. What changed? He hoped. He hoped for a better life. His unshaken hope got him through his sufferings. For to get the life you want, you gonna have to have the kind of belief others cant even dream of possessing. Thats how you show you deserve it more than anyone else.

Below is a little something similar to what I tell myself if I ever find myself wishing I be dead. Although I got a good foothold from a Hollywood movie for this post, I did add my bit so that it be my words that I write.

May you always find the strength to get up everytime you fall down.

Do not go quiet into the night.

I say,

Do not fall silent without a fight.

Let the night be the darkness

And the light be the blinding fear.
May your voice drown in madness

And your fights end in nothingness.
May the stabs bleed you out

And the pain beat you down.
Let your heart crumble away

And hopes sink like paper boats.
And when you are done dying

Get up and fight.
For the darkness dont scare

Nor the pain
For the bleeding dont kill

Nor the sorrow
For you, my love,

 Are all the bravery

Folktales talk of.

Have a good night people. Sleep tight for all is well when you believe it is.

Echos from the soul

​To some poetry is just jumbled words made to love beautiful. To some poetry is but a way to impress. And there are some to whom poetry is the very essence their everyday living hangs on.

Hats off to all those wonderful poets who have made our life colorful!

Here is a little something from your fan!
What madness is this thing,

Called poetry?

Where love becomes the sun and the moon

And the heart, the ocean blue

Where love becomes the seven seas,

The surfer quests to tame.

Spinning tales out of the crashing waves

Hoping for a footprint, in the sands of time
What absurdity is this thing,

Called poetry?

Delusional quotes carved

On the tombstone of the dead

Telling tales of lives

Of great men and of others

Of hope and hardships

Of lost lives in the struggle, called living.
What is this poetry? I asked.

The autumn leaves and its inner peace

The dancing rain and its untold joy

Take my breath away!

‘Poetry, my dear’, said the voice in my head.

‘..is all things beautiful’.

Then again, everything is beautiful.

In its own unique way.
The above is a humble tribute from a person who has spends many a happy moments in the company of poetry.

Mon Amour

You gave me the most wonderful gift I can ever ask for. You gave me the confidence, to write and to write my heart out. Hence here I’m, writing my heart out for all my heart ever has, is you.

​The writer who dies

At the mention of your name,

Crumbling, like a sand castle

Washed away, marooned forever.

The writer who lives

In the shadows of your memories,

Fondness like the fire

Burning bright, from within.

The writer who writes

With the black of the night,

Constellations of you, and me,

In my fantasy skies.

For I’m the writer who bleeds

For bleed is all I can do

When I’m in love

With you.

The above piece of work is something way too close to my heart, so close that if I ever plagiarise in this, it means I dont even have a heart!

Life in the Memories of you

​There are people like me, people who dont worry about the future or the present. People like me who’s life still revolves around a certain past. A past so magical it has convinced them that there can be no better life than the life that they were part of, and left.

Living in the past aint a sin. Then again, nothing really is a sin. It all lies in the eyes of the beholder.

My voice is but a quiver

My thoughts, a starless night

My heart, the greatest coward

Unwilling to let you go,

Hovering over your memories.
My mind still loves you.

My eyes pry like always

In the voices of chaos

And in the faces, the masquerades,

To feel the magic that is you.
I look for you in the shadows

Shadows that was once people.

In the shattered lives

That speak of beautiful pasts.

‘Coz my love I loved a rose and its thorns.
I need you

For you’re all the people I know

The one true thing in my life.

I want my soul back

As my bleeding heart needs its fix.
Come back to me

Or take me with you,

My love.

My emptiness is unbearable

And my love is unquenchable.
Lets lie on the glistering sand

And gaze upon at the starry night.

Lets fly to the moon, and make it ours.

May our love consume us

And the world.

The above are words of my heart and it is as genuine as it could be.