“My days will end, as they began…with thoughts of you.”

So. You are mine and I am yours. So pray, tell me…what is this emptiness I feel that pervades my senses and leaves me feeling utterly numb? Perhaps I have stumbled across the true curse of being a romantic; ever in pursuit of the idea of a love that transcends all other...Yet bound by social norms I wait, in naïve anticipation…for the delightful ring of your voice across the line, your footfall at my doorstep, a message sent effortlessly to eyes that are starved for a glimpse of your affection. Your affection. And like the rose that hung limply in an abandoned glass at a lonely bar, I wait for you. Perhaps you will never know that the glass was yours.

"To my Konstantine..."

"Little did he realise about the outer perception of himself and therein lies the tragedy of the life that he so proudly led.

Little did he know, that the true beauty of his being entirely lay in culmination of his flaws as they danced exquisitely with his binaries, ringed with flame and pulsing like that of a sensual salsa routine...He lived, and will die as my Konstantine.

His potential for life exceeded all his peers, yet in that too, his flame never burned as a constant. He sweetly breathed in the revelry of all that which he could not handle, and he burned within the beauty of that clandestine arrangement he had with life. His honesty was hidden in small, significant glimpses that elevated him instantaneously like that immortal bird of flame as it rises from its bed of ashes...yet the sincerity of the image lies not in that consuming extravagance of the creature itself, but in the ashes that framed and defined all it lived to be.

He was a dream and even perhaps....simply a myth."

"The echo of lost moments"

It was the start of a gentle winters day when I felt the first glimmerings of a forgotten sunshine swell inside of me...My mind; caressed by the smooth yet sultry voice of Diana Krall uplifted, releasing its pressure like that of a French press...I was almost blue. I almost saw the things that your eyes once promised and flirting with this disaster became me. I met you on the road last night, you were calm. You were done. I remember the first of those long nights, brief in their entirety, endless in their memory. There is no easy way to cry.

Like those symbolic cigarette butts and flying traces of ash I try to reach out and hold on to the dust and it vanishes into a grey smear that says far too much...yet means far too little.

I cradled the silence like a wounded child and rocked in my whirlpool of inertia. With quivering lips I parted the sticky web of disintegration with a sliver of smoke that teased me with effortless curls..resembling the journey I longed to take.

Golden sands brushed against my cheek as I embraced the kiss of the wave that rushed to greet me, and as the water consumed my every breath I shut my eyes and allowed the flesh of silence to rip apart and resonate with feeling.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear myself screaming.

"Shantaram"

"To know the truth, all you have to do is close your eyes. We can know God for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams and we can know love. But none of these are real in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length or find their basic parts in at atom smasher, which is why...they're possible."

For you, Signore.

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's full decay;

'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,

But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness,

Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess:

The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain

The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never stretch again.

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;

It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;

That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears,

And tho' the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears.

Tho' wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast,

Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest;

'Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin'd turret wreath,

All green and wildly fresh without but worn and grey beneath.

Oh could I feel as I have felt, - or be what I have been,

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene:

As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,

So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.

(Lord Byron)

"My perambulation.."

Yet nothing can to nothing fall, Nor any place be empty quite, Therefore I think my breast hath all, Those pieces still, though they be not unite...

So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys, To tell the laity our love...

My sweet nothing...How shall I suffer thy loss? Thy continuous proliferation fills my days until I throb, with numbness still, I lost my voice, my heart, my quill. Teach me how to kill the time and I will kill thee through my ebbing hours, bury my thoughts, drink the draught of amnesia sweet, as I forget how to love, I may forget how to weep.

I brave the desert to earn my keep, caught in an hourglass, memories at my feet, teach me to tread softly past thy bower, teach me to live past this hour.

"One week left."

I'm shit scared. There's no elegance in that, nothing poetic or moving that can be written to describe it, nothing. Yes I miss you, yes I care so much sometimes it contricts around my throat like a silken scarf that is bound too tightly, yes I cannot breathe with ease. I cannot stay and it burns my eyes and my inverted tears drop into a sunken cavity pulsing with the ache of my loss. I lost my ideal, somewhere out there between this land and the next, over those ebbing waters I kissed my frog prince goodbye and lost my sweet virginity to the needle of painful cynicism. It coats the words in my mouth with a metallic web until they harden and drop out before me like blobs of cold steel. The trouble with living with metal is the chill that it fills you with at the onset of every embrace, every moment.

I cannot go gently into this good night, I cannot cast my heart aside for it continues to rage...rage against the dying of the light.

"And in that sleep what thoughts may come..."

It left me. Natures balm left me. And I was breathing, shallow and quick, and like flashes of blue glass I had visions that outlived the haunting passage of that night. That fearful night.

I will always love you. Always.

The person that lives behind those blue eyes is someone who I am truly fortunate to have been able to meet. I am fortunate to have been given the opportunity to love you for the journey has been surreal.

These wings did not fall to my side when I passed your window, my love.

This night, as I kneel here on this hard surface, I am thanking God with tears for bringing you into my life and most of all...

I want to thank you for loving me in return. Thank you for making me who I am.
Thank you for letting me into your heart. Thank you for being yourself.

I will always remember you with love...and I need you to know that...I need you to know that...before these eyes flicker shut...

Before my heart can beat again.

untitled...

It’s almost like those poems and songs. The ones that blow your mind until you realise that they're all untitled.
What can one make of this blunt honesty? This obvious disintegration? The violent withering and towering heights?
Sometimes one cannot help but wonder what the hell we are all fighting for, and what will come at the end of it.

There are those moments which, although untitled, can mean the world to you...lazy sunshine and rolling hills...yet there are the others which, under the same name, thrash and kick out against every core of your being until you lie, exhausted, in an unattractive bundle on a cold tiled floor.

Yes I felt those knives you pushed into me, I felt them then and I feel them now, I feel them twist and burn as my body quivers with charged emotions. I feel everything and I long for numbness, I long to be free of your treacherous caress. I long to be free of your lies.

You plan my future and like a wild animal hurled into a cage I cry out in desperation and claw at the steel bars.

You stroke me in my cage. You stroke me until my eyelids droop and my voice fades.

I refuse to be untitled.

"Involvement.."

I wish you knew how much I miss you.

I miss the sound of your voice and the echo of your words when I hear them in my head long after you have gone...

I wish I knew what you were doing or how you were feeling, I wish I knew if you still cared... I wish I wasn't so scared of losing you and yet I'm not sure whether I had you at all...

I wish we didn't have to play this game. I wish you weren't so desperate to win.

I wish you were here to hold me and brush your lips against my forehead.

I can still feel you beside me, I can still feel you breathing.

Do you miss me at all?

"Kneeling at your feet.."

When the one thing you're looking for
Is nowhere to be found
And you're back stepping all of your moves
Trying to figure it out
You want to reach out
You want to give in
Your head's wrapped around whats around the next bend
You wish you could find something warm
'Cause you're shivering cold..

It's the first thing you see as you open your eyes,
The last thing you say as you're saying goodbye
Something inside you is crying and driving you on.

If you hadn't found me...Would I have found you?

So long youve been running in circles
'Round whats at stake
But now the times come for your feet to stand still in one place
You want to reach out
You want to give in
Your head's wrapped around what's around the next bend
You wish you could find something warm
'Cause you're shivering cold.

It was your first taste of love...Living upon what you had.
Something inside you is crying and driving you on. (August Rush)

Sitting on the terracotta steps watching the rain drops fall and pool before me...I couldn't help but notice how my dreams resembled those raindrops...falling from the sky and crashing down on to the ground.

Pools of dreams sinking into the ground.

I couldn't help but notice how my tears resembled those raindrops...falling down with my dreams and crashing to the ground.

Fancy a drink? There's ice in the freezer...Nowadays we use our tears to make ice. We freeze them and put them in our drinks.

Nowadays we get drunk with our tears.

"The Question of the New Year"

Tonight the sky above
Reminds me how to love
Walking through wintertime
Where the stars all shine
The angel on the stairs
Will tell you I was there
Under the front porch light
On a mystery night.

I've been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines
Been waiting for a dream to seep in through my blinds
I wondered what might happen if I left this all behind?
Would the wind be at my back?
Could I get you off my mind...This time.

The neon lights in bars
And headlights from the cars
Have started a symphony
Surrounding Me
The things I left behind
Have melted in my mind
And now there's a purity
Inside of me.

I've been sitting watching life pass from the sidelines
Been waiting for a dream to seep in through my blinds
I wondered what might happen if I left this all behind?
Would the wind be at my back?
Could I get you off my mind
This time.

(August Rush)

"Give me the luxuries in life and I will willingly do without the necessities..."

"I like my coffee black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, and sweet as love..." A luxury or a necessity...or both? One luxury that many people overlook...is beginning the new year with a smile on your face and hope in your heart.

Maybe this year will be different.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

-- W.H. Auden

"Brevity"

To a man I did not know, whose soul was writ in water.

An experience that humbles...and yet is forgotten in just a short space of time. What monsters have we become?

I wish I knew who you were, I wish I had made the time... It frightens me when your smiling face flashes before my eyes and in that instant I feel as though I am drowning...perhaps in the depths of my insignificance.

Arrogance and frivolity...competition amongst yourselves. Material wealth and the squandering of our virtues, the bragging, boasting and infantile emotions...It consumes us and buries our senses in a putrid yellow slime. We are taught how to swim and yet we laugh as we drown. We drown in our filth.

A parent should never have to bury their child, a brother should never have to feel that pain.

May Allah grant you the best of the world in which you have entered into...and may you be blessed with peace. Your position is envied and greatly feared, there is little that we can pretend to know.

Adam Desai - I miss you.

(29th December 2008)

"The Caged Skylark" - Gerald Manley Hopkins

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

Into the Cornfields.

The difference between a literary and a journalistic text is often misunderstood. I have opted to assume a somewhat journalistic stance before the commencement of this next piece however, I do not wish to be constrained by the crude dusty chalk lines that are etched around this style of writing...'if by dull rhymes our English must be chained' so to speak...

Frankly, at this point in time, there is little that I do care about and yet I desperately wish I could alter this confining frame of mind...freedom and passivity is actually quite a confining state of being as there is very little one can feel or do when they have reached this 'ultimate' position...Perhaps it really is 'lonely at the top' on more than one level..- if only we had the intellectual capacity and possessed enough patience with our stunted faculties of understanding to appreciate this notion. If we did, we would not continue to pursue that which is ultimately futile, we would not find ourselves racing away from our lush homely valleys into barren grounds that are weighed down with the mottled carcasses of those who once found themselves here...in much the same fashion that we have found ourselves here now..

It is an old tale if one considers it, - Keats touched on it in the ballad entitled la belle dame sans merci, an 'ancient ditty' as Prospero would have it, as the knight sojourns in the foreign land 'alone and palely loitering'... perhaps we are all enthralled by the wild wild eyes of those faery children that wander the earth unrestrained...How do we resist the sweet melodies that charm us like dumb serpents eagerly slithering to our demise? If we eliminate the notion of pursuing that which we long for and yet cannot essentially obtain, would we be happier? Or simply obedient followers of unschooled ignorance? What exactly is success? What defines this, and how does one separate the tangled wires that mesh together to make up this absurd concept? Can we, as limited beings obtain success? Does success define happiness or is it quite the opposite? Why do we constantly grapple with theories that we never actually pay much attention to when human nature overcomes us...? And lastly, are we all essentially servants of Eros when all the glitter, foils and civilised jargon is stripped away? How much can we control in terms of who we are and when the moment arises when one must venture out into the cornfields, why is it so difficult to define how we feel?

She wandered lonely as a cloud, and strained to hear the music, yet still she followed the white noise in her mind and ignored the rusty chains that clung to her ankles. The cornfields. How does one refrain from looking back?

Salt crumbled beneath the stones, and like a newborn her hands stretched out to touch, her nose lifted and her eyes opened, her tongue slid slowly over the parched lips...but she still could not hear the music.

"The street of lost footsteps and the endless postponment of closure.."

"The concept of genuine perception does not refer to one's insight regarding a single category in isolation, but rather, our true perceptional abilities are only illustrated when we are able to brush the delicates shades gleaned from that insight on to each and every thread interwoven into the colossal canvas of everyday life.
Each new shade enriches and ages our frame and gradually the colours will blend together to reveal the rare hue of empathy."

"A Mingled Yarn"

She spins tales of gold, they say. She spins them around her shapely form until, like a mingled yarn she emerges, dazzling and secure, delicately clad in her cocoon of comfort.

Her fingers weave in and out of the threads as her head gently tilts to one side. A smile plays upon the corners of her lips and she draws the young man closer to her, somewhere across the ocean the bright glass eyes flicker shut. Somewhere in a darkened room a candle burns and the scent of jasmine floats in gentle curls over the glowing embers.

They say she descended from an angel. They say that those that look upon her cannot gaze for too long..they say her innocence makes them fearful and their fear makes them run. It is she who makes them run.

With naked footsteps pressed into the lush ground she wanders out towards the water.

The heart of the city pulsed and blazed. Lights, music, the streets of life. Never a dull moment. The cosy cafe on the corner of the street was dimly lit from the inside, the smell of roasted coffee wafted out on to the open road.

It resembled a mansion...one of those old mansions that was set out in the French colonial fashion, but there were so many rooms, and there were the tunnels too...And the lofts and the balcony's, the cracks and the loose floorboards, a single chair in a red room, an old chimney.

"Its complicated Officer", he said dismissively as he chewed noisily on a particularly tough piece of meat that kept painfully reappearing inbetween the rather crooked rows of his tar-stained teeth.

"There was a girl who lived in these parts some time ago, but I guess now only the roses would know."

"The roses?" The young officer frowned at him and handed him a serviette to assist him with the remains of his masticated meal that clung in clumps to the wiry hairs of his unkempt beard.

"They grow outside the white house on the fields and they seem to be changing colour" he replied.

"Trainspotting"

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

-John Hodge