Devolution

Where did they go?

Words of power spoken by poets ancient,

Men with old-world strength. They have been cast down,

Replaced with sycophants, with men fundamentally flawed.

Men of big talk and small dreams,

Of fast food and slow digestion,

Of outer wealth in an inner wasteland.

Where are the voices?

The ones like liquid sunlight, flowing, rippling;

Imperfect, but delightfully so, music

As made by humans for humans. They who wove paths through

The brambles of minds with their flaws, their accidents, their dreams.

Now, the minds have been replaced with empty rooms, reeking of cigarette

Smoke and loneliness, alienation, desperately hidden under veneers of flashing lights,

Plastic smiles, empty gestures, false hearts filled not with love, not even with malice,

but with grey, with fog, with apathy.

Where have we gone?

Ascension

Quiver.

Wounded wing, hidden under imaginary steel;

Pain coaxed out of the vessel by soft words,

Soft words embraced by the maelstrom of existence itself.

The hand of fate makes its move, relentlessly;

As we vainly scream to the heavens ‘leave me be!’

The plea turns into a roar,

The whimper into a frenzied battlecry,

The whisper into a call to glory,

‘Leave me be’ becomes ‘teach me how to die’.

Forging steel in inner fire,

Metamorphosis catalyzed by circumstance.

The phoenix reborn, yet slightly dimmer than before.

Or is it just brighter outside?

Silence

Outward projection of inner space,

Outer silence marred by inner turmoil, perhaps desired.

Perception veiled by loneliness,

Beauty marred by Clarity’s demise.

Outward projection of inner space,

The maelstrom pours out through his eyes;

Shadowy figures fighting their ilk on the walls,

Set to the buzz of fluorescent lights.

Spasm.  A paradigm shift announced by reaction,

Awareness precedes recognition.

He flees into a bulwark of sound, finding

Solace amidst notes, feedback, movement, blurring.

But even the pillars of heaven must one day fall and

Shatter.

Ripples

Balancing on a razor precipice,

with pain to one side, numbness on the other

each calling out to me, with voices that are barely heard,

yet pierce through to the seat of the world.

Honeyed voices, devilish voices, whispering secrets,

like pebbles tossed into secluded pools of shame and anger,

causing small ripples that fade with time,

yet change the present irrevocably, forever.

For while the pool may return to stillness, to clarity,

some part of it would remember the stones breaking its surface,

plunging into its depths,

with water and stone eventually becoming as one,

unnoticed; just another rock in just another pool.

git init

To be honest, I don't know why I decided to start this blog.

I write sporadically, and normally only during times of significant emotional duress. Existential crises, stress, mental turmoil, and a clear view of what's actually happening in this fucked up world normally give me the impetus, the fuel I need to actually write something of worth (by my standards, anyway). Because that's the point, isn't it? The best thing one can do with negativity is to make good art. According to Neil Gaiman anyway. It's interesting to note how I find myself agreeing with a statement made by an author I have made no attempt to read or understand; but maybe that's just because he said that as a person, and not an author.

Or maybe, that's what an author, or any artist for that matter, actually is.

Not a person defined by his labels, his 'calling' or his 'aptitude' as defined by others, but just a person who can't freaking help himself; a slave to that impulse that filters a mix of reason, emotion, knowledge, memory and intuition through the shutters of his experience to give birth to something that leaves a mark, that makes a difference, at least to him or her, even if not to anyone else. Because that's the point; isn't it?

Maybe the words find the wordsmith, and not the other way around; whatever the case, they mean something. And that's all one can ask for, in a world that's filled with people willing and able to smack you down, to convince you of your worthlessness. Maybe that iota of satisfaction gleaned from expressing ideas through words, through music, through something, is what keeps us sane, allows that little, soft-yet-oft-heard voice in our heads, the one that whispers of strength, optimism, love and innocence, to survive the ordeals we subject it to.

Because that's the point. Isn't it?