THERE WAS LIGHT

 and the first breath reared its head into my chest

the way oxygen singed my lungs-

caressed every alveoli with its teeth-hands,

its tongue-heart licked incinerations so fervent, the sea could not tame.

the first time i sneezed,

an inferno bloomed.

i thought i tasted

soot.

the first step i took,

plucked the cords to feel the

tension in my sinews, in my limbs.

feet smothering my secrets into the sand,

the grains ingesting my laughless laughter,

will subsume with salt.

the colour of  veins when i bend my feet to face the light

makes me certain:

there are rivers running

through me.

the first dawn

was honey and light pinned to a tree.

i learnt that rays refract underwater,

that secondhand warmth

only provides so much heat

and that the sun is now my lighthouse.

sometimes i sleep in the ceramic bed,

slide into the silky cerulean pool.

i haven’t forgotten how to talk fish,

i still find traces of salt on my pillow.

my tongue is heavy, sated with saline.

most days i half expect to find brine between my teeth.

i havent got any poetry left. 

i wasted all my words on you- all my metaphors fall short, shamefaced and saturated. 

the water keeps running and the more i lose, they slip into the sea and subsume with the saline. every drop, every grain burns of you. you are salt and you hurt my skin. you are not here and it hurts my brain. the water keeps running and the more i corrode. cell by cell i am slowly consumed and i cannot swim. i havent got any words left. i am just skin and vertebrae, i am just dust and misplaced letters. the bath is overflowing and i sink along with the last of my verbs.

(please, pleas, plea, ple, pl, p)

only my nouns (remain). my last words, echo the pleas of the waves, 

(push) you

(pull) and you

(push) and

you. 

trying to die

Today I am trying to die.

Two strokes, are all I need, across my wrists, vermillion and silk, scrawled in haste, are proof I’ve paid my debts, ‘let me in, let me in’. Alas I lack artistic direction, and taste. This will not be a masterpiece.

Perhaps I should drown.

In the pool? Where children can gawk at my nakedness? Shield your eyes, avert them. Today you will start swimming lessons, so you will not sink on your own accord. What about the sea? Where I watched you wail at the waves until you were hoarse and bruised? Remember the gaslights that painted our shadows, stretching over tarmac like bandages? I recall the grains plastered on my back, falling off when I rolled over, ingesting your laughter whole, sweat and sand, teeth against skin, bare and blue. Fucking on the beach, that was your idea. You spat me out, eventually, grind and salt, brine and breeze. You’d always chose the sea. My head still churns and my nails are bent, toss a rock into the ocean, it sinks, lay your body to rest, it surfaces. Taunt me, sneer at me, scorn at my wits, but let me, let you, leave me. You asked me once how I’d like to die. I told you I was afraid of death, that I would live forever, by your side, of old age and liver spots. Now I shut my eyes while driving along the shore, too reckless, too rapid. I hold my breath underwater waiting for my lungs to swell, until my skin is raw. All I do is beg at the sea, ‘let me in, let me in.'

things i am sure of

i am positive that should he lay eyes on someone else, i will most surely disintegrate like dust. not even crack- my skin drawing hairline fractures, spreading like roots. no i would not even exceed 'crumble'. that would be too intense. i will curl up like the smoke from chimneys, dissipate and dispel. i always wondered if the circumference of a chimney affected the way it dispensed smoke. dispense is a strange word to use. 'shall we dispense with the forced civilness?' or  'she dispensed my medicine' yet i feel it is the only appropriate word to justify my depletion. 

so here i lay, this is nothing but smoke and mirrors i am confounded within my own means. it is quite the talent. now i am reminded of a murakami quote. 'I want to see him. I want to see him so badly I could die. That’s the only thing that seems certain.' this explains everything. with every passing day of our last encounter i am reaching my demise. i think i am in the process of dying. but i do not want to alarm anyone. my reflection retains the same half pained perpetually surprised expression. like when a non-particularly attractive stranger asks for your number. not like that unfortunate incident has ever befallen upon me, but this should help you visualize. it is a strange situation nonetheless. in all 18 years of my insignificant existence i have come to realise that love is flexible and non-defining. i have chosen to love only you. 

this could be easy, could be simple. after all it is. 

i think that if you were the sea, i'd tie rocks to my chest before going for a dip in the waters.

i think that if you were a burning house, i'd become part of your debris. 

i think that if you were science, i'd name love after you. 

i think i had enough with reducing myself to metaphors.

i think i love only you. 

There they are! The madmen, arriving in troops, their skin replaced with crust, bodies providing temporary respite for flies. They come in colours scrawling notes into the sky throwing their throats upwards, cackling 'There is no GOD! There is only Death! Death is the surest thing about life! Death is our God!'

i am trying to do a mirrored parallel to Nietzsche's 'Death of God' and i am prolly too ambitious but lol lemme try and if i fail it'll be quite funny no? 

Anatomy

Anatomy 

Come unload your burdens,

Burdens in your shrieking and whispers.

Whispers float to rest on collarbones,

Collarbones that became an intimate collection of tears

(Tears when they shed their poetic articles, are essentially salt).

Salt; process before or after I lick your wounds,

Wounds, so many ways to bruise- you are my favourite.

Favourite alignment of cartilage, flesh, wax and bones,

Bones reduced to dust and ash, scatter a trail begging for you to follow

Follow- I'll wait for you to come.

- Miki, Kris

took turns writing a line each during lecture with the following challenge in mind: the last word of each line is the same as the first word of the next line and also the last word of the poem has to be the same as the first word of the poem.

can you guess who wrote what hahahaah this is actually really fun

grabbing life by the ears

ppl often say 'grab life by the balls/horns' but i like ears. like i am not being too invasive but at the same time i maintain some form of aggression anyway miki and i have started to write a line of poetry each during lectures with different challenges and themes and here is one we did with vic

theme: write an instructional poem to person you have *harsh feelings for*

           begin line with only verbs

Instructions For You

Click for flame

Lacerate my initials on your cheek

Shed my skin off your mutilated bones

(unzip- beginning from the crown to the back of your head and down the spine).

Take a chisel, hack at your ridges. I want hairlines, not fragments.

Wield a rope, tie a noose and snap.

Douse self in kerosene, stand 20 feet away from all civilians but in front of a mirror 

Watch self spontaneously combust.

Witness the caricature, mock your reflection

Notice my presence flourishing in your wake-

supply oxygen so you never burn out

Savour the moment

as your soul rises above the flames and hisses

at the toxicity of your aura.

Congratulations, Hell crowns its new Queen.

- Miki, Vic, Kris

can you tell who wrote which lines HAHA give you a hint, the order goes like this, Miki -> me -> Vic and Miki again. yay fun times in lectures (wrote this on the cookie wrapper from subway because we are pretentious lol) JK

carpenter

you saw through my heart
with rusty edge, crooked teeth,
what are you making?

when punctuation becomes a state

i am

but a comma,

curved, curled, curt- 

an accented checkpoint

'please pause before proceeding'

'did you leave anything behind?'

'you have travelled thus far'

'there is more waiting for you'

'please continue'

i am a delay

no- haste, no- hurry 

(you will eventually arrive at the end)

a mere indicator

a polite gesture

wondering what is it i am delaying you from,

with advancing towards what lies ahead?

I do not know the meaning of 'I love you' but I think, what I meant was 'I'd rather be destroyed by you'.

i am not good at math

it is known that there are 6 people roaming the earth with the same face. i am assuming that there are 5 other identical pairs of your eyes choking with oceans, the same intensity no less- saturated with salt, whip lash and envy. 5 accidental dimples caved into the bump adjacent to your nose, like an afterthought, a careless nip and 5 other identical facial structures of yours, cheekbones completely sculpting the topography of your face(s) (so that they diverge paths, when your oceans overflow). and maybe there are 5 more voices that melt like butter, replicas of you that chuckle at the strangest, most mundane of matters, that elicit copious amounts of life in me and loathe chemistry as much as the quantum of atoms humming in sync between us. buzz buzz buzz. and if there are 5 other copies of you, what are the odds that i have 5 clones too? maybe amongst the 5 pairs of us the same gravitation exists and my brain is aching at the possibilities of them decussating, converging, trailing into place. and if they are in luck, perhaps timing and chemistry will overlap and somewhere somehow, the reality of us will prevail.

swimming

it is child's play,
water transients into cadences, rhythms,
pulses you find prosaic
4/4 you hover,
2/2 you flounder
largamente mosso
it is a composition that affords no  (s),  or fermatas
only strokes that cover distance, strokes that draw a note out

this is all your fault

my heart is not a heart
It is a beast
vile and relentless
it is rancid it is rancor it is the colour of blood when it lacerates my initials onto your skin
And you not helping
you are fuel you are prey you are lamb waiting to be slaughtered
I can try but how many times have you seen great whites turn a paper cut into a sea of red?

beast

3:31am and all I see

at the back of my lids

is how your hair twists not
curls
how you howl and whimper not
cry

how every verb you carry out

is an animalistic version of what most of us

normal beings lack the capacity to

portray.

3:32am and you’ve made

11 trips around my head

each peregrinate increases exponentially

and the trial you leave

begs for someone to follow

it is your forte:

lacerating your initials

into my skin

the way beasts mark their

territory.

3:33am and I am a carcass

revolting and rancid

my bones have endured your mastication

my remains

an open invitation to scavengers

I reek of your scent

even in my atrophy

your athanasia prevails.