The Only Car.

Inside the fire,
I struggle to speak,

with

Styrofoam cups of whiskey blues,
Smoke left hanging in the air.

Gloomy as it may be
Drive the car I must.

Congested throat,
It's like I swallowed a boat

Dreary eyes and
Faltering feet

I Scamper out of the way to let the feeling pass

Just a little pin prick
But I am sick.

Taut nerves.

Catch a glimpse
Can't catch her eyes.

Keep driving my son.
Keep driving.

The Road To Nowhere.

In my infancy, all I saw was flashes of technicolor strewed across everything that seemed real.
Brilliant arrays of vivid bright light then creeped in to my field of vision, letting me see beyond what the predestined haze of obliterated grayness let me see.

I am going nowhere.

My life is but an intensified chess game between the forces of good and evil; I chose my path solely because the dark auras of social stigma pushed me roughly across the borders of black and white lines of self actualization, into a universe where everything is just a matter of following the herd into the pits of raging fire.

I have ceased to think for myself. Brainwashed I am, by the millions of tiny atoms of media-infested force fields that stray deep into my minds, erasing my ability to conceive for myself.

Stranded I am, on this rock in the middle of a great raging ocean, driven by a furious urge to throw it all away and get swallowed by the depths of blue, never to be seen, never to be remembered again.

All my life has made no sound, except for the bells I hear on odd occasions, noticeably louder each time, signalling the end of our time. It is too late to fight off what has taken a cold grip on my life. It is too late to unburden myself of the chains that hold me down to the ground. I am being led into a void of nothingness.


I speak for the world, dear readers.

We are going nowhere...

See those pigments of indigo on the horizon?

It’s amazing, really, when your talent is appreciated.
My newfound talent, of course, being photography, has become more of an obsession than anything now, and god knows it, it’s paying off.

There’s a moth resting on the terracotta wall. *click*
There’s an old brown brick that’s jutting out on the wall. *click*
There’s a pipe that’s leaking sewage water of the sludgiest kind. *click*
There’s a rusted old candlestick. *click*
There’s a once magnificent building that has lived its life in grandeur and now lies in ruins. *click*
There’s the sky; she looks like she’s about to burst into flames. *click*

I find beauty in ruined figments of the past. Once grand buildings, now lying in dust. Rust. Dirt. Cracks on the wall. Dust. Ancient spider webs. Everything I see, I click a photograph of it my mind’s eye, and make sure I come back to the same spot with my camera and capture it in its entirety. Browns and greys, hues of pale yellow and desaturated red, monochromatic shades of faded light. It’s all a game of chess in my mind now.

To click or not to click.

*click*

I admit, the world is a beautiful place, but there are some things that go unnoticed by many.
Those small, brilliant shards of nature’s big glass of wine. Those are the things I notice.
And someone needs to put them on paper, to say the least. Putting visuals on paper, of course, involves photography.

I take my camera everywhere these days. The night, I must say, is the best time to take photographs. When there’s absolutely no one in sight. When there’s a dark beauty in everything you observe, when the lighting is just perfect to capture the most beautiful visuals ever. Taking walks on deserted alleys after midnight, and clicking away has become a routine activity now, wherever I go.

Might as well put my insomnia to good use eh?

Apocalypse, if you please.

Trying not to close my eyes so soon.
There's a cold breeze streaming from the vents that inscribe the tall and gritty brick walls that imprison me.
As depressing as a bucket filled to the top with carcasses of fish, those dead eyes gazing blankly at the brink of extinction.
The walls are cracking, the lightning shaped dents expanding at a pace the naked eye can not read.
Life, as we know it, is ebbing away from every bare inch of ground under my cold feet.
Gritty old kettles rattle in the lonely shed, clammy nuggets of snow coat the old wooden shed door as it hails as it's never hailed before.
Green and yellow are things of the past, monochromed shades of brown and grey are all I can see.
The ground now quakes, impending surges of a strange aura of dread envelops the surroundings.
What is left of the sun, is a tiny dot of brilliant white light somewhere beyond the endless horizons of empty space.
Now I stand inside the dingy, dully lit toolshed with a pickaxe in my bare arms.
All love is lost. I am the last man standing. A miniscule fibre of flesh on my lower arm I scrape with the pickaxe.
I am the last man standing.
The last.
'Tis too cold.
As I watch the depressing grey skies signal the marching drum beat of impending doom, as I watch our mighty earth being swallowed up by the throats of an unknown force that is hell bent upon destroying Infinity,

I pick up the pickaxe.
And I bring it down upon my skull.
Goodbye Earth.




And THAT is how I imagine the End Of The World to be.

Cheers, folks.

Home.

The past few weeks have been more than amazing, and quite frankly, I was surprised it turned out to be so. Coming home for the first time after a long break of about half a year for my first ever university spring break, I thought, would turn out to be an uncomfortable gap of discomfited thoughts, filled with awkward silences, unintended pauses of a very gauche nature, and spaces of time when you wanted to sink into the earth under you and disappear.

But it was not. In contrast, it ended up in being a long and cheerful number of hours, days and weeks, filled with reminiscing about the good old times when we were young and free, filled to the top with nostalgic inner warmth. Weird as it may sound, friendships get cemented on stone, and bonds become stronger than ever before, when two people haven’t seen each other for a very long time. I finally came to realize the worth in metaphorical gold each person around me weighed; I believe that without them, my life would be an incomplete puzzle. People change as the sands of time get carried by the wind in soulful carpets of dust into the distant horizon; nameless faces appearing and disappearing into the sands. But the ones who do stay solid, well, those are the ones that you genuinely remember forever.

Nowhere else on earth can you feel as comfortable and completely satisfied as possible with lying on a couch, a novel lying open next to you turned to page 151, a half empty can of soda lying somewhere around the corners of your vision, some good old 70’s Brit Pop playing in the background, the warm sun shining mildly through the half closed drapes, and well, your mind at a comfortable state of peace and content. Flipping through your old notebooks filled with writing and designs and songs and everything else, looking through old letters from past flames, and smiling at how young and stupid you were back in the days; nothing ever feels as good.

Sue me, for sounding like I’m on the brink of turning into an old man when I’m just hardly even eighteen, but I tell you, a lot does change when you leave home for the first time in your life and come back to visit. Brings back old fond memories it does, fills you with a pleasant sickly sweet sense of nostalgic reminiscence it does, leaves you craving for the good old summers at home it does. But then, you come back to reality, and you sigh, and your heart fills with longing to relive those days again. Your first girlfriend. Your first break up. Your first lessons of life. Your first dawning self realizations about your true self. Your first ever encounters with the realities of life. Your first ever memories of feelings ranging from dreary depression to nirvana. Your first ever steps towards yourself. Good times.

And now, it’s time to leave, as I write this. A flight back to real life waits for me. I bear no regrets at the thought of going back; a different life with its own unique set of people awaits for me back there. But I tell you, the days you live at the place you call home, those days; you’ll never ever get them back. Time goes by way too fast. Fuck time and all its intricacies. Fuck you. Fuck everyone else too.

And, just for the sake of telling you this, I once wrote down on a piece of paper, a list of things to do, to erase out all the regrets I have ever had back home, by a series of apologies, showdowns, venting out of well concealed frustrations, sorting out misunderstandings and the sort. But now, I tear that piece of paper to shreds. And I write a new note on a fresh new piece of paper extracted not so economically from a random notebook:

“To whomsoever may concern, go fuck yourself.”

*Grins to himself*

Home, where my thought's escaping
Home, where my music's playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me

A waking dream, a spontaneous combustion.

Visualize this if you will....

The voices, the lights and the whispers,
The knowing smile and the pretty face,
That look in her almond eyes.
Flitting through your dreams.
Ever evasive.
Dreams. Octane dreams.
Knowing, deep inside, that it is all but a passing phase.

Nothing is real,
The dreams tell me that every other night.
All the images of BeingWantedAndWarmthAndBeingLoved,
Mere manifestations of the ticking clock inside.
Tick tock tick tock.

The unknown force driving you to Wait,
Wait eternally for that significant other,
A practical joke being played on you by that bastard puppeteer above you,


Those passing visuals you witness,
Not of endless calamities, but of
Fair maidens that come your way once in a wolf's cry,
They get your mind racing,
Turn your drained gully of a heart into a fucking waterfall,
*Thud*
Hammer. Heart beating like a Hammer.
They turn your incisions and your scars, inside out.

And then they leave. Poof. Gone.
*Thunderclap*


The impregnated black clouds seem to follow me as I walk back home,
Back to the place, back to my sanctuary,
Where all I do is waste away on visions of.....STOP.


Now,

Is it worth it, I ask myself.
To kill that part of you to feel the lack of pain.
To lose yourself in your mindless self-indulgent bouts of sunshine, on a rainy day,
To paint a fake smile on your darned face,
To waltz through broken cobbled boulevards, Walking Dead.
To smoke a cig and blame it on infinite possibilites.
To watch a broken twig bleed,
To burst into flames to pardon those who broke you.
To save the saddest songs for last.
To try, just try.
The answer lies in the skies, they said.

Fuck It All. I give up. My fall of grace, dust to ashes, ashes to dust, whateveryouwannacallit.
I have had enough of reading this endless manuscript of Waiting; when will I ever find the last page?

When, goddamnit?
Fuck.


And yet,
And YET,


On those nights,
Those silent nights,
When the lights go out.
When you turn around, and look into the eyes of the prettiest girl you'd ever seen.
When all you do, is look out the window as she does,
At the same cursed twinkles of Existence, the stars,
And the stars tell you, Turn Back, Look at Her.
And that unknown force,
That points your eyes towards hers,
And lets you see,
That tiny diamond of a tear in the depths of that glimmering well,
Her pretty face blurred by the moonshine,
That flicker of a smile, sweetly worn.

Then DAMN it,

You change your mind.
You realize,
All hope is not gone.

And you know you're right.


*Flicker*

*Undiscernable Static*


Ah, the sweet sound of silence.

A Stellar Maybe.

Like ink running off the neck of a feather,

He draws upon a shaky conclusion as he trembles to get his thoughts right,

A conclusion he does not love.

But one he remains firm on, as firm as the lone leader of a pack of wolves howling into the night, standing at the edge of a crevice so deep,depth deserved a new definition;

"Why is the world just a shallow earthen pot of half sun-baked black dahlias, rather than one filled with a bountiful bloom of a psychedelic display of colors emanated by the brightest of the bright magnolias?

Why is it always a true story that when every man, woman or child you know,looks at you as if you had uttered sheerly the most blasphemous of blasphemous phrases ever to be phrased when you had indeed voiced out a mere fabric of your brilliantly complex nervetree of ground breaking thoughts?

Why is the population of the very planet You grew up on,just a mere mass army of monotonously idle media-driven group of single minded individuals, who dared to explore their vastly complex storehouses of unborn ideas only as much as blind armies of wounded men would, when they barely scraped the surfaces of hostile castles with their drawn swords erstwhile failing to realize the castles even existed?

Why is it virtually a sin to wander unto yourself and discover the true reason for your pitiful existence on this planet, while it is something worthy of applause on a grand scale when one carries out an act that just cements the ideology that every mind must follow a specified path into a dark void of linear oblivion when there are actually a countless number of roads you could take to actually explore your own mind and free yourself from the binding chains of Stigma?

Why is it Wrong to be random and spiral out of yourself to explore metaphysical depths untold of, while it is Right to be a typically traditional God fearing individual drowned in theological lies driven into him like nails by the hammers that the Elders in his Family possessed?

Why did the sacred art of Love involve two plastic souls pretending to the world that they were indeed One and the Same by engaging in fake acts and speaking out mindlessly artificial phrases lacking in Heart, all the while massacring and mutating beyond comprehension, the true meaning of what the word Love actually represented? "

The answer would never come to him, he concluded.

Struck his heart like a poisoned arrow it did, that Change was not possible.

He would have to live on.

Live on.

Live on.

Live on, and yet not daring to Live as Living was meant to be Lived.

Not for one moment, daring to step out of the circle of fire drawn around him by the rest of the mindless souls marching on towards the End.

Not for one moment, daring to hope that someday, he might just find that one person to complete him and shine Light upon his thoughts.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Ah, the travesties of an unsatisfied incomplete man, he thought.

It was all part of the game of Life. No strings attached, but no spiral staircases into the unknown either.

* Soft music in the distance*

A discontent sigh of a man shaken by his own conclusions,

as he turns to a mirror and looks into his own eyes, thinking

'Maybe it is not meant to be.

Maybe I am not meant to reach out.

Maybe I am not meant to step beyond the invisible boundaries I couldn't cross.

Maybe I am meant to walk on an already trodden path towards a Dead End I would never see. And maybe, just maybe, my thoughts weren't meant to cross a Human mind. '

Is that not a sad sight to see, my friend?

Because, I will tell you, maybe that man is Me.