Underwater

To be an inspiration to susceptible, guardless readers, listeners, watchers, thinkers, walkers, eaters, lovers, drinkers, breathers. Draw a note from your endless suitcase of sad tunes, tie it with a bow to your fragile wrist and walk proudly around, parade your own making. Just like these words, they will burn, imprint the meaning each different to those who take the time to read. It is a hat trick, a maze in its own right, a desolate road to recovery or a glorious path to freedom. Born out of a simmering desire to want the want. This is how I come to be inspired, how I am touched by what you had written. Simple, confined to the musical restraints, almost silent, heartbreakingly still. You push my whole body under water then slowly allow me to surface, float weightlessly in your sorrow, wallow in my own self pity, hurry towards the elating end that lifts my spirit momentarily.

Useless to think that any effort on your part could save me. There are only waves that bring me closer, calm me, stir the vessels that channel elusive, futile beginnings of thoughts sprawling on the page. Quickly lose coherence and I am back to drifting to your humming, endlessly roaming, being carried to invisible safety by these tireless words, these over used melodies. With each repeat you gain confidence and I am forced to revert back to where you found me. Where I found you. Over time it becomes easier to breathe, seduced to attempt to fill my lungs with air underwater. With each attempt I come closer to understanding the fate, the essence of existence that is defined by an unending need to create. Without it there is nothing, nothing above water. With it there is only a constant pull, only seldom liberated from the force which beckons deep down below. Never reaching dry land, only staying afloat: this is the most that can be said, can be done, can be wanted, wished for, prayed. And even like this, even with this threat of a painful end, the prospect of constant captivity, the creation like an iron chain, a heavy anchor pulling at the soul, even with this burden the gift of a word, a melody, a rhyme is far greater than any threat or pull or pain that could befall. I let go, fall after you and sink underwater.

I live my life with countless regrets. Each day brings a new one. I have lost the will to name them, keep them at bay, try to revoke them. Then comes a light, a wave, a feeling when I know that it is time to write. For that moment, for the duration that writing lasts, that inspiration holds on, that the fresh air forgets to change in my lungs, all regrets are overturned. Never mind what happens afterwards, how great the fall is, how the regrets magnify and the faults multiply, for this short time I am afloat. Right now, lying on a raft, sailing, wishing for shoreless seas. While these words last, while you read them, while I listen, there is stillness and air underwater. There are no regrets or wants for a different life.

You have moved me, fed me, kept me breathless. You have changed me, bettered me. There is but one thing I can do. I let go, fall after you and sink underwater.

I'd rather be in Michigan

If it wasn’t for the unimaginable colours of your landscape, the quietness of your ways, the stillness of your heart, the perfect harmony of this ludicrous unity, I would have given up, admitted the insanity of my place a long time ago. I burn like a lantern underwater, like a flame challenged by hurricanes, rains, icicles falling from the sky. The fire dies from time to time, almost regularly, as often as it is re-light then gains strength and gathers the capacity to fully glow under the hazy waters, amidst crazy winds, monsoon like rains. You demand an explanation and I cannot give it to you, this is just how things are. Contradictious and lovingly different, this is how I survive, this is how I accept the things that I cannot change and the powerlessness that overshadows every move I make. Indescribable is the beauty that surrounds me, yet words find me in abundance, hold me captive until they can rest assured on paper. I give in and allow myself to be moved not by the harshness of what is outside, but by the quietness of what is inside. The almost silent yearning for something else, a different place, a different time.

These futile fights I must learn to never again engage in. I know full well the outcome, yet cannot resist. Cannot resist the desire, feeling content at having voiced these thoughts. This is my place, here to stay, here to be shared with anyone who wants to see. Dead certain that this is my place, but longing for something different. When have dreams not made you yearn, fully succumb to the burning desire for change? Desire that can never be acted on, still feeling the undeterred pull of the want, wish and hope. Keeping it all a secret, conjuring to manifest only when it is safely dark outside. Feeling hidden if nobody else can see. Feeling exposed if nobody can see and ghoulishly using the anonymity of these words to cover any trace linking this fantasy to reality. I cannot shout this any louder, I cannot make you see more clearly, I cannot decide whether to gaze at your unending beauty or to move away from the blinding spectacle that you have decided to surround me with. I could even die trying.  

Then again I am here and you are where you are. If standing still never challenged you then you might not understand the sorrow that twists its tight rope around me. Squeezes tighter, invisibly cruel. Physically moving through the obstacles, through the thick fog, through the forest in which all my dreams are projected onto a canvas where I move in and out. There are a million places I want to be in, want to share the right now, experiment with the more fortunate, with the more talented. Pack my words in a suitcase three floors tall, take them with me, toil over the labour of pulling them from street to street. Someone will take pity, offer to take some home, use some for more and more people to read. Slowly I would part with each and every one. Then I would hide, spend days, months and years befriending more conspicuous kinds, parade them later, but in another dream with melodies accompanied. Lose them overnight and only see some rarely, barely recognisable through the change that freedom has forced onto them. Surely some would never find their way home. I too might end up homeless, poor and drenched in sadness, empty and regretful over the places I did not go, instances I did not follow, instincts I refused to embrace, people I have shut out, words I never knew I could use. I too might end up silent, just a lost figure, seamlessly ordinary in a landscape where nothing stands out.  

My holes have been made by fear gnawing swiftly, by courage being forced to leave each comfortable den, by doubt lurking, by indecisiveness playing hide and seek. The holes are too numerous, cannot shield me from the burning sunshine so I stay safe in the shadows, shouting from the sidelines, cheering those who have less holes, who have more holes, who have ribbons of courage tied to every hole, whose holes spell out pride, who have accepted to be homeless, reckless, friendless, and always ready for sadness to take control and create. I do not have enough holes to let go, I may never will. This is where I am. It may be exactly where I need to be, it might also be the last place I should be spending time in. I am who I am and it may be perfectly enough, it may also never be anything I long to be. I make my choices and embrace the things I am able to make, never find happiness anywhere else but in sadness. I would never have it any other way. This is me. At times I long to be elsewhere. At times I would rather be with you in Michigan.

Wish Me Away

And in these trying times there is but one beam of light, a faint source of fortune, a delicate reminder of the things that are seen. The things that you may see. Mostly the clouds cover any sane reason or judgment. Hanging high above, dragging deep down low, these foggy images of the future send you leaping towards the wrong direction. Head over heels you rush into the unseen. Told me you could no longer hear the warning shouts from friends who foresaw your inevitable crash. Where has your voice of reason disappeared to? Then you blame the changing times, the hurdles that the passage of these endless hours bring about. Hands up in the air, you hold off on decisions, curl in a corner and sob uncontrollably just to make a point. To make us feel like fools for not having seen, sensed or felt the burning immediacy of your standstill. You look up with your tear filled eyes and with an honest desire you sigh: wish me away.

Your voice is breaking with sadness, your life is too burdensome to lightly take. Unpacking the injustices, the harsh words and even harsher deeds, you stand in the middle of the road, bare and exposed, waiting for the gentle wind to blow through you. Wishing for the scorching sun to dry your much seen eyes. Hoping that by the desire of want the hurricane conjured will wipe your soul clean. The wind never gathers enough strength and you must put the weight back on. Dress your fragile body, cover all the parts, leave nothing behind and continue walking. Walk on. Each broken promise, each word that cut your heart, each time the shouts pierced your ears, each scar to envelope the fair skin on your brittle bones, each must go back on. Each must make the mark so we all see and so that you remember.

There are signs that scare and signs that encourage. The shell is broken to a million pieces to reveal the beautiful core intact. There is hope for the future yet. Not tomorrow, may not even be in this lifetime, but there is hope in the distance far ahead. You no longer need to take everything alone. Stand the wind alone, endure the sun, walk with the weights dragging you down. You must fight for you. I cannot give you directions or shield you from each injustice. I cannot stop the words that in an unruly fashion lash out against you. I cannot halt the power, I do not own time. In my helplessness there are instances when I curl in a corner and sob uncontrollably. I look up with my tear filled eyes and with an honest desire sigh: wish me away. 

Lament of the talentless

This is my love song. These are your words. This is my attempt to convey. To find the coherence that you long for. Amongst these daunting shadows I stand in desperation, waiting for a sign to confirm that these words are strong enough. That they are right. That they can stand alone and not be shaken by the wind. Here is my forceful yell, hitting the rocks that entrap me. I wait for the echo to return in sweet confirmation, carried by the breeze that dances loops around me, leaving the message gently in my ear. If only it were so. If only the yell turned into distant, soft embroiders of assurance. But it never will. It gets lost. Swallowed by the eternal vastness of this impenetrable hole.

Then I continue. My journey leads me through darkness. The dark is met with only the occasional simmer of light sifting through the dense net of doubt. No chance to find the way, no hope for a guide. I learn to lean on walls, to see without light, to feel the turf under my unsure feet. I learn to curse and praise my invisibility. I learn it is a hindrance and an asset in the process of trial. I want you to love my words. These words that have been born out of desperation and a fierce desire to make better, to fulfill a destiny, a calling, a path that has been set. I want you to love my words without ever seeing me. Lure you, repel you, make you hunger for more, make you elated or bereaved, leave you in the dark beside me or bring you to the light without ever reaching the surface with you. I want you to love my words. Nurture them, heed to them, never turn from them.

As imperfect as this whole may be, it is my whole. Crooked, chipped at the seams, torn, dull, barely useable, a true whole no more, but the only thing I know to belong to me. A perfect fit to my misshaped soul. I would not know how to use more. The exact measure of talent that has befallen me sinks low in the cup, disappears at the sight of a better trickster. The murmurs quiet and the shuffling feet slow, stay motionless until there is a need, a desire again for the words to arrive at the page. This quest is as much as I can take. Bigger adventures, grander plans would die in execution. The nights are few which welcome the thoughts, the words, the emotions. Those nights can barely handle the traces of talent that lead me into deeper darkness, more unfamiliar and uncomfortable places of interest. These nights cheat my lungs, prove that living is not breathing but feeling. In these powerful nights I am invincible and my words are shiny ornaments of a priceless value. I hold the air in my lungs hostage until I am done, have fully succumbed.

 

Towards the end I wish you away. I want to keep my secrets, never let the dirty work of creation be known. By the end you would have seen my bare flesh, exposed, publicly ridiculed. Maybe you felt it too, maybe you will read again to try and understand. Maybe you will read until you discover the sense. In every attempt remember that it was more important to write, to come to the end of these words than to have forcefully rounded a message or tale of success. These words survive on little talent. In a sea of waving enthusiasm do the best they can on endless nights that allow them to roam freely.