its been
moments since I thought about you
in any capacity
minutes since
I remembered some portion of our story
hours since I felt anger
days since I tried to pick up my phone
weeks since I last contacted you
months since we last touched.

its been

months since you crushed me
weeks since I put on the brave face
days since I longed for you
hours since I spoke of you
minutes of starring into a blank screen
silently pleading
moments before all this is behind me again.

It’ll be

Moments of weakness
when I think about “us”
Minutes of silent cursing
while you run through my mind
Hours of rationalizing
before I let it go
Days of depression

I know

Weeks of emotions crammed into a few minutes
Months of self doubt and insanity

Soon it’ll be

years

But I’ll always have


the



tears.

Everything was going according to plan
Highschool. Pre-Med. Med. Specialization.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think
That you would add up to this equation
Never did I think that things would end up
Like how it is at this moment.
You never were meant for this equation
And yet, you fit in so perfectly
I was expecting nothing, and yet.. You
Never did I think that you, once a variable, would become a constant. That you would succeed euler's number or the symbol for radians, pi, as important constants in my life, you're as important but as confusing as i.

I mean, at times you're really confusing me
like rationalizing the negative square root of 3, but it's simply, really how I thought it would be to make sense of irrationality. Things like this would make sense mathematically, but not in reality. In reality, you're more simple, yet oh-so filled with insanity. But it still boggles my mind, on how a lovely variable like you becomes a constant in my life.

It can be quite daunting at first to start something new. However, all you really need is the right kind of attitude. The open-minded approach to tackle problems as they come along. My biggest fear, however, remains being afraid of not finishing what I have started and dropping things half-way through as soon as the going gets tough. I admit that this problem of mine has been present all the way throughout my life. I'm quite quick on the uptake and get really intense about something and then somewhere along the line I get side-tracked and drop things altogether.
    The saying "easy come - easy go" could never be more true for me. Having said that, I know that everyone has encountered this exact same problem at one time or the other, so the grass always looks greener on the other side despite the fact that it's often painted.
    The ease with which I get a head start compared to other people has been both a blessing and in a way a curse. But I shouldn't seek excuses when it is quite clear that I lack the motivation, perseverance and the self-discipline to soldier on after I finish the first lap. To put things into perspective I am like a competitor at a 5000m race challenging the title again and again. It brings me endless joy being able to participate and more often than not I am the one who sets the pace, however half way through the race fatigue sets in and I gradually lose the built-up momentum. Seeing that, competitors overtake me left and right. Eventually, I lose the heart to continue and end up finishing last or dropping out of the race.
    I keep wondering; perhaps the secret to success in not starting strong, but being consistent and preparing yourself mentally for that finally straight line when all your arduous training pays off and you still have some firepower left in you to give it your all. Not only what you can do, but edging slightly outside or your own limits, be it mental or physical, that keep holding you back you outmanoeuvre your own shadow.

     The other problem of mine is that I rarely practice what I preach. I like to reflect and analyse, and can pin-point fairly accurately the inner demons that have been plaguing and dulling my senses, but comes next day – and I succumb to them once more. Lately though, I feel like I am eradicating them one by one, but I shouldn’t rest on my laurels.
      For example, over the last five years I have discontinued playing guitar and then picked it up again countless of times. I would intensively practise for days, sometimes weeks, professing my love for music and then give up on it at a drop of a hat. With distractions and novelties larger than life, it is getting harder and harder to ignore them and go about our own business as we did before. They are like irresistible mythical modern-day sirens lulling us into a trance-like state of comfort and false sense of security. “Forget all your problems and let go of your worries, sweetie. We will take care of it all now”, whisper the sirens as their bodies become entangled with ours and for a split second we can feel the weight of our shoulders starting to disappear. Split second is all it takes t avert our eyes from things that truly matter and before you know it - we are neck-deep in this fairy land.
     Once we snap out of it, a sense of helplessness engulfs us mixed with guilt for wasting so much time. Without further a due, we seek out a new distraction that can preoccupy our thoughts, so that we can feel on top of the world once again. As a result, a new form of escapism is born where we dig endless tunnels; not to escape into the real world, but as far away from it as is humanly possible. Much like the prisoners, we are just as creative in finding means to escape and evade hardship. Therefore, we are effectively prisoners of our own minds rationalizing our every wrong-doing up until there is no inner voice to question it any longer. By then, the ritual of “switching off the real world” is hard-wired to our neurological pathways and over time it becomes second nature.

Some get that way by playing it safe,
memorizing mantras, righteously abiding by rules,
some get there by cutting seams,
lost in purposelessness, partaking of
ether, marijuana, alcohol, or anything
that's buzzy enough,
some find their sweepstakes in curls,
in fantasies, on the internet, or in the aftermath,
some claim the spoils, some gracefully accept
determination, some divorce their wives,
some happily raise their pulse to the heavy metals,
some review albums and cut down the *******,
some write love stories for our grandmas,
our moms,
our ex-girlfriends,
some find it in politics, right winging, left winging, chicken winging,
some in bomb threats,
some find it in supremacy,
others in melting pots,
some cheer up over breakroom chitty-chats,
some in **** ***,
some in sympathizing with pedophiles trapped in iron lungs,
some when they have hit the bottom rung,
some by rationalizing,
boosting themselves above half-wrongs,
to coast on the half-rights,
some by breaking up,
some by declaring war,
only to get discouraged, yet proud of the scars,
some kids dance to experimental music,
some write blogs about capitalism,
some find it kicking it with bitter vegans,
others while murdering their parents,
but everyone is a winner,
everyone is right,
everyone has earned the paycheck,
the vacation,
the **** wife,
and the key to eternal life.

I'm up late again.
Can't stop my mind from racing.
Going. Going. Going.
Obsessing.
Ironically, late at night is when your brain is at it's most creative.
Is it any wonder the best artists are insomniacs?
I've been fighting that.
"I need to sleep at a decent hour so I can wake early & be productive."
"I NEED this particular item to write this particular thing."
"I cant sit down & write/draw/create in a filthy house."
"Someone might call or need me, I can't get ****** in to that now."
"I need to clear my head before I can sit down & do this."
"I have my routine, all my daily tasks that must be accomplished, before I have time for myself."
I NEED TO STOP BULLSHITTING MYSELF.
I NEED TO STOP LETTING THIS BE AN EXCUSE.

See, I want to write.
I want to paint.
Draw.
Shoot.
Design.
Cut.
Glue.
Hammer.
Sew.
Create.

I used to do these things to a point of obsession. To a point where they kept me from completing every day tasks.
I remember as a kid, I'd get in trouble for using my school notebooks as a drawing pad.
Or the teachers couldn't keep my on task because I was off in my head scribbling away at some story.
God himself could not pry me from what I NEEDED to let out of me.
Then I grew up.
I think thats what happened.
Suddenly I had so many more things to worry about.
I had to put away childish things.
Life became so much more than the fairy tales I made for myself.
I forgot how to be what I was.
I only knew I had to do things.
Stupid, every day, grown up, necessary things.
That became my new obsession.

I traded one for the other.

Now I stand on a battlefield.
I have chosen the darker evil.
Doesn't make sense?

Remember Peter Pan? His life was full of adventure & freedom & joy.
The grown ups, the ones who forgot how to have those things, became bitter shadows of themselves.
They lost everything for all the wrong reasons.
I don't think I ever felt more closely identified with a fairy tale character (or characters because I find that the many different aspects of my psyche very closely identifies with most every character Peter Pan.)

Anyways.

For several years now, I find that I have been trying to reclaim this lost part of my soul. I don't think anyone, save perhaps 2 or 3 people realize just how important this is to me. These are people that would have known me in my early high school years, before the dreaded piracy of true adulthood took me away.

Why not just pick up the pen & write something? you may ask.
Well, it's not that easy.
Not for an obsessive compulsive thinker.
I'm not using that term lighty either.
I hear brats toss it around like a fashion statement.
Like having OCD is the new trend.
Just because you're a neat person doesn't mean you have a disorder, *******.
I know how many steps it takes to get from each corner & point in every home I am familiar with.
There are patterns in my day that, if broken, send me into emotional Hell.
There are many aspects to this disease.
This illness.
Whatever one may choose to identify it as.
I haven't found something I'm comfortable with yet.
I'm only just beginning to be comfortable with facing this truth in myself.

I let the only reality & peace I knew be burried away & my brain formed this militant prison of order around it.

The good thing is, my heart knows better.

When I'm able to bust those walls down for even a few brief moments in which I can slip past the compulsions & allow complete chaos take my hand & create, I am free.
When I become inspired by something & am able to mentally break away long enough to pursue it, it's like capturing a god ****** unicorn.

Unfortunately, more often than not, I find inspiration fade away. The many excuses I wrote before, just the tip of the iceberg, take hold & beat me back into my weakened submissive routine. I literally have stood still, as though at a play, & watched my head battle in itself to convince me NOT to follow the idea.
I may be *****, but I am no one's slave.
Least of all to myself.
Which begs my fear: control.
Why do I control myself?

Art is not controlled.
Creation is not controlled.
Beauty is not controlled.

These things cannot be tethered to definition or reason or logic or mathematics or laws or routine.
So the war inside me rages.
The problem in my head with its finger in my face is rationalizing ignoring the passion in my heart.
That disorder is sorely mistaken if it believes passion is in any way rational.

So this is what stands:
I am fighting an illness, something I aim to fight & beat & never succumb to again.

Creation is the air I breathe & no matter what worldy or sensory things bring me pleasure, nothing fullfills me like raw thought pouring forth from me.

I cannot stand by envious of the lives & accomplishments of my peers because I was too weak to take hold of the only true thing I hold dear. I am sick of hearing myself say "if only I could" or "maybe some day" or "I used to". I am done crying myself to exhaustion because I physically cannot pick up a pencil.

I don't know where to start.
I guess choking through this & fighting off anxiety attacks as I type is as good a start as any.

My most beloved author, inspiration, & life long hero, Anne Rice said,

"Keep the faith. Writers need faith...Just keep writing & believing in yourself...Just write until the juices start. Don't put up with Writer's Block...eventually you just have to write & write & write."

Write I shall.
Until it gives me anuerysms from fighting these tiny ticks & compulsions.
Until the tears are of success rather than submssion.
One step at a time I will conquer more than I ever thought possible.
I will take back my heart.

Anxiously awaiting atomic assimilation
Basing me on belligerent and boorish bastardization
Capsizing cargo with careful consideration as to
Deciding which day is decay's destination
Everyone embrace the elevated expiration
Forget my face and follow fabrication
Go to the gallows with grace and gravitation
He will hold you and hinder alienation

I, however, hold insignificance in interest
Justifiable jackhammers jacking fighter jets
Killing Californians who are kissing canvases
Lying without laughing and lighting cigarettes
My master makes me move my mundane mind
Never knowing next to nothing with nothing else inside
Overly offering operating override
Practicing patiently pulling peoples' pride

Quickly questioning quizzical quietness
Rationalizing raging reinventions ridiculous
Stapling this summer to my (still) sick subconscious
Traveling tunnelers trading tides for tiredness
Under the umbrella my undertow untangles
Violently vibrating like varying violin angles
Waiting with wandering whispers under the table
Xylophonist x-rays, excruciating fables

You yellow youngling, you who screams in my dreams
Zebras zoom by every single night, it seems
Let's chant my enchantments, the alliteration song!
And untie your tongue
So you don't take it wrong.

Part I.  Like Gods Falling

At first—
new trembling
and then she didn’t want
to be—

alone

with guilt

or seen

as **** half-eaten evidence
So she held it out to him
with her half-hearted, “It's OK.”
her crippling distance

“Why doesn’t she just embrace me
as before?”
He thought
that he had never seen her eyes that way—
with no words for their ruin
he loved her fearfully more

Gorged in the aftermath of forbidden
fat and animal fruit
Sick with excuses
Staring at
the core of lust
Rationalizing
Food?  Beauty? Intrigue?

Wisdom!

Searing awful terror
into each other’s minds

Part II.  Love and War

In the years between
the harrowed rows of sprouting corn
they found pleasure without plan
that bound them more than guilt had severed

How curious the textures of a man
in sunlight

her power?
In all the brilliance she had bargained for

How curious this burning for her
in the sodden life of rotting

She was always holding him now
from the scorching day
as the earth sizzled and swam
in seas of senseless—
background drone of locust and revenge
sealed in sweat and clutching labor

She was always holding him back by night
from the icy crackling mad!
his restless hunting hate!
And sometimes, while she pleaded
he would seize her
Make her pay!

For that afternoon

by the well where the boy was washing
A basket of vegetables returned
a bowl of blood

Part III.  Grief

Prepare the darling carcass
Shroud it in her pleas
clawing in the mud beside its silence
consumed beyond all fire by her anguish
“Can this not be enough to make him move?
Yes! He did! I’m sure I saw it!”
Can this not be enough?”
to stop the knowing…
grief from pouring into space?

Not even light escapes
____

Returning from the Mount of Meeting
hollow chores
collecting fatwood
grinding joyless grain

From corner of her eye
she watches the boy
walk toward the forest
spear in hand
She pauses
looking down
at hands on stone
that once had cradled...
Breath catching on jagged sorrow

She continues to grind

bitterly pregnant


Part IV.  Endings

Descended now
Reclining heap
reflects before a sun’s surrender
His face gleams with last light
hair blown back by volleys of wind

Her face
Not visible
as we are behind them
Her head rests in his lap
She is on her side
Soles of her shoes
mute and toward us
His eyes search the sky for a god—any god!
Her God

Exhaustion poses them past
the point of question
When the matter of “Why?”
becomes each other

Close in

the net of twilight
Dulled of hope and pain
at the edge of all that can be done...

...everything is gray going on black—
but we always knew that

feathered daydreams
semantically encoded heartache
we all remember
i remember

where we came from
we never go back to again
rationalizing pain until it
becomes a drum
and it echoes

i fall down the stairs again
hit my face on the tile
and when my lip bleeds
it comes as a relief

two-pence for lovers
a penny for thoughts
shots of chamomile to chase the night time
away

butterfly beats
ba-dum ba-dum
ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum
fluttering
like eyelids longing for greater ends

spit out that memory
pull it out of your ears
maybe it doesn't really
matter anymore

whenever I talk about art my mind gets so flattened
I wondered if I did wrong tormenting the album horn of plenty by Grizzly bear- I was listening to the song "don't ask" and I saw myself singing a cover of it- it was so **** good to hear for the first time. I wondered what I should do sitting opposite a cute girl I just had this exhausting conversation with. I wondered if I got up and left if she would want me more or something- I was wondering if something happened between us and one day she said she loved me what her first impression would be- why she fell in love with me- maybe the fact I displayed a passion. She said she was born in august- I knew she was a Leo- as am I - though I didn't take the arbitrary source of attraction too seriously anymore- given my last relationship with an aries was hell. Though I did learn a lot; This seemingly was my mind in the wake of all the strange patterns I once had- before and when I met her- I was trying to change these. I saw she had tinder on her phone- and I knew today after a talk with some ******* OkCupid - this is not how you meet women. So I wondered if I should delete it before I get to know her better or worse- get matched with her on there. I thought maybe she had a boyfriend - she was doing a masters - maybe she thinks she was too old for me - I don't know. excuses excuses. I sneak a look at her- she has a nice nose.. I don't know why- but I always check a girls nose out- its one of the things I find I fall in love with easiest. I thought about the song- how I always wanted to write music like this or like the fleet foxes. One of the few bands that both me and alice liked- she said at the end of it- something about how we don't like the same music or our sense of humor was off - and that we should just be friends because of that. I realize she always had a really strong front- Evidently that wasn't what she wanted- just some friendship- but I knew that. I want to say she was weak for not telling me the truth at the end. That the music thing was just ******* and there were other reasons we had for not being together. But I guess she really wanted to separate - given the fact she made it the trivial and banal and subjective of reasons for not working together. The saddest part about it all was that I still feel we had something though I know that is probably *******.

Last night I gave her friend Xiaoxuan some relationship advice- since I realized a lot of things lately and I guess she kinda valued my opinion or something- idk tbh I think she probably just really wanted to talk about her hopeless romance as a way of rationalizing her hopeless love interest that she didn't even have- I would know since I literally just did that with Alice. Though I still think we had something- though I guess through her I am learning a greater sense of self love. I told her she should get out of that situation with some guy who had a girlfriend and led her on calling her his second best.

Today I had plans to meet a girl I almost went out with who chose another guy over me. We stopped contact for a while- and then she messaged me we started talking again trying to be friends. she was also an aries.. odd. We were going to go to yo sushi to take advantage of the blue mondays deal and she did something strange and yet unusually familiar. She messaged me at 6 today to say she couldn't make it today. then again at 8 to say never mind. I asked her ***? and she said she didn't sleep - we spoke for a bit and I said "so yes then?" and I seem to remember her saying something like yes. so we continued to chat and then she cancels again saying she feels like ****. And then it hit me gently- I was in the same position as Xiaoxuan. and a few pieces fell into place- for one I remember how only a day before we were talking and she said are we still meet ing for lunch- I didn't reply - I told I was annoyed and didn't feel like chatting- e.g. *******. and Then she sent me this message- something ilk if you don't tell me in 10 hours I am making other plans- I said of course I want to go - I asked you to begin with after all. And just as calmly as I realized her playing me - messaging me at 2 and calling me sug sug and all that ****- I calmly told her that what she was doing was really rude- canceling 2 hours before meeting- as I made a distinct effort to make myself available to meet- and she was disrespecting me by canceling like that - especially bc i had some **** bad hay fever this morning anyway- I realized I made myself too available for people that are unavailable- but they are only unavailable usually because I am so available. As soon as I told this bothered me she behaved really callous to me - so I know exactly what she was up to. I felt good for telling her this ****** me off- but to be honest I got a bunch of pizza last night with Xiaoxuan. She didn't have any - but rather picked off the remains- the first night I had oregano since I last saw alice and we had that horribly awkward "date" with Xiaoxuan. I gave a few slices to a homeless man who said he hadn't eaten in 2 days. I felt bad for him and gave him 3 slices. He was nice guy and I could tell he was just hungry. It felt good helping someone else out for once- if anything I couldn't imaging me saying no.

I remembered some other special advice I gave to Xiaoxuan - that she should contact the girlfriend of that guy who was playing her. Because clearly he wasn't happy just with her. It was evident that it was the same with most people I knew in relationships- except for Alice.

She had 2 boyfriends since she was 13 and seemingly had a perfect sort of upbringing. I hurt me to think that she might of felt bad at any single moment and could tell me or anyone else about it. She had to be grotesquely strong inside to keep all those feelings in - since no one has a perfect childhood. Or maybe she was the one person who did.

I felt it was a shame that high self esteem would have to be passed on so callously through example. I realized she felt good about herself most of the time. And didn't have constant regrets and bad feelings about herself as I- and most people have. And thats why she couldn't stand for me I suppose. Since I was all too aware of the sensitive nature of peoples nature.

I find it would be a paradox to be so independent and feel so good on my own - and that somehow that would make me a better lover- or more liable to get into a relationship. Rationalizing emotions- seemed ludicrous and yet made so much sense. Given the situation I got myself into with Alice I can't blame her for everything- that would keep me from learning- was one of the few lessons I learned.  

Something about this girl reminded me or Elena- someone who I think was in love with me at a certain point. And I treated her like every girl I "fell in love" with treated me.

May was the girls name. She just got up and left. She added me on Facebook and we said maybe one day we will meet to play some music or something - she sang. We just had a last minute conversation- about why my work was late- how I was kinda depressed - but I was feeling better now- more or less. She recommended  I get a girlfriend- which confused me. Since that was quite explicit- but yet suggestive but I won't think about it- since my mind is three feet below my thoughts and three feet above my heart -and it's probably ******* anyway.