Null

I only started calling myself a writer when I had a dream of Sylvia Plath
beckoning me to her kitchen.
Since then I have not been sleeping;
I have been dying little deaths
buried under the sheets.
Sometimes I welcome them, but
death mostly chooses to leave me awake and wondering.

I want to die, it’s why I write.
My life is the length of a pen.

I don’t want to die alone.
I’ve littered my bed with paper so I am never alone.
My pen rests under my pillow
as if some sword
to ward off my detriment.

But I’ve long since cleaned my bed.
The flow
of inspiration was
inconsistent and
I found more stability
in my hand grabbing my neck
until the sound of my pulse resonates
loudly enough to
lull me to sleep.

Sometimes I think
I should have been an escape artist.
They never die.

Nihil Obstat

A thin layer of debris lost in many stages of decay.
I cannot write because I cannot think.
I cannot think in fear of what I might say:
Rhyming is juvenile.

Nothing shall redeem this, but
read me when you’re vitiated by quiddity;
pneuma.

We were all agents in orchestrating this infinity we live in;
an infinity of still thought.
You are a horizon that incarnates
the connected space of truth. Alas,
my perspective is a sense of vertigo
that has me stumbling in and out
of grace.
The dissonance I constantly breathe
in attempts to exhale harmony
is a sacrificial ritual:
Please, once more.
Once more, let me find rhythm.

I am ready to be forgotten
now.

Imprimi Potest.

Writing Club Project #17: War

Your boots stood towering by the door.
Skyscrapers mirroring your very stature.
They explain the heaviness in your step.

I am not fully awake until the third time
a nightmare drags me from the bliss of sleep or oblivion.
But I wake to greet the sight of your boots.
With each pull of consciousness they move in-
cessantly closer to the foot
of my  bed.

Beckon, coax, draw, entice.
Then I read into it;
Reach out, relate, regress, regret.

You’re fond of walking.
You would walk straight into the first glimmer of happiness.
But would you want to walk into me?
Do you know what they call people who walk out on a war?
Cowards.
Do you know what they call people who walk out on their families?
Cowards.

I’m sorry, I glued your boots to the floor.

As Ease Emanates

A brilliant vehemence.
Not a Phoenix, burned and born again.
But a machine, built to withstand some yet enduring more.
Enduring. Enduring.

And if I poured you onto the sky, it would shine eternal.
And if I try to fit you to this earth, you’d restore the bounce in my step.

And as ease finds its way to my heart, you know it doesn’t flow through the veins. It permeates the very sinews holding me up.

You always wake alone and in the dark, but I ask of you to collect every drop of this internal downpour that’s trying to elude to something sorrowful and let it soak. Let it evaporate.

You suffer from an above average gravitational pull that “The Lows of Joy” seem only natural. In the trenches and in the valleys, you walk through crippling nostalgic incident.

The first taste that touches your tongue is the incomplete, you first notice the lack and the absence. I don’t know whom or what I must appeal to for this to end. All we will remember are the days that we barely survived; the days where love and loss seem to come intertwined.

But please lay to rest your need for permanence, for I am here and haunting. Disappear into me and let me be the ghost of you.

I will sing to you of windows at nightfall and you will take to the night skies, swimming through the cosmos of (your) effervescence.

Underwhelming: When What I Write Puts me to Sleep

I feel compelled to top off the drink of collective discontent
with something poignant, powerful.

I, I, I.
I never stop talking about myself, yet it is my
mission to relate to as many people as I
can.

 

I
was never a woman of faith…
or science.
Just floating in the in-between
of two polar extremes of conviction and disbelief.

 

You,
as a reader…
You can just enjoy this annoying inner conflict of mine.
Find it in you
to find it delectable
or pathetic.

 

***

 

Noro.
Ate his sons.
Hung his daughters.
Wives by the week.
He busies himself as not to
think.
With this many kids to kill, you don’t have time for anything else.
Does he get scared
of what comes after?
Check for warmth and see.

So(u)liloquy

You can tell Mr. Prufrock that April is indeed the cruelest month;
Seven years ago, my first love sprouted from the showers.
Seven minutes ago, my second love died from the wasteland.

You can tell Mr. Prufrock that if he reads much of the night,
he shall see: I am The Wasteland.
You cannot dare, no, you cannot dare.

But you shall breathe when forestry loops itself around you
over and
over and

over–

Ghostly abandonment, and –”You must not use adjectives, young writer.”
Shadow your fears,
follow them just enough to see:
Life.
And its lack thereof.

This is an adolescent homage to the lost,
the last, the languid,
those who went lame with thought.

Irrelevancies in sequence,
adorned in all those winding streets of min(e/d).
My candles burned for the sons I lost at war.
They burned me down.
Their light cast more darkness… more.
More of an entropic descent.

If you cannot be human, you must
cease existence.

Contrive and orchestrate
an unforgiving stupor of
not wanting anything but
mastering the use of adjectives

to levy upon

loss.

 

-Influenced by: Eliot, Bukowski, and Hemingway.

Writing Club Project #16: Speak

Hello, can you hear me? Am I clear? Am I understood?

Am I understood?

For too long, I have spent my life rearranging every drop in the ocean to make sense of how I can deliver each and every word in a succession of tidal waves without drowning in them. But my pockets have been filled with stones by none other than diction as it laughs at how I am dragged to the bottom of the sea.

I am hollow on the inside; there is no more expression in this shell of mine. I have exhausted every word in me with this pen, paper vacated any sense of meaning I could have had.

Much like city streets in the dead of night, I am many constructed paths that lead to nowhere in particular.

There are no words left for me.
Each word I have met, became infatuated with and gotten to know.
Each word I introduced to all my friends.
Each word a lover I cannot bear to part.
And when the time comes (and oh, how it comes so quickly), they decide it’s time for a break or that we should see others. I realize that it’s not me, it’s them, because they have left me without as much as articulating anything I had truly meant to say.

Given their departure, my thoughts have waged a cold war against words.
Listener, I need deliverance from every thread of thought of mine that found its way to tie a noose around me. And it is through you; I need to speak of what is within you.
I need to connect, and wade through every stream of thought flowing through you because mine have dried, shriveled, and killed off everything that grew around them.

Words might have deserted me, but they shall adore you. They will sound out your very pulse in light of the solace your soul emits.

It is why I want, have, and need to speak the essence of you, listener. I want to collect every goosebump as my words melt into your skin, trophies of a coveted triumph; knowing that they have met with your heart and it welcomed them. I want to meet you at the most secluded corner of your mind and show you how I’ve made a home of what goes on through it.

I think I need you to want me to speak for you. But I think most of all, I want to be a writer.

And when I have immersed myself in your entire being, I wish to hear from you what would validate the process of losing myself to emulate yours, what would validate my very existence.

“I understand.”

192

He claimed spinning clever fate in the dark.

He taught me how to whisper futures into dead ends.

He asked everyday: “Are you dying to live?”

But

I

am

living

to

die.

Living as if I

lost

you, myself and everyone.

Am I under grace when in feeling,

I have buried myself

alive in everyone I ever loved?

And I have felt so

Alone

before knowing

what ”alone” even meant.

I am his train wreck, but there is no song in my head.

Waking, Medicating, Recovering, Relapsing, Composing..

D i s i n t e g r a t i n g.

-Influenced by

Writing Club Project #15: Wanderlust

Breathe me all in, for I am the ground you walk on.

Run to every part of me, sculpting your way through.

Dream of trees; be the leaves and let my wind carry you.

Light your way with my fire. Swim in my blood exploring the rivers surrounding you.

Let it be that you will not settle until you reach every mountain top guarding you.

Let it be when the cold winter comes, you will not stay frozen.

Wanderlust is a melody.

Reach the places with the loudest sound.

Dance upon me, and with every sweat drop my floors will burst.

Listen the music of the world, the sound of birds in the morning or the howling wolves at night.

The sound of branches rustling or the sound of thunder claps.

But more importantly, the sound of your urging footsteps.

Build me up and tear me down much like you would build up your courage and tear down your doubts.

With my endless roads I will guide you.

Be aware.

Be aware that when the time comes, when the heavy pull of the earth drags you down, that I will be the solid surface beneath you.

Promise me.

Promise me when your time ends and your bones are buried within me that your heart will not be unsatisfied.

***

Drink me all in, for I am the sky above you.

Look up at me as I’ve adorned myself with the brightest stars for you. 

Look up and let me show you the world reflected in me. 

Let it be that inside yourself, you hold up your own little sky, that it seeks to meet with me. 

Let it be that you cannot rest until you’ve seen every edge and corner of my skies. 

Let it be that when I shine the moon, you grow weary of sitting still. 

Embrace the world and let your legs carry you to what your heart cannot conjure up. 

With my moon, I will bring the tide closer so you can marvel at the ocean. 

With my sun, I will illuminate and cast light on every surface of earth for you.

With my stars, I will be the compass that will guide you. 

If you tether your roots to the sky you will never be away from home. 

Be hungry, be tired, be restless and let it be the fuel that moves you; for both the earth and the sky bless your wanderlust. 

Note: This work is a collaboration with Nora Abdullah.

I am Defeated

History is
written by the Victors,
the valiant
the brave
the outspoken
the courageous
and sane.

History is
Written by the
victors,
and this
little
journal of mine
does not
Exist.