I am the embodiment of freedom,
The mighty pilot of my fate.
I travel through the broadest of horizons,
Without going beyond any gate.

There's no country I've not seen,
Nor a season I've not embraced.
My life is full of bewilderment;
It turns a single page every day.

Beyond the turbulence of flight and fear,
Against the clutches of sweat and tears,
I soar, towards the end of the world,
To the new dimension of another novel.

Upon the vast skies that covers me
Over the sun that's glowing with hope.
I am the embodiment of freedom,
The world only ends when there is no road.

With my fate sealed by the tardiest wax,
Dashing the hopes and dreams of the enraged.
I am the embodiment of freedom,
Bounded by the cage.

That night I took a step away,
The night I let my feelings stray.
They took a ride to eternity,
Came to the terms:
It's better without me.

The cold and lonely
Know only how I feel,
Yet they fade away
Feelings gone; Heart of steel.

Maybe, or maybe, they shall be saved.
The tightened ropes, fall of the brave,
The sharpened blade, may pain be engraved.
But in time to come, painless; would it be embraced.

Blackened ropes and blooded knives
Tempting pills and twisted lies,
Alone I shall end my life
In darkness tonight, to find my guiding light.

Darkness indeed, the haunted souls,
Searched in vain for a gaping hole.
Into the abyss, purity fell
Even with hope, my skin:
Stained by Hell.

With my fate sealed
By the Devil who killed
Away the goodness go
And insanity fills the soul.

It's time I gave up
On this non-existent life,
For it's mere invisible evil
That keeps me alive.

Touch

He leans against the fence, his fingers delicately curled around the wires. The creases on his fingertips caressed the surface of the tensioned strings, subtly but deliberate – enough to feel the outermost layers of his skin being rubbed away. The skin cells disintegrating off the tips and almost vanishing into thin air, just as he wished could be done to his existence.

Sight

He lifts his heavily burdened skull, up to an angle that’s barely hanging his head on the fine line separating him from discomfort, peacefully immersed in the ache. The sky is beautiful. He hasn’t expressed a sense of liking to anything in a long while, but the sky is beautiful. Abstract art at its finest.

The sky is a palette of vibrancy, each spot of it a work of art – the mix of colours and weather as intricate as the human emotion. Dark clouds penetrate through the sky, making their grand, melancholic presence known to the orb of life. Their colours clash, into a shade peculiar as a dissonant chord. This mix only created a mess constantly greater than before as the dark clouds ease in comfortably, like playing every genre of music at the same time in that one moment. Ironically, his troubles seem to have displaced themselves into the landscape in his sight – the disarray of the sky brings calmness spewing into his once clouded mind.

Smell

He closes his eyes and takes a whiff of the air beyond his nose. A trillion particles, each clinging on to its neighbour – a cloud of fragrance crashing into his olfactory sensors, and he can hear the ocean waves whispering to the shore. He bows his head, intent to construct an inescapable paradise beneath his breath, so that he could take in the scents over and over. And over. And the rain, it’s over.

His feet began to sink into the moist ground, like he was battling quicksand, except without the struggle. Two inches in. He is venturing into the earth. He’s two inches closer to the centre now. And as if that wasn’t enough, he lowers his stance – ten inches down. One foot in now. The pleasurable fragrance now closer to him than ever.

With his eyes still shut tight, he takes another huge whiff.

Fresh produce. Lemonade. Tea leaves. Strawberries. Cow dung. The aroma of them all.

He can no longer resist. A lone finger releases itself from his clenched fist. It points towards the ground, as if to pose a warning to the earth. Slowly, he extends his arm, sending the tip of his guiding wand creeping into the earthly soil. Slowly, and there.

He greets Mother Nature with a light tap on Her soul. She returns the greeting by sending exhilaration through his connected receptor, and it flows through his humanly veins to arrive at the edges of his lips. She lifts them. With that, he brings his wand, covered in the grains of the earth –

Taste

Onto his lips without hesitation.

He sticks out his tongue in delight and savours the gift of nature that has landed itself on his palette. The soil melts to the heat of his mouth like a piece of chocolate and evaporates into a burst of flavours he’s never tasted before. His entire mouth begins to fill up with sweetness and the occasional cackle of the fine insoluble grains against his teeth.

Satisfied, he stands up again and leans against the fence, his fingers delicately curled around the wires.

le goût

She chews on the piece of rubber repetitively, sucking out the last ounce of flavour that the piece of rubber could provide before it turns into a piece of rubber. The sweetness on her tongue slowly dissipates into nothingness, then into a distastefully bitter aftertaste. Not forgetting the plaque on her teeth that is stuck onto the sticky rubber too.

Her humanly instincts send the sticky rubber flying past the grass patch and onto the tree bark beyond the nearby fence.

la odeur

Her humanly curiosity brings her two covered feet moving, one in front of the other and leaving marks behind them that resemble tiny fences on the ground. On she goes, building dominoes in her tracks that lead her towards the tree.

As she nears the seemingly lifeless giant, she is overwhelmed by odours that she has never associated herself with ever. The smells so pungent they punch into her olfactory sensors, and she hears the shattering of glass leading into the wailing emergency alarm.

Greens. Acid. Decomposed what-are-those-called-oh-leaves. I-think-I-smell-a-rubbish-chute. Cow dung. She gags.

la vue

But somehow, the sight of the old tree trunk up close seems to blind her nostrils. The stench escaped her memories. Particles dispersed. She sees nothing but the intricate carvings on the piece of log ahead of her. The patterns on the trunk are unique, as if to have its own fingerprint. Each line is a marking of the path of the new life in the palms of its hands. The lines connect, intersect and diverge, carrying the fervent blood of this wise, old being, extending the paths towards its branches and roots.

He remains stemmed to the ground but reaches for the sky.

No part of her life before this moment matters to her; his beauty cannot be unseen.

For the first time, she fell in love.

le toucher

And so, she removes her feet from their shelter. They finally leave their homes and for the first time her bare feet grazes the earthly soil. Mother Earth greets her with a burst of exhilaration sent through her connect receptors, and it flows through her humanly veins to arrive at the edges of her lips. She smiles.

She faces away from Sir Old Tree and raises her head to make a toast to the skies. The dark clouds are gone, leaving the orb of life glowing ever so brightly in her face. The sky is beautiful. She hasn’t expressed a sense of liking to anything in a long while. But that thought reminds her of something else. Or someone else.

She takes a step back and leans against the tree, with only the fence in between them. She allows her fingers to slip through the gaps, with her arms behind of her, and those fingers delicately curled around his hands – the hands which feel more human than her own.

cues epic soundtrack
boom pow whim wham
the scene rumbles on with
thunderous       interjections
of shrieks and groans
clashing swords and cracking bones

then silence.
piercing silence sending ominous jingles down your uncracked spine.
cues suspense music
cackle   rustle    drip-drop         scree­­ch
leaves you in your seat gapping at the unsoundly shrill cries of dis – reality

resolution
cues climatic piece
often highly defined by the hollow echo of intelligence
feel free
let out a snort of
disgust, or pleasance       usually the latter
presence of three hundred and eighty-nine pairs of hands slapping against each other
and splatter through the isolation of sound.

To the devil’s eyes whom glare is so peacefully piercing,
I wish I could stretch out my arms and grab whatever remains to your vessels,
For I could savour the goodness of staring into your bloodshot eyes no longer.

To the devil’s smirk whom so joyously beamed in rage,
I wish I could sew through every single space that leaked a presence of life in your breath no longer,
For I could freely bask under the symphony of your silence.

To the devil’s thunderous, passionate beating heart,
Allow me to grant you a pleasant long break;
Give me a grip of that scrumptious feast,
For I could set my own unnerving piece of flesh into motion.

To die a morbid death
A tooth for a tooth they say –
How I wish life could be presented to me,
The way I took them from you.

To write a verse
that captures a person in a nutshell
It all starts with ‘Hi’
and then all the tragedy that unfolds.

Hi,

The fear of seeking the truthfulness
yes the underlying mask made of flesh
The reluctance to smash a hammer
through the rose-tinted tempered glass
carefully constructed,
tailored for the most fragile tear-inducing
fragment in the body

I am…

Escaping
who the mirror was staring at
what those thoughts told me
when the walls attacked and gave out laughter
where this reality brought me
why a terrifying creature existed inside

How I’d turn out to be

Me.

The last sense that goes
The one that never came to me.
Perhaps at the moment everyone else lost
It’d find its way back
Back to where it should’ve stayed

If;
Only In the very last moment
Maybe a second
Or a tenth of it
Or a tenth of that
I’d stop listening
To the quiet
That brought me
Out of life.

You’d ask me why
I just thought
Maybe I could hear it
Hear you for once
Listen to the sound of your breathing
The moment I lose mine.

I can hold your petite hands,
but not with my own
I can smell the stargazer lilies surrounding your presence,
not with my nose
I can see the beauty of your curves,
not with my eyes
I can taste the sweetness of your lips
not with my tongue
I can hear the sound of your pleading breath,
not with my ears

There, pleading to part from this abyssal depth of a horrid reality;
To dive into the lingering ache of your heart — the only place I can be right now.

Let me touch you
Let me smell you
Let me see you
Let my taste you
Let me hear y—
—the sound of my heartbeat once again.

Within this perpetual frame
Has me suspended by thread, bounded
midway

in a n t i g r a v i t y

Lifeless
      Massless
            Timeless

As the city bustles on
And the faceless beings pass
Remains me abandoned, paused

in my now non-existent track

Unable to
        journey on

Unable to
        return

Like the Marionette Cross
Like strings cheese
Like strings attached
Or a rope between you and death

Like harp strings
A thousand threads held together in providence
More rigid that springs
Tied and tight

Heartstrings Shoestrings
String of words strung together
Comma Twists and Stopper Knots
Separate, and together again.
Stringing up the broken glass shards into the perfect glissando of a wind chime.

The clear stream trickles momentously
Droplet upon droplet
Knocking the doors of the bamboo vessel
Badgering it to ignite its engine
To bear the words glistening beneath its lips
Caressing them as they find their way into their seats
And depart into the pond
Droplet upon droplet
They fade into the abyss

They fade into the abyssal opulence
Its lavishness goes beyond their imagination
They swim through the turbulence
Into broader vials
The currents grow louder till they fall
Into a deafening silence
As they float amidst the blue pastures

The white waters waved into the shore
Coating each grain like a gentle embrace
Sinking deeper into the Earth
Its touch brings spirit into those unexamined seeds
Breathes life into the stones oblivious even to their own melodies

And there they depart
To trace new voices
To receive
To envelope new words
Ineffable to the senses

— I sink into the depth of the ocean, staring, into those eyes that seem to bear another realm within them. The force of immersion that overwhelms me perforates through my every cell, and fills me beyond what this humanly vessel can contain.

Woodwork

It’s heard conversations
Plethora of squabbles
The dispirited aspiration of a chopstick drummer
Chastised for dreaming ludicrously far

Porcelain and stainless steel scrapes
It wonders why not its cousins instead
Pencil scratches that pierce its skin
Tattoos of a lifetime that cease to peeve

Milk bottles that lost their balance
It’s never forgotten the taste
Soundly stored with the episodes of blended grass
Mingled with the froth of booze and barf

Glimpses of the living room
The Garage
This impending doom be just a facade;
The carcass be renewed
Yet its soul untouched and sealed