The Romance Of Streetlights

The Romance Of Streetlights

I've always found streetlights strangely beautiful.

I'm sure more people would, if only they took the time to look up. We often ignore what our eyes can't see, but then again, you can't ignore what your eyes never know. 

Bright, like candles hanging in midair above the terraces and ever changing colours of the traffic lights below. Above the green go, amber slow, red no, they stand stationary waiting for the light to break the dusk. 

Nothing but still, watching the blur of headlights and metal speed past along the grey streaks dotted with white that line their each side. Silent and static amidst the chaos. It's a sight to look up and see this luminescence framed by some vast expanse of dark and stars flickering softly in the background. "Turn your head up" is all they'd ever ask if they could speak. Politely, of course.

Rather this than roses and a box of chocolates.

Shoestrings

Shoestrings

Well, isn't she just the most wonderful abandoned building I've ever seen? 


Outside in, so promising. Potentially exquisite. It's sad, really, the state she's in. The regal red brick facade trying to mask her deteriorating interior. Oh, how it's trying. Her ceilings have all but collapsed under the weight of what she was. Her wallpaper lines the floors rather than the walls, torn and shed, damp and shamed with moss. Her rooms lay bare and still with the cold drafts that breeze through doorless panels. 


She's falling apart in isolation, and I can only look on. 


She's cold now. So cold. It's such a shame. She used to be a thing of beauty, you know. You could only imagine the charm she possessed, the faces she lit up, the warmth she brought with nothing else but her presence. She was home. Now all that's left to remind us of that are the crumbling fireplaces, staircases, pockmarked traces of love and untied shoelaces.


Wonderful, wasn't she. 

Graffilosiphy

Graffilosiphy

Scribbles.

Awkward paraphrasing and bold lettering adorns the endless lengths of the empty canvas most people refer to as a crumbling wall. Fluorescent colours play contrast to the bland, bleak background of the birthplace of this beauty. Or vandalism, as some may call it, though I don't see the difference. 

There's nothing more beautiful than finding chaos in serenity, rebellion in the peace, or the repulse in attraction. And isn't this all that really is? An escape from elegance, where secrets are sprayed over the sprawling street walls to an audience of ants and discarded plastic bags. 

Maybe that's all the audience that was needed.

Say hello to the modern street artist. His spray cans have morphed into the smattering tap of fingers dancing across a keyboard. His canvas is as blank and vast as ever, though now it follows its addresses with the obligatory '.com'. He drains his mind and his heart for a few poetic scribbles to be scratched onto the surface of his computer screen for a new audience, one of more human capabilities than your regular plastic bag, but at times, less emotional capacity. All this with the knowledge that they'll only be forgotten by the next time his screen lights up, whitewashed with time and our natural instinct to forget.

Our thoughts are just memories to be painted over.

Roses Are Red

Roses Are Red

And she found that she didn't love me, and it was all just the habit of attraction. 


It's easy to get them mixed up. People talk about 'falling in love' but really, it's all just the safe comfort of habit that they fall into. They fall in love with the routine, not each other. Of course, they'll deny this vehemently, but deep down, they know it's true. They grow accustomed to the feeling of being wanted, of finally being relevant to a person other than themselves. They'll enjoy that incredible rush of power over another's emotion, however cynical that may sound. But as people tend to do, they get tired of routine. And when this extended routine meets its overdue end, the hollowness that they feel isn't the pain of lost love. It's merely the absence of habit. 


Love is like a cigarette. The first rush will fade eventually, and all you'll be left with is a habitual monster that is only there for your money and your health. And no, I'm not referring to anyone in particular.


I'm still a romantic, though I wouldn't call myself a hopeless one. Being a 'hopeless romantic' never really made sense to me. Romance is, in essence, pure hopelessness. Romance is surrendering yourself to the possibility of the hopelessness of life alone. Romance is being hopeless enough to create a void in yourself for the minute probability that one day, maybe someone as hopeless as you might come along and fill it. Romance is seeing a beautiful woman across the room and thinking 'Fuck it.' and going there and actually saying 'Hi'. Romance is throwing your hands at chances you know you can't ever reach. 


There's a certain beauty in hopelessness that I don't quite see in love. Love promises hope, but the more hope there is, the more romance dies.


If this was more eloquent I'd have posted it on Tumblr. Oh well.

A Cynic's Prayer

A Cynic's Prayer

Look up.

Let us watch this glorious moment of self-pity riddle our expectations like acid rain sweeping across some dimly lit scrapyard on the crossroads of 'we're fucking lost'. 
The abject heaps of abandoned metal lay bare and naked, facing the sky paralysed. 


Rusted and rusting.  


Crashing rain tears through them at such a delicate pace, running off their surfaces with the intricacy of tunnels carved by ants. The copper tinged haste of metallic tears, metallic blood, and metallic sweat fall to the ground. And so ends the silent slaughter of goodwill. 
Hope wants to be a distant memory, but iron hearts tend to forget.  The only question left to ask is 'Are we dead yet?'. 


It all depends on what you count as living.