What's My Age Again?

What's My Age Again?

I don’t think much of birthdays.

There comes a tepid unease with celebrating myself for merely existing; even more so when others do it for me. Thank you very much, I think to myself, but the real heroes here are my average regard for personal health and safety, along with this lottery of birth that has led me to live in relatively stable countries where healthcare is abundant. Those are the secrets to staying alive where mortality rates in more developed countries are higher than they’ve ever been in the entirety of human history. But again, thank you. 

It all just feels rather hollow. A supposedly special day comes and goes, with nothing to impart apart from a general reminder to everyone that I’m still alive and a gentle reminder to myself that I have now lost the potential to be remembered for doing something special at the age of __. The only saviour of such shallow celebrations are the gifts I receive, and even those number few thanks to my unenviable but hardly unreliable talent in losing friends and alienating strangers. 

I was eight years old when I last had a birthday party; a movie, then a meal at McDonald’s. Though it sounds like a cheap date, I still remember the elation of seeing my friends arrive at the cinema, one after the other, bringing with them smiles, presents, cards, myrrh, frankincense, etc. After the movie (Pokemon, if you must know), we headed to the nearest McDonald’s where garish peach and turquoise colour schemes accented stained cream walls. Luckily, they readied balloons around our little designated party area to distract us from the horrendous décor. The hunger pangs of children began calling out to the staff in the form of whiny pre-pubescent voices, and they satisfied us by bringing our food. We feasted on burgers and French fries, the smell of reused oil and floor cleaner wafting among us, perfuming our happiness. It was probably the last time a birthday had mattered as it should.

And so, we come, to the twenty first of these trivial celebrations. I turn twenty one in barely a fortnight, and in spite of my previous apathy to the date, a feeling - slight, but enough to irritate - has been nagging at me in recent months. I’m not sure what to make of it. 

Perhaps it's the fact that even though this date has meant so little for so long, it feels as if I might actually be looking forward to it for once (if only to escape being categorised in the 16-20 age group when filling out forms). There’s a certain resonance with dates that I’ve grown accustomed to ignoring, and though I’m sure the day will come and pass like all others do, this arbitrary age for adulthood feels somewhat monumental. I might not celebrate it, but it's quite nice to know that my heart isn't entirely made of stone. An odd sensation, this optimism. It's just as if I was turning eight all over again. 

Also, work marriage family death taxes.   

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Short+Sweet Festival 2013

Short+Sweet Festival 2013

This is a confession.

I've manipulated my morals, given up goodwill, and surrendered my soul to temptation. This post is proof of my prostitution. The words you are about to read are nothing more than a publicity stunt, an artificial article written in exchange for my materialistic whims.  

I have sold out.

And what better thing to sell out for than free tickets to KLpac's Short+Sweet Festival 2013! No, really. The arts scene is something I feel very strongly for, and it needs all the help it can get. Sadly, it feels as if the hard work and effort that people put into producing stage magic just doesn't receive the exposure it really deserves. Like an erotic dancer playing hide and seek, great entertainment exists, if only you could find it. This post shall be the middle man.

The festival is divided into weekly categories; comedy, musical, and two weeks for dance and theatre. For four nights each week, audiences are entertained by ten different productions, and at the end of it all they vote for their favourites. As explained by the name, those productions are "short and sweet"; limiting themselves to around ten minutes of stage time to win your heart and vote. 

As an introduction to the theatre scene in Kuala Lumpur, there's nothing more welcoming than this festival. It's far better experienced than read, and I sincerely urge you to for yourselves.

Details so you can experience the wonders of Short+Sweet Theatre
Theatre Week 1: 16-19 Oct @ 8.30pm
Theatre Week 2: 23-26 Oct @ 8.30pm
Gala Night: 27 Oct @ 8.30pm

Tickets: RM28 (adult), RM23 (students, disabled, and TAS card members)
Gala: RM43 (adult), RM38 (students, disabled, and TAS card members)

Grace, Saved

Grace, Saved

"God" read the word scrawled out unevenly on white in blunt penciled writing. "My nem is Ahmad" it continued. His fingers were barely large enough to even grasp a pencil properly. "I wud like to mit you".

His teacher moved from child to child with a waltz-like grace as she tended each innocent mind with an encouraging smile. Her pupils called her Miss Grace. She was young and hopeful, though she never really knew what she hoped for.

Ahmad waited for his turn. As a final touch, he added an ineligible scribble at the foot of his letter, mimicking the scribbles he'd seen adults do to pay for food at restaurants and clothes and things like that. His teacher looked busy.

Miss Grace loved her job. She was doing her kids a favour, saving them from the future, letting them grow like plants under her watchful eye. She talked to her plants often.

Ahmad looked up. Miss Grace stood over him, smiling - have you finished? Good -  then crouched beside him. She asked him to read his letter. He read it.

"Oh, sweetheart, that's a lovely letter, but I don't think you will ever meet God. You can't even see him!" She smiled carefully. "Maybe you should write to someone who isn't so hard to find."

--------

Ahmad had just turned forty. He felt old. The young and hopeful days were far behind him, and he'd already forgotten what he used to hope for. He hadn't yet met God, but then again he'd never really tried looking.

Headlights

Headlights

It's the risk that comes with the kiss
A gentle press of lip on lip
On borrowed time in a car backseat
To an audience of an empty street

With a pulse as rushed as my fumbled touches
A dress pulled over a pair of shoulders
In this moment
We are neither young nor old
Just a consequence of our fears and desires like two moths and a dance of fire

Here, I have found you
The only sounds we hear are the breaths that escape
Too alive to stay within this feeble frame but believe me
I would hold every breath if I could
Force my lungs to spare no air
Keep it stashed between my heart and diaphragm as all I have 
A treasure chest 
Of flesh and breath

Your hands find mine in the absence of light
As you breathe harder your hand holds tight and
Skin and friction and all we've ever been
Collide like our existence depends on this
This single moment of temporary bliss
He was hers and she was his
Like those love stories we listened to as if they ever spoke the truth
Kiss

Headlights paint the sunroof above you
Patterned 
Refracted
Toned
By the rain on the windows
Replacement constellations
A passing sky for unseen lovers
A starting engine
An empty street
Morning.

Landlocked Blues

Landlocked Blues

He was lying down.

Or at least it seemed like it. The man had his right cheek pressed against the pavement, his eyes were closed, and his limbs were stretched out like a starfish. From the view of any justifiably concerned passer-by, the man merely seemed to be lying down. He wasn't, though.

The man was, in fact, hugging the floor.

It was an awkward sort of hug. It was the type of hug you encountered at reluctantly attended family reunions with distant relatives you'd never even met, let alone enjoy physical contact with. But it was still a hug, and the man had been in need of some compassion. He enjoyed it nonetheless.

He'd been on the floor for a while now, though he couldn't exactly remember how long. It was quite long, he remembered. It began when the fear he'd kept inside became too much for him to handle, though he felt that he had succumbed to it in a very practical way. He was, after all, rather comfortable.

The Earth was a very old thing, he thought, and wondered if anyone else had ever hugged it. The thought flitted around his mind as he adjusted his head so as to be pressing the left cheek of his face down instead. Slowly, he opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings. Most people gave him a confused stare before walking on past him. Others seemed unperturbed, not even noticing the strange sight of a man sprawled right in the middle of a walkway.

The man was puzzled by this. The people around him appeared fearless, briskly strutting the streets and going about their day without even remembering that the Earth was spinning constantly. More than a five hundred miles an hour, he recalled. He couldn't remember the exact speed but it was very, very fast. This book he read said so.

He wondered why no-one else was scared by this. Any second, gravity might stop working or the Earth might suddenly stop like a car braking hard and everyone in the world would be flung off through the atmosphere into space and die. 

Except him. He was safe.

Sighing, the man closed his eyes again and gripped the ground tightly in a tangy mix of fear and anticipation.

Boomerang

Boomerang

'It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds.'

Hello, future me.

...well, this is awkward. I'd be lying if I'd said that I wasn't used to talking to myself, but this is different because, you know, you don't even exist yet. And I guess that doesn't matter anyway, because you'd know if I was lying. You are me, after all. 

Wait. Shouldn't I be referring to myself in the plural? Since I'm talking to you but you are me and that would mean we should be known collectively and now I'm just confusing myself. Maybe with the years of experience with words that you'll have, you'll be able to sort out this technicality. Now, moving on. 

The future turns into the present so quickly. I'd always thought of it as a little box of potential memories that I could keep under my bed for later, like the hidden porn stash of a boy who obviously hasn't heard about the internet. Now I'm as worried to face it as that boy is worried to face his mum after she cleans out his room. It's unstable and I'm not sure I'd be able to deal with it all, but I guess I'll learn along the way, just like that boy learnt new ways to hide his magazines. 

Traumatic childhood analogies aside, I thought I'd help you (myself?) out by giving some advice because if I don't write this down right now I'll forget it in a few hours. Life is a road where every car is a van with 'FREE CANDY' sprayed onto the side in big red letters, and I know it's horribly tempting to take shortcuts, especially through a van which promises sweets of the complimentary kind, but you must remember where you're heading and keep walking in that direction. Besides, those vans are lying.

First piece of advice; don't die. Seems pretty obvious, yes, but you have a tendency to get yourself into stupid situations and I'm actually a little more worried because the only authority that will keep you in check at your age is the police. I know we promised not to grow up but I'm starting to think that maturity isn't all that bad. Plus, being known as a man-child would permanently harm our reputation. If you die, you don't get to retire and get paid for being old. Remember that.

Secondly, don't let go of the ambition I have right now. I don't want to have grown up just to find that all the plans I made were only the whimsical fancies of an unfocused nineteen year old boy with too much imagination. I want to write a book and travel from Singapore to London by train and learn languages and make a difference but you're the one who's going to have to do all that. And there's no way you'll ever be able to apologise to me if you don't because I'm in the past and I don't see anyone using time machines to get here yet.

Lastly, make mistakes. Fail. Get so close to financial ruin trying to fund the production of your inevitably disappointing solo folk electronica album that you feel like giving it all up, and then learn from it. Learn that there is a reason why folk electronica is not a genre that has a lot of fans, or even exists for that matter. Learn that trying new things might not lead to success, but it will always lead to satisfaction. Don't trade yourself in for a lifetime of repetition in an office cubicle for a little money because what if, WHAT IF, folk electronica breaks into the mainstream? It won't, for obvious reasons, but you never know. Don't take that chance.

This has been fun. I like where I'm going in life and it's up to you not to fuck that up. I will see you in the mirror sometime in the next decade or so. 

Hope I see a manly beard growing too.

Heartstrings

Heartstrings

My patchwork heart is stained
Soaked by my sins and each separate square is held in place
By pins that threaten to slip with every heartbeat

And each thread is worn
Discoloured by age and by love and by rage and 
By shades of expectations they eventually frayed

Fragile and failing
The hues have dulled with dirt and desire and
It beats like its bursting or it actually wants to

But not an explosion
More tired abandon than expel of emotion
A stuttering stop to exhausting devotion

Between each breath the seams relax
And for that short release the tainted strings lay at ease
And await the pull of

another 

heavy 

beat.

The Exclamation Under The Stars

The Exclamation Under The Stars

I met this girl once.

Well, no I didn't. I mean, yes, I have met plenty of girls but the girl I was supposed to be talking about from that first sentence up there doesn't exist. I only wrote that because it sounded nice, all deep and secluded from the rest of the post like a hipster prologue. I had actually planned to write something about love since it's 2am on a Monday morning and there aren't that many better ways of ensuring that I start the week staggering around in public with half-open eyes and arms flailing for balance. So yes, I hadn't met that particular girl. Glad we cleared that up.

I have met other girls though. They were nice, generally. I can remember their names and faces and not much else. Like I said, nice. Or maybe that's just how my memory represents them. I can't really recall much else because most were just forgettable. I used italics for that word because 1) I wanted to emphasise the word and 2) I don't often use italics because they're like normal words but drunk. By now you can probably see how easily I lose focus, so it might not actually be any of the aforementioned girls' faults that I don't seem to remember them as I even have a tendency to forget the point of certain paragraphs when I write. 

There are girls I do remember. Crushes, flames, relationships, whatever you want to call them. Those people who, for at least a little while, meant something more to me than a regular person did. It's easy to look back and dismiss certain feelings as naivety and for the longest time, I did too. It was easier to pretend that those emotional bonds were actually nothing more than a phase that I thankfully grew out of because my sanity finally decided to kick in. I never really believed it though. 

Love is only around as long as potential is; it dies the moment the future does. We're all used to that grandiose talk of love conquering all but if there isn't anything to conquer, what's the point of love? That realisation helped me understand that maybe those moments were real, and maybe I was naive but maybe not as much as I'd subconsciously hoped, and that maybe it was easy to dismiss because the potential had been too.

Or maybe I was actually just stupid. Young love doesn't count, apparently. It's hard to tell from where I am now, but I do know that I have, on multiple occasions, thought that what I was going through was definitely realer than anything I've ever felt before this is amazing don't let it end. It did though, but that's not the point. For that brief, singular moment in my less than two decade old existence, I felt that I was more than myself, tied to this deviously beautiful sight of potential with one other person who I hoped saw it too.

I think that counts.

Blemish

Blemish

Things change.

I apologise for the ridiculously cliched way in which I started this post, and I would completely understand if you never forgave me for it. I'm still having trouble accepting the fact that my fingers are actually deserving of the right to be part of my body after typing something so hopelessly devoid of insight or originality that even a ten year old with limited internet access could have come up with the exact same phrase. If this is the first post you've ever read from me then I guess that also enforces my brilliantly practiced skill of making terrible first impressions. I could start this post all over again but I won't, because you see, that's the point. We're a product of our mistakes.

Or what we think are mistakes. I tend to avoid introspection because if there's one thing I dislike, it's when my ego has the same level of self-confidence as a teenage boy on a Taylor Swift induced cryfest over a girl who he kinda sorta knows through, like, the internet. Taking a good, long look at myself and questioning my actions aren't one of the most entertaining things I've ever done. Partly because I think I'm always right, and partly because I know I'm actually wrong most of the time and reliving those excruciatingly embarrassing moments of my past makes me feel like I'm watching a compilation of the worst American Idol auditions ever and every contestant is me.

But past all the negativity and the why-did-I-even-do-that-was-I-really-that-stupid instances, I actually had a personal epiphany. You know, like those moments in Disney princess movies where it all makes sense and background music starts playing, except that I was alone on my bed in the middle of the night and my phone was too far away for me to start playing any relevant songs. I realised how much I had changed since the last five years, two years, and even since last year. And what struck me most was that the movies really weren't lying because I actually had been oblivious to it all. Those forgettable conversations, those missed deadlines, and those scribbled thoughts; they all shaped me and I couldn't even tell. 

I'm not sure what to make of this. Writing usually helps me make sense of my emotions but I'm still unsure if I should feel scared, excited, sad, or horny. I guess I'm still taken aback by not really being the same person as I used to be because I was literally that person and now I'm not. Also because you're now mentally grouping me with those girls who go on and on about their 'new me' and 'omg ive changed im NOT that person anymore!!1!111!' and it's rather unsettling. 

Maybe I'm scared of who I might become; maybe I'm scared of change itself. I don't know why it even bothers me. I might be (God forbid) growing up. Or not. I guess I'll have to wait a few years and repeat this whole process before I really know, if I ever do.

I still haven't forgiven myself for the first two words of this post. Sorry again.

Payphones And Prostitutes

Payphones And Prostitutes

The payphone stood next to her
And from a distance
They were alike
And as she leant against it
She knew it too

Because she was in disrepair
An ornament for the empty streets
Left to waste and wait
Her sagging thighs could testify to better nights than this

But tonight she's not alone
Scrap metal potential by her side
And they were tired
Both waiting
For a passer-by to spare some time

They stood in silence
Because they'd long forgotten what conversations
Were meant to sound like
Or feel like
But they felt comfortable
Together.

Knots

Knots

These strands of thought are so deftly tied in my mind
Forming knots that I struggle to untie
Weaving lines behind my eyes
Like charmed cobras hypnotised 
And how I see is how I'm paralysed
Open eyes but I'm still blind
I'm not sad but they tell me to cry
So I cry.

there should be a title for this

there should be a title for this

Screw eloquence. Here are my thoughts.

I'm disillusioned by it all. The materialism, the lack of curiousity, the blind faith, the seemingly content will of my generation to just sit back and accept everything at face value and be so carefully conditioned by their environment to not even bother searching for more meaning in their lives. We're destined for mediocrity and it's frightening that no-one seems to be that bothered.

I question everything. Life, faith, people, motives. You see, the more answers you receive, the stronger your thought becomes. Life is about finding meaning in anything and everything because without it there's nothing stopping you from jumping off a building with all the grace of a paper aeroplane. These questions lead you to meaning. It isn't about the answers, but the pursuit of answers that actually have any relevance in your lives. We grow up in a society where we're taught to accept unconditionally, to not challenge old ideas, to just fucking take it as it is. If you're wondering why, the answer simple. The ignorant are the obedient. We'll go through our insignificant lives with a strict process to adhere to. Work, sleep, pay. We become part of a cycle that heeds no benefit to anyone but those who control us. And it's this ignorance that is so prevalent in my generation, one that I feel nothing but shame for.

If you're reading this, you have internet access. Which means you have access to the largest collection of human knowledge ever compiled in the history of the fucking universe. Wikipedia is the most expansive encyclopedia known to man, yet its main use is to get that A you want for your assignment so you can get a degree so you can slave away your life just to survive. You can learn languages, skills, practically anything on the internet yet most choose to while away their time on images of kittens with horrifyingly incorrect text grammar-wise. I mean, I love kittens as much as any sane human being loves kittens but why stop at kittens when you have the whole world before you? Why. 

We're fed concepts and lifestyles of what is right and what is wrong through media, through celebrities, through fucking 9gag. The irony is, we're taught not to think for ourselves. All this information is there to create us because most aren't courageous enough to question why things should be so. All these brands, all these logos, they don't mean anything when they were made in sweatshops in China by the hands of desperate children just trying to survive. Or at least they shouldn't mean anything. But they do, and it's a pathetic excuse for humanity when people are sharing pictures on Facebook on world issues while using everything that they are publicly against. 

Religion just seems out of fashion too. You're seen as backward when you stand by your faith. It's made out as if religion only succeeds in limiting your intellectual capacity. I agree. I agree that anything limits intellectual capacity if you blindly accept it. You do things because 'God says so' but why does God say so, why are certain rules sent down, why do you think you can't ask these questions? 'God says so' is a reason I can't accept because it shows that you don't even have enough understanding in your faith to answer with a reasoned, logical answer that can be accepted in the wider scope of society. Question your own faith before you question faith itself.

I was in a class today on the philosophy and view of different ideologies towards the wider global climate. A couple of girls to the left of me were texting throughout the lesson. I lost count of those who fell asleep. Education is wasted. The man in front of me spoke with a wisdom that I've only ever seen rarely, but the people around me took it for granted. And it's fucking sad, you know. This complete lack of feeling towards learning. That As are just for your future, your job. It's there. Eleven years of free compulsory education and you waste it. Eleven years of information and thought that others around the world have no access to and you throw it away. Granted, education systems do have their flaws, but isn't it our duty to fix it? Instead you choose to let it all pass by you without gaining a single thing apart from the hardly laudable skill of memorising and regurgitation. Without even fucking knowing what you just wrote down. Well done.

Like I said, I'm disillusioned. I haven't even written all I think I could write but writing more could possibly lead me to an even more depressed state than I already am. 

At least things sound a little better with Explosions In The Sky in the background. 

Nostalgia And Colour

Nostalgia And Colour

A different day a different shade that wilts in colour
As this blind nostalgia guides me
The spectrum pales and I'm certain it'll only fade out into white

And the vivid lives we used to live
Are rather rushed and the colours merge
And blur and I can't make out anything but the streaks of what used to be

Lines across the surface not painted
Leaving us a kaleidoscope of hopes 
But they'll be blank and so will we chasing flickers before they dim.

Defend And Attic

Defend And Attic

It was just a staircase. 

Empty, not because no-one was there, but because even passing by could leave you feeling dejected. Each step seemed carefully designed to be at every possible angle other than level. The bannister that ran along the side was marked with peeling white paint under the deep tone of the wooden hand rail. No-one ever used the staircase.

He wondered why. The boy was not more than six years old, seven at most. He possessed the dangerous quality of curiosity that all defenceless infants do until its worn away by the pitfalls of age and education. He regularly passed the staircase on the way to his bedroom. The house he lived in had been around for a few centuries, but he knew it as 'a very very very long time'. The staircase lay at the other end of the corridor of the top floor, a long stretch of stained carpets guarded by a number of pale, lifeless doors. The boy stared from the other end for a while. Stairs were meant to be climbed.

The dim lights gave a yellow hue to the walls. The boy walked on to the foot of the staircase. He looked up.There were about a dozen steps to clamber up before he reached the top. He clambered up. One by one, each step was conquered. He reached the top.

He was met by a door unlike the rest in the house. It was a deep shade of red, with intricate patterns chiselled into its surface. It was majestic, so unlike the stairs that cowered before it.

The boy wondered. He wondered where it led to. He wondered why no-one else went up here. He wondered a lot. While he wondered, the door creaked softly and opened. Heavily, like an aged man sighing as he rises from a chair. All he could see was dark. He walked in.

The door closed.

Island And Door

Island And Door

He was standing on the middle of a creaky wooden platform raised by four beams which seemed to be playing a game of who could sway the most. A larger, sturdier beam stood next to him. A rope dangled off it, gently brushing against his shoulder as if to comfort him. He felt comforted.

He looked out, still, and surveyed his surroundings. They were coloured by these grey clouds just waiting for the moment to spill. They would wait some more. It was only a few short steps, near enough, and he knew he shouldn't rush it. "Enjoy the moment", he told himself.

His eyes glanced lower to the sea of faces that surrounded him. They were on the brink of drowning him, like waves upon a shore, only reflected by the promise of retribution. He smiled. He felt powerful here, atop this swaying platform, observing the faces of fear, of anger, of disgust. He could feel the growing energy amongst the crowd below him, as if they were praying with a form of negativity and it charged him and he felt alive, more than he'd ever been. More than he thought he could feel.

He felt godly.

Poseidon, controlling the oceans before him. He took one step forward. Then another. Then one more. They wrapped the rope comfortably around his neck and he was willing to let it rest there. He looked around, directly in the eyes of scorn and rage. He smiled.

They pulled the rusty lever and the trapdoor gave way as he fell into satisfaction.

Coffee And Walls

Coffee And Walls

The wall was looking at me. I was only looking back.

It stared at me intently, like it had something it desperately wanted to share with me. A secret shame of some sort. I waited for it to make a move. It didn't. I couldn't help feeling slightly disappointed but I had to remember that it was a wall. They weren't used to these sorts of things.

I sat behind a metal table in a chair so worn that leaning back posed a health hazard. The wall still wasn't saying anything so I took the liberty of examining its features. A large family portrait hung on the left upper corner, displaying three sombre faces of people who obviously didn't enjoy having to wait three hours for the paint to merge into what I was seeing now. Behind them spread a mustard based wallpaper with sharp, scarlet lines running vertically to the floor. Or to the ceiling. It didn't matter. The wall still wasn't talking to me. I decided to take a different approach. A change of tactic, if you will.

I offered the wall coffee. 

I could sense the wall being slightly suspicious of my new approach, and cautiously declined. I won't lie, it was a very disappointing response. No matter. This wall would speak eventually. I took a sip of the boiling hot cup of that dark, bitter drug before throwing my arm forward and spilling the contents directly onto the wall's face. It kept silent. 

I wish these walls would talk. 

Death And Bubblewrap

Death And Bubblewrap

I need people, or friends as some might say. I don't feel like I deserve to call them friends but that's how they would appear to most. I use them as a shield. It's that shelter; that comfort of having a safety net to fall back on, to protect me from harsh realities like death and no internet connection. People are my bubble wrap.

Assurance; to be wrapped in the safe confines of a thousand air-filled pockets that individually, are as fragile as me. I feed off of that comfort, not as an addiction, but as a condition. Life enjoys my weakness. Life is that little child who runs over to me as I'm unboxed, pops the breath out of my safety and takes it all away. One by one, life kills them. 

They're all dying and this fragility is starting to frighten me.

Bones

Bones

You know when you're young and you break a bone
And you flinch at the pain as it takes you whole
And you swear you won't be bad again
Because all you want to do is escape the pain
And you fight but it won't go away
So you pray and you pray
'It was a mistake!' you'll say
You don't forget those days


Those days when you're lost and you learn
You're helpless and you yearn
For someone to turn and guide you through the hurt


Because to your dismay
You find that bones aren't the only things that break


Like how promises are just as brittle
As the bones you broke when you were little
Like how a marriage could fall apart
The laughable emptiness of 'till death do us part'
Like how the pressure leaves you shaking
You hope to heal so you're stranded waiting


And by the end you just wish you were that little kid
Who knew of pain as something which
Hurt a lot but for a bit
And didn't last like how it did
And didn't scar like how it did
You think of how it was before
And breaking bones doesn't seem so bad anymore.

Fall

Fall

You run and the road beneath you moves backward but you haven't gone any further
And you trip trying to keep up with the spin of the earth
It's hard to settle when the momentum threatens to cast you
Into flight 


But if for a second you were suspended
You would accept it
The hang in the air 
To rebel against gravity
To pause in insanity
And feel that this has to be


A temporary bliss but those seconds are taking their time
And you might look around but the air past your eyes
Blinds your sight and 
Save for the cushion of empty that envelops your body
You become oblivious to heights to drops to all
To the flight before the fall.