Erect tangle:
Walk with me,
along Saturns rings.
Orbit around my mind,
640 degree axis.
Let go of me,
and simultaneously,
grip as tightly as you can.
This is all I want in life.
No it isn’t.
But it’s great.
It’s cold.
I’m reminded that I’m still alive.
I want to dream an impossible dream,
but I don’t believe one exists.
Hold me koala!
Tightly please.
Chew on the leaves so that I may share,
nutrients for my imagination.
It’s all that grounds me into an unsurpassed reality.
One of many,
and I’m satisfied at the prospect.
I am satiated on the occipital occurrences of my life.
I believe I am,
and what I believe to be true will inevitably become so.
Whatever it is I decide,
the executive decision has been made.
I will burn and be reborn from the ashes that are your tears.
Is that okay?
Will I survive?
Am I even alive to die?
Am I even dead to be brought back to a cycle of expected mediocrity?
That’s not what I want.
I have long since decided otherwise,
and that’s acceptable.
Acceptable to me at least.
In which case,
nothing else matters.
I’ve constructed my own subconscious,
free of outside influence,
devoid of the world I’m in,
and into one with infinite moons.
Moons,
choosing new coordinates in the plane of my vision each evening,
each morning,
and afternoon.
Because why should the moon be forced to contain its beauty for virtually half of my existence?
It deserves to be seen.
And if my existence is as limited as everyone says,
I want to grasp every fractal that floats in my peripheral.
I want it all,
within reason.
Reasons which,
I too,
decide to be logical,
or perhaps, as illogical as they come.
Which is more alright than anything I see and hear.
It’s alright.
I’m alright.
Right?
Written between Torrin and I, three words a piece (more or less), repeatedly, while on a walk.
Where am I? Somewhere between here and the ocean. We blink away waves of seismic emotion, saltwater rising like scalding magma, spilling down canyons along my ribcage from precipice faced slugs on spindles, pupils standing on end. Like feline tales, eight lives ago I saw unscathed. Luck didn’t run but sprinted across a sidewalk crack filled with neurons like buried treasure. We mine for false memory generativity and incoherent cognizance, false race starts; the ultimate farce. A play we maimed with our smiles, off time laughs, preprogrammed hand gestures, and honest humor. Hidden below epidermis, vessels express scarlet ribbons is incandescence, bruise. burst. rupture. Rigid empty caves, sunset spoils burnt-violet into my corneas, pupils erect monuments within disloyal nations. Televise the revolution. Disrespect the expected. Cauterize cliche expiation until my spine, old bone fault-line, rattles the Richter scale, switches proportions. My organs sing a cancerous symphony, sixty-six string sonatas shatter Shakespearean systems sever synaptic sinews, seducing sinister syllables spit serpentine soliloquies through turpentine tracheotomies. Fuck! Crickets scream ripples down rivers, pebble children fracturing underexposed occipital film. Underdeveloped visual artifacts in entombed museums metabolically synthesized into gargoyles of ancestors stone-skinned phantom muses of dark ash, laid in trays, left to rest, like off-hand remarks and darkened scars. Burns never fade- engulfing flames everlasting. Silk skin grafts, delicately woven tapestries. Our fibers entwine residual strands of silver chords unraveling shades of melancholy. Not quite indigo, are your hands in mine, or so I perceive. Roots entangled at the end of sleeves sopped in tears, inlets to ocean-eyes polluted by societal dissonance. Do not cry for me, Suburbia. These bones have outgrown the lights shown in your attics. This poem fucks planets, watch Uranus.
It always feels rather contradictory to me
when the sun is out and it’s very windy.
It’s as if just at the moment the heat graces your skin,
the wind whisks it away like some sort of tease.
Some days,
I’d run through the house,
barefoot on the tile floor.
Feeling the stone tingle beneath my feet.
I knew the sun sat high in the sky,
but couldn’t see it beyond the four walls.
On these days,
I’d stare out the sliding glass door.
I could see the sun shining,
illuminating the dimensions of every flower petal in the yard.
It spoke to me,
in a language I felt only I could understand.
Blank spaces in the novel of my life,
that I didn’t know existed,
now suddenly filled with warmth
and shades of ochre.
I could see the trees swaying back and forth,
moving together in a synchronized dance.
I saw it all,
but of it,
felt nothing.
Within the four walls,
I was meant to be invincible.
The sun could not give,
and the wind could not take away.
So I sat,
skin pressed to the thick glass,
feeling the sun try with all its effort
to penetrate my societal barrier,
as if its rays had been individually wrapped.
Each a gift,
bestowed upon me,
for reasons unknown.
I’d curl up
and feel the heat on my skin,
and the cold tingling beneath my feet,
watching interactions within the atmosphere take place.
Varying sensations across my body
moving in accordance
with oaks,
elms,
sycamores,
pines,
behind the glass,
out in the world,
while I sat contently inside my own.
Duality of nature in its most obvious form.
Centered in my peripheral.
Windows are not simply for looking.
Forgetfulness is a vicious cycle.
______ needs to be done.
Okay,
remind me
to remind you
to remind him
to do ______.
Don’t forget.
Hold on to it.
Grip it tightly
with figurative fingertips.
Never let it go.
Yet,
like the pigment in photographs,
it fades.
With the passing of enough time,
it dims.
Our eyelids shut on the remembrance
of motions of the passerby,
emotions long since passed,
occurrences no longer recurring.
Shut,
not to be opened again.
Such is life.
So are our minds.
Missing in action.
Reaffirming what I can see
Illuminating what I cannot
Wrapped in the dead of night
Engulfed in a waterfall
Of lustrous streams
Extending from my fingertips
Follicles
Eyelids
Mimicking the luminosity within
Light imitates life
Life imitates light
Tumbling
Rolling
Spinning
Through life
I am a ball of clay
Collecting stray bits
And dent marks
Courtesy of the world
Imprints made by
Specks of broken glass on a Saturday night
Footprints of a giant overhead
Memories carved within indentations
Beautiful flaws
Because I see them that way
A continuous gyration
An endless rotation
However
Now
Everything has
Stopped
Unexplainably
Indecipherably
I am solidly in place
Unable to move
Cemented
Firmly
I writhe
I am unknowingly receding
I am unwillingly recoiling
Everything has stopped
I have transitioned
From
Rotation
To
Stagnation
Confusion is my middle name
First and last forgotten
Let me know if you find me
Before I find myself
That’s just what I’m in (refer to title). And I love it here. Amidst knots and coils, pathways indecipherable. That’s just the way I like it. A little bit of confusion (or a lot) never hurt anyone, right? Well, if it does, you’re not handling it properly I think. Confusion is a delightful glitch in the programs that are our lives. It’s minuscule (or massive) gestures, words, sounds that make us stop, take a step back, and really look at the entire picture. Confusion adds a layer of pleasant surprise to our otherwise monotonous existence. I generously welcome it. I embrace it with as wide an arm span as I can literally achieve, and as open a heart as my mind can conceive. I feel complete, in a subjectively magnificent way. I feel as though I disband and come together, only to disband and reconnect with my fragments repeatedly, and the feeling of doing so is unsurpassed. I am convinced that my feet are planted just as they’re meant to be, now sprouting beautiful blooms I’ve never seen before. They’ve found the “X” that marks the spot. They, and I, are where we belong.
If you are reading this, thank you for doing so.
If you are reading this and know that you are referenced in my overwhelming content, thank you even more.
The images included are long exposure photographs that I personally very much enjoy, and I hope you do also.
There’s a light on in a distant room. The door is cracked just slightly, so that a sliver of Edison’s genius makes its way through. The light is on above the stove, illuminating overcooked, now cold this and thats. A light is on in the restroom, diffusing fluorescence as I douse in nearly scalding water. I thought once, that I couldn’t handle this. I’d crouch and cower at the liquid flames as they met my skin in a rather unpleasant greeting. I thought the two would never be acquaintances. I met the civilization of thin needles as they pitched tents on my arms, my fingertips. As unpleasant as they too were, they gave me life. Hard to believe, as I had yet to experience much of what life is at the time. Blindly being intravenously fed the duration of my existence, all the while unknowing of what it may hold. Clear liquid as transparent as my apparent future. Morphine, the medium of the artwork that is my life, painting brush strokes in sync with the electrocardiogram in my left peripheral. Dripping onto the blank canvas of my understanding, Pollock has his fun. An earthquake is emerging beneath pastel sheets. The meteorologist on channel Sabrina is predicting a storm, although it couldn’t possibly become any more cold here, I believed.
I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the heat. I didn’t think fire and I would ever meet in the middle, because I never thought I’d extend my arm even halfway across the flames. And then one day, I fell into a bucket of ice. Someone decided to drop me there, and upon landing, I awoke to a stark frigidness. No sock or scarf or hat could be the answer.
I’m no longer in ice. Granted, we fall in on occasion. But I am careful not to slip.
I appreciate the scalding oceans engulfing me.
Pinging and panging with each of our interactions, it says:
“I am your friend.
I love you.
I will not defy you.
I will comfort you.
I am not ice.”
So I had said earlier in my “My Heart is Changing” that I wasn’t sure exactly how I was feeling, and to be quite honest, I still don’t know. But if I can at least determine that I am feeling good, content, and all around satisfied, I don’t mind not knowing exactly what it is. I found myself going through an intense emotional experience earlier today while listening to both Apartment and Firelight by Young the Giant several times. This happens to me on occasion, and when it does, I know that the song(s) I’ve found is/are really special and pertinent to my life, for reasons that the songs themselves will at some point reveal to me. I don’t know whether or not these two songs have revealed reasons to me yet, but they have elicited the most magnificent of tears I have yet to experience in my life, and that alone is an ethereal indication that they are a significant part of my life. I often feel as though I can’t put words to my emotions, as if they exist in a language I don’t (yet) know how to speak, and that bothers me in a good way. It lends itself to frustration, but at the same time, it makes me inspired to strive to learn to decipher my brain in ways that I have not yet come across. I am not quite sure exactly what it is I’m feeling, and I don’t think the languages I know (English, Farsi, conversational Spanish, and approximately three words in French) exactly fit what goes on in my head. I often wonder what language deaf people speak in their heads, what language it is that people speak in their dreams/nightmares, if anyone speaks at all. Perhaps their lives are just one giant silent film, which wouldn’t be all that bad to me even, even though I’ve experienced sound and what it means to speak in general, let alone to have a conversation with another individual or several. Lately, I feel as though with each moment in my life, I am further and further grounded into a place that is exactly where I belong. I feel as though I am consistently furthering myself into perpetual content, and the fact that I am able to comfortably say that about my current life circumstances is better than anything else in the world. I am so happy that in some moments, I feel like jumping up and down. This all sounds arbitrary and kiddish, but those two words are essential to my being, in a much better way than their general connotations lend to. I am where I belong.
“Life’s too short to even care at all, whoa,
I’m losing my mind, losing my mind, losing control, oh oh”
I am going through such a change. Inside and outside. I can’t explain it. When I listen to some music, some songs, I want to break down and cry with tears of content. At the moment, it’s Apartment and Firelight (Young the Giant). I feel so happy and so exactly where I belong that I really can’t even explain it with anything but tears. A perfect mixture of salty and sweet, with the reflections of beautiful faces in each. I don’t know how to explain how I feel. I’m sitting in public and I can’t possibly keep making the seemingly ridiculous faces I’m making, otherwise people will think I’m in serious distress, which is not at all the case. I am falling in love with the riffs in both Firelight and Apartment. I really don’t know what I’m writing anymore. This feels like a word vomit, and it sort of is, but it’s the most pleasant vomit I’ve ever experienced in my life. If I could, I would frame it and hang it on my wall like a piece of artwork, because of how utterly magical I feel inside. I feel as though a flurry of faeries have sprouted inside my chest and are dusting my organs with a layer of illuminated stars and fluttering hummingbirds. I want to dance on the surface of the moon and watch the earth rotate. I feel as if I could keep writing forever. My eyes are closed and I’m l have been listening to both songs while typing this. My fingers feel so in sync with the keyboard as if technology has officially become an extension of my human self. To some people, that’d probably be viewed as a bad, and rather detached thing. I am thrilled at the prospect. Because just the same way I am in control of all my limbs, I too am in control of this keyboard. I decide what I do with it. I decide what it produces. What I have no control over are the tears that seem to be welling up in my eyes despite the fact that people are casually sitting around me in this Starbucks, giving into their caffeine addictions. There’s a realm in my heart, a room that I didn’t even know existed until you showed up and knocked on the door there. I don’t know what to say. I feel as though I should keep listening and writing though. I am so passionately confused and I love it. I don’t want it any other way. The tears are falling, someone will soon think I’m pretty crazy for sitting in Starbucks, typing furiously and crying slightly. It’s not even finals week. I am entitled. I cannot comprehend the change happening inside my body, in my heart and my soul. I don’t know what other worldly fluid is flowing through my veins, but my blood has filtered out. I can’t explain how exactly I’m feeling, other than that the feeling is unsurpassed. I want to feel it forever. I can’t explain it other than how it seems to be externalizing itself. Tears are a magnificent feeling. I am where I belong, indefinitely.
“I don’t believe you
I’m in a parachute
Falling in deep
Sleep
Out of control
Can you feel it?
Is this the end of the road?
Falling in deep
Lost in a dream”
Forgetfulness is a vicious cycle.
SABMANSHAR 