Halves

I am one whole of a half

All but one

and then some

Between a cozy oblivion

and a searing chaos

I am what you call

A piecemeal person

This patchwork persona

is my design

A cannibal with a conscience

and an uncertain taste

I taste of contradictions

The twin flavours

of love and loss

A shifting gaze

that finds stories

yet unresolved

And voices that speak

more and less

than what you hear

I am, it seems

both the ruler and the ruled

I lead, by example

my rebellious tools

And hold my own

in this no-man’s land

As long as I can.

#101DaysofPoetry Day 7

Run

The only problem in running away
Is you never know
Where you are headed

The world opens its gaping mouth
To swallow you whole
And you don't feel a thing

Does it matter
As long as you put distance
In between
What was and what would have been

The only questions that sting
Ask how much farther does one
Need to run

You wonder about the famed escape
Or if it's only the journey
The process of escaping
That matters

Will I taste freedom in all my limbs
And, intoxicated
Make love to one and all and him

Or will I feel its first sting
When the little scrawls on the page
Reveal one that once answered to "I"

Maybe find a footing
In this tragic circus of life.

The trick, perhaps, is to not let your soul take roots
Just in case you need
To run again.




#NowPlaying

Insight

The real problem with pretension
is that of leakage,really.
We never know what it is
and how much of it
that seeps into our soul

We could be more honest
if we dared
Plant fences with no peep-holes
Around ourselves
With ugly graffitti warnings
And look out at the world
through the cracks
We see too much and too little

Why would we
make the same mistakes again?

Poetry should exist for a better purpose
than bleeding through words
and decoding patterns
that form on blotting paper

We can comb through it
The paradoxes and half-truths
And find blunt insights
in this crimson swamp

But to be honest,
We'd rather not.

Identities

Identities hidden
In textured paraphrases
Stalked by all those words
Unsaid, Unheard
And crimson verses
Of him, For him
Throbbing with every heartbeat out of sync
And refusing to ever die
Constantly asking
(in between the lines)
Who are you?
Who am I?
In rusted confessions
Of my blind obsessions
Searching amid the silent validity
Of a love with no takers
And it wasn't him
It was all me.

Artist: Ken Wong

Note:
This poem marks a breakthrough in more than one way. Firstly, I have accepted how I will always be writing about love and it will, more often than not, be borderline sad unrequited-love poetry. Secondly, (the breakthrough part), most of my previous verses have me (or the speaker, definitely the speaker) reaching out in the dark for a presence, for answers, for something to gain a kind of closure and look beyond the immediate circumstances of my life. But in this poem (and hopefully, in all the future ones), I'm going to turn all this pondering and searching inward, to find that answer and that closure within my own self.

Daily Epiphany: We really are stronger than we think, once we give the continuous process of underestimation a long, deserved rest. :)