we are free and alone at sea

I wish this heart belongs
to you
and you’d want it back.
I’d say take it, take it back
I don’t need it anymore
my chest wants to be free
from you.
It wants to feel light
and hallowed out,
it wants to be filled with air,
it wants to float
and drift
and swim
the sea,

and one day it will learn what it is to miss the shore,
maybe.

there is a spot here, right here

There are times when I cannot feel
the left part of my chest
so I start to beat it once,
twice, then I
wonder why it sounds so hollow,
why you’re no longer there
and where have you carried
my heart to?

I want to remember this forever.

Tell me about these words
whispered against my skin.
Tell me about those lips
that carried them.

Tell me about these dreams
etched on your temples.
Tell me about those years
washing them away.

Tell me about these lines on your palm.
Tell me so I could remember.

No, I am not Sisyphus
carrying the dream of forever on my back.

I just want you to
tell me about these fingers,
so close and touching mine
so I could forget where I begin
and you end.

We are awake and dreaming

Say, 'Hello, the moon,'
I wonder if it ever felt slighted
Loved in the dark and
only quietly
when the world
is silent and asleep.

'Good morning, the moon,
and look, there's a poet
invoking the secret muse
a mistress
embracing her vernal lover
while the world
is silent and asleep--'

while we are awake
and dreaming of you.

It's like flying with no compass, the air hits my face and

Let me whisper you a secret, you say.

There is no moon tonight and your eyes
are the only lights I see.

----------------------

We make do within the boundaries of our limitation, and let’s face it, we are pretty limited. And nothing in this life is free. There’s always a price to pay for everything. The price of fame is freedom. The price of freedom is obscurity. Nobody can be Shakespeare long after their deaths. Most aren’t even Shakespeare during their lifetimes. Some are lucky to be loved by many, but the luckiest is he who is truly loved by one. In his lover’s eyes he is beautiful in his virtues. In his lover’s eyes, he is even more beautiful in his imperfections. In the end, everybody desires this life, this kind of existence.

To be loved completely and unconditionally.

This is what I found from my shattered dream:
an illuminated reality,
an ocean of love
and you.

My feet draw steps wide and sure,
as I walk in straight line towards you.

You smile.

And my steps become lighter, faster, airbound
as I run—--

What I want is to write like this.

Want
by George Gunn

What I want from you is the long open road
and the dying swan of freedom

No small hour talk that I'll forget
In the late morning when work begins.

What I want from you is the colour
of the sky in late July

when Summer yawns and is tired
and the nights warm with hope.

What I want from you is to be bright
In the sad black days of no Sun

What I want from you is not much
What I want from you is the secret smile

reserved for lovers when the world
shivers under its power.

Sing the aria for me.

I do not know what to do with all this pain under my skin.
It bled through like tears, like snot, like blood,
but it doesn’t die down.

I want to know what it’s like sitting quietly under the shade of a tree.
I have forgotten what it’s like to smell the rain,
what it’s like to touch the grass.

I want to know why there’s such a ruckus in my head,
why it doesn’t die down,
why I’m so lonely.

My loneliness is such that I cannot feel you
even when you’re grasping my hand in yours
and touching my skin with your lips.
My loneliness is such that I desperately claw for you.

I do not know what to do with all these strange dreams,
excess feelings,
alien existence,
clamour,
chaos,
hate,
pain,
love,
pain,
sob,
pain,
pain,
pain.
Like Ophelia, I am possessed.

Untitled #3

Something in my heart is unsettled. I cannot explain it by words or tranquilize it by sleep or soothe it with music. Like cannon, it keeps on hitting and breaking the walls. Keep on invading the space of my peace and quiet.

Be still, my heart. Why do you keep on shouting and screaming and yelling things that I could not understand?

There is something in my heart that is akin to a small scale panic and chaos; the kind that would disturb the surface of the water without splashing any, but enough to make the whole lake ripples.

Let sleep take over, my eyes. Why do you keep on fighting for light?

Sometimes there is smoke, there is love, there is tears. Most times, there is confusion. I just need to be dissected. Someone to tell me what is wrong with me. Myself to understand what has been displaced somewhere deep inside the crevices of my heart. So much love and pain traipsing aimlessly in my veins. I do not need this gift of emotions.

Let there be rocks and immovable mountains. Reverse to seven years ago. Reverse to when this heart was encased in stone.

Let there be peace and quiet. Cover me in darkness, hide me from light.

Here, was the centre of the universe

Your name left my lips to carve
eternal mark on the rocks,
I took my love and hid it underneath
where no one will see.

“One day, all of my regrets are going to kill me.”

I closed my eyes and the sand swallowed my toes.
There was saltiness on my fingertips
And I wanted to believe that the sea was mourning for us.
But as the sun rose, the horizon cleared and everything became light,
I had to turn away from the heaviness in my eyes.

I left you underneath the rocks, with flowers growing in between;
the sun, the sand and the sea as your company.
My steps were breadcrumbs, marking the sacred path.
I walked forward, resigned and heavy
to wait for the day when all the ghosts
will return for me.

"I love you."

I love you the most who
was the apple plucked from my eye.

There is a hole in my chest where you
laid your head once.
Sometimes I cover it gently with my hands,
but most times it is too enormous to bear.

"And that is all."

I remember touching your hand and
Your eyes came to life.
It felt like soft rain in my chest.
My skin used to carry this memory;
but no more.
I wish there is a way to go back, to recall, to see
even just an apparition of that dream;
where there was you, and I; the evening
that stretches forever
"And that is all."

Be silent, my love

My love is mute
And my anger a Hitler.

I can feel my love swelling up and around
Me, quietly rising like the sea.
A tsunami.

But I can hear all day long when my hatred
Breaks glasses, wrecks houses, scars skin
How my hatred
Burns the city.

I wish it is easier to speak about pleasant things
Like the warm feeling I get by being close to you
The kind of kiss we share that will never be like any other
The way you hold my hands and gently squeeze them
As if by doing that you can remember that your hands are still there.
The way you look into my eyes and tell me
That you need me, need me the most, the one and only
You need me to breathe and sleep and be.
And I will say I love you too.

I never have anything to say to these feelings.
Because my happiness is a mute
And my anger is a Hitler.

Untitled #2

What good does an apology bring?
The future is like death; unknown and feared,
the present is never our decision,
and the past is always here.

One day, all of my regrets are going to murder me.

Who says

Who says this is a place where thoughts blossom?
Scratch that.
I change my mind thirty-seven times per day.
More times than I eat, sleep, read and say 'I love you'.

Who says this is the place where I make sense?
Sometime ago, I ran out.
Decisions are chances you get, you let go, you missed;
Senses are the apparitions of freedom.

And you can't convene with ghosts.

Like blood

There is a little bit of lie in every happiness
Encapsulated in every dream.
It was like the time when we walked and
laughed and the sun was setting against
the magenta sky.

It must have been the dimmed light of the universe
Clouding my eyes.

Talk to me, you said, and what else
is more fitting to talk about
than ships and sealing wax; cabbages
and kings, while we gently picked up every oyster
to return them to the sea?

You smiled, the night set in, and the carpet of stars
was flung.
They glittered like so many broken glasses.

I wanted that night to leave imprints on my skin.
But the waves must have been trying to
say something when they wiped
our trail away;
Like washing blood from
the war-torn shore.