Q.

Will time heal the pain or kill the memory? Did the illusion of choice set Sisyphus free? Can you lose your way and find the destination? Or will nuclear war be our salvation?

With love gone will god need Man? Would you have done enough if you do all you can?

If repeated often enough does a miracle stop being one?

Is the journey just beginning, or are we done?

Growing up sucks

Someday, you’ll hear the concern
behind every censure.

Someday, you’ll be kinder to your parents
and feel sorry for others’.

Someday, you’ll find a stranger
in your mirror.

Someday, you’ll miss the comfort of certainty.

Someday, you’ll want real food.

Someday, you’ll be all grown up
and hating it.

No Rhyme, Just Reason

We could have been in love,
introductions got in the way.

We could have smiled,
fear got in the way.

We could have flown,
gravity got in the way.

We could have been beautiful,
appetites got in the way.

We could have made a difference,
a beginning got in the way.

We could have lived the dream,
mornings got in the way.

We could have been famous,
names got in the way.

We could have made it,
colour got in the way.

We could have been at peace,
God got in the way.

We could have created perfection,
but work got in the way.

We could have won,
economics got in the way.

We could have died,
love got in the way.

We could have been friends,
egos got in the way.

We could have been happy ever after,
but life got in the way.

The Last Words

“So, you want audience with the King, huh?”

The fat soldier’s thin friend laughed at his ready wit, relishing the look of acute discomfort on the visitor’s face. It wasn’t often that they got sport like this, trapped as they were behind their desk job. But when it happened, it was good. Only the truly helpless come knocking at these doors and they make soft targets.

Growing truculent, the fat one spat out “We have orders not to let anyone in. Now get out of here before we hand you the same fate as your King!”

The visitor didn’t seem unduly worried by the threat. (He was an old man, the lines on his face making it impossible to judge his true age. Looking at him, one only knew that he’d lived too long for his own liking) He merely reached inside the rags that served as his robe, and pulling out a piece of parchment, placed it on the table in front of the soldiers. Face up, so they could not mistake the seal on it.

One glance was enough. The fat soldier took his feet off the desk, and sat up straight, his face ashen. His thin friend was already escorting the visitor to the cells downstairs. It didn’t even occur to either of them to read the note.

The thin one was back soon enough. First he had a swallow of the glass the fat soldier had filled in his absence. Then both stared at the parchment in silence, as if wishing it away by the combined power of their fear.

“I thought he’d washed his hands off it,” the fat one finally ventured.

“Do you think they’ll release him?”

“If they do, it’ll be our heads. You weren’t there that day. The people will have his blood. Or ours.”

“I heard rumours that many were incited by a few. Do you think…”

“Shh! You think too much for your own good.”

X--------------------------------------X---------------------------------------X

The cell was small, filthy. Rust coloured stains covered the walls – reminders of the trials of others. And also served as warning to the new guests: “Countless men have been broken here, spirits crushed, futures erased. Do not think you’ll be any different. Soon, your pride will be gone, and so will all resistance. All that’ll remain, will be these four walls. And an eternity.”

Huddled in the corner, he seemed to have lived his eternity already. But had he been broken?

The visitor was there as well, the sight almost too much for him to bear. But he too, had a job to do.

He opened his mouth, but the other spoke first:

“It is done.”

Silence, as both men contemplated what was to come next. Hard as the last few days had been, the visitor knew that the worst was far from over. Finally, the visitor spoke:

“Pontius has done what was required of him. Everything is at the ready. But remember, a nation hangs on your final words. We have come this far, do not...I pray... do not fail us at the end.”

“A kingdom, not a nation. The kingdom of God.”

The visitor felt uneasy as he heard these words, escaping like life itself from the still form. A whisper, yet more than a shout. Was he, in his final moments, falling prey to his own myth?

“You know that this miracle cannot come to pass, as others have. It is outside our hands. Your last words must give a reason for this – a reason for the followers to believe. Without that, all this will have been for naught.”

The visitor paused, waiting for a reply – some sign that he understood. None came.

There was nothing more to be said. The visitor had done what he had come for. Now, it was up to God.

X--------------------------------------X--------------------------------------X

The next day, the visitor joined the carnival. There was no other word to describe it. He winced as he saw the enthusiastic crowd milling about, waiting for a man to die. Housework was put aside in favour of endless debate on whether he would beg for mercy in his last moments, or die in the same silence with which he had borne his trial. School was forgotten as the young ones ran alongside their elders, boasting how they would have shown their courage in the same situation.

One good man’s life for a million saved. It seemed a fair enough bargain. And yet, the visitor wasn’t sure anymore.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It was done. The visitor turned back, away from the crowd waiting for an encore. It was done. The faith would live on. The endless debates, theories & counter-theories about why the promised miracle didn’t happen would see to it. As long as there’s room for doubt, there’s room for faith. And so, a nation would be built from the ashes of another.

But as he walked away, he couldn’t help wondering, ‘and what about the Kingdom?’

An exercise in futility

Life is incredibly frustrating. All the while you sit, and to an extent it allows you some amount of freedom to believe whatever little insanity you call a philosophy, and to use that as a coping mechanism, and then when it really starts to settle in, and you get comfortable, you get hauled out and you have to start all over again, you would think that this is a solid warning to not go i nthe same direction again, but no, the mind is an incredibly fucking stupid organ. It will go the same route, saying "I'll fashion something different this time, albeit with th same tools" , and 2 years later you'll find yourself in the same ditch you had to dig yourself out of some time ago. It's general really. It could be love, relationship, falling for the same psychotic women again and again, it could be a career, not knowing what you want and so condemning yourself to the tedium of basically raping your soul everyday when you get to work and have to deal with people you'd rather see under a tombstone with a cute little epitaph marking their unremarkable lives, and then making that statement, looking at the elitism and arrogance that caused you to say such a 'mean' thing and then realize that that arrogance is contributing more to your isolation from all the things that life on this planet is about.
The more miserable you get, the more you surround yourself with this wall of impenetrability, the more you try to appear composed to people around you so they wont see the cracking foundations within, the more you try to keep up appearances, to hold on to concepts you consider "constructive" while desperately trying to hide the big gaping holes of doubt that come across whenever you or someone else deliberately or innocently questions a core fundamental precept of whatever crap you chose to call a belief.
Life doesn't suck though, it can be nice, but the head won't let you see that, and when you are down, it will kick you in the shins some more so you can crawl a little longer. But eventually you have to crawl out, you either do that by abandoning yourself completely to nihilism, which is really not advisable, because then you have a "nothing can stop me now cos i don't care anymore" attitude, which makes you into a pretentious little bitchy goth, or you can say "we add our own meaning to life" and embark on your own quest to redefine your concepts again and again and again till you either go mad, or weave something so durable that it can withstand anything life throws at you, from random deaths of people you love, to instances that appear out of nowhere and have no tangible lesson to offer. Naturally, this does not happen often, many people who do try have incredibly ridiculous (to me) ideas wihch do not stand up to any form of scrutiny. These people are best left alone. These ar enot the only two methods. I am sure there are more, but unfortunately my moods are being severely limited by my criticism of every observation i make. I am stuck at a stage where I am trying to build something stable. A concept that involves having no concepts of life, which well, is completely self-defeating, and yet i do it, for the few moments I am able to look past that paradigm i am able to experience balance equilibrium, and this fleeting feeling that maybe life is not an ordeal after all, that it can be pleasant, that there are squares of light in the dark. But like all things, this too will pass, and it leaves you again with the uncertainty of doubt, the vulnerable feeling in the morning, the pain on seeing someone you don't wish to speak to anymore, the hundred things that make existence a roller coaster, and they keep washing on over you and spinning you around in an unstoppable vortex of change. I am desperate to get out of it, to be in it, yet be outside it watching myself be in it and not feeling numb, feeling things yet realizing the futility of emoting about something that is entirely out of your hands, yet I realize that that very desperation also keeps me very firmly in it.
Unfortunately, I fail to see the point in many things these days,love perhaps being the only exception, because it has some good benefits as far as mental health is concerned, other emotions,anger,rage,despair, they come, they stay, they go, and i still stay the same. I won't say i don't care..i do care, but there is only so much you can do for yourself and others. The exhaustion that follows the realization of futility is indescribable. I feel it pretty heavily now, so I think I'll spare you the torture of reading more of this tripe, not because I am kind, but because I can't go on without sounding like a complete charlatan.

“I wanted to clear our misunderstanding…”

The pain shot through me like an arrow. An intense, searing arrow straight to my heart. ‘This can’t be right’ I thought, as I turned to face her. That misused, shriveled up mass of hard lead shouldn’t have been able to feel anything. And yet it did.

The initial shock gives way to numbness as further words assail my ears. A twist here, a shove there, a delicate slice elsewhere – the conversation progresses.

Not that I didn’t have my part to play. But the numbness had spread to my mind by then.

“So yea. I just thought you should know how I feel. Goodbye.”

She left, leaving me on my knees, bleeding. From the kitchen knife sunk in my chest.

..................................................................................
I wrote this quite a while back. To those who know what I'm talking about, this has nothing to do with recent events. If anything, I am the one left holding the knife today.

Out here in the living planet

“Out here in the Living Planet we come to grips with life in all its ferocity… we see all the majestic power of God’s creatures… the Living Planet… out here, with me, we will meet life itself in the Living Planet…and…”

I watched, entranced, as the little man shouting these words leapt from continent to continent. Sometimes wading across the cold waters of Siberia. Now slashing his way unconcernedly through the forests of Africa. Now again, somewhere on the plains of India, surrounded by idiot natives gaping at his antics, and the colour of his skin.

And yet, while I watched, something in what he was saying bothered me, like a discordant note being played repeatedly by the idle finger of some musical madman.

A discordant note…what was it?

“Out here in the Living Planet…”

Where was I then? And where he?

As I sat there, watching him cross continents at the whim of an editing machine, I realized that to him, I and all the others who were moments ago getting our daily dose of indifference, and are now being subject to him, are not in the living planet. To him, we’re the ones through the looking glass. As surely as he is the same to us – ethereal, made of light.

But isn’t there more to it? Has he ever been a part of this ‘living planet’ to which I have membership?

Oh sure, he must have been living at some point. When he was struggling to reconcile his parent’s expectations with his dream of being an actor. When he was wandering the long road to success, with obscurity and failure awaiting his every misstep. Sure, he must have known what it is to live once.

Or have I got it all wrong? Is he truly the one living now? Living his dream. Wandering from place to place, with the firm conviction that millions across the world tune into his words and are affected by his view of life in some way, never realizing it to be a figment of the producer’s greed and the statician’s necessity.

But perhaps that is the life. It may not be the ‘real living planet’ but where is that to be found anymore? All of us live our dreams in one shape or another. The chosen few, like him, live a beautiful one. The ordinary, like you perhaps, are trapped in their nightmares.

And then there are the rest, who merely flip channels when the commercial’s done.

"We now return you to our regular programming..."

And then the ink ran dry

On nights like these, I feel equally close to greatness and insanity. On the brink of madness, I fling my arms out, ready to take flight. Or plunge to everyone’s doom. Is this delusion of grandeur? Or the elixir of Supermen? Perhaps it’s whatever I want it to be, and I don’t have a clue.

On the halfway point between insanity and greatness, I pause. The forks clear but my path isn’t. I hear it in every empty laugh sent echoing across the deserted house. I see it in the monsters lurking in the dark corners. I recognize it in the fly I just killed. I drink it out of my fridge everyday.

My pen says “Experience the Power Within” and the ink has run dry. I still continue to write. The patterns on the floor fascinate m…