Btlk-like

Important Reminders

It hurt so bad and I did not want to feel all of this pain and dread anymore.

Perched. So gently.

(for a better resolution, click on the picture)

Hands held breaths,

Claimed themselves to be Gods today;

Said:

Here lies a body-

And the life within,

Both held in my grasp.

We do not have the habit of letting go;

Even in infanthood

They taught us how to hold things,

Clutch them tight,

For anything given the chance of leaving

Will run away from you.

I have gone through life

Holding things that do not embrace me back;

I have the cuts to prove it.

Sometimes, we cut parts of ourselves

Just to watch something heal.

What are hands

If not something that holds

Another thing;

Another person,

Another body?

Sometimes hands let things fall,

Get tired of holding so much of

What does not want to stay;

Hands look in the mirror,

Ask themselves what have they become,

What have they done?

All that blood and all that glory:

You can not wash away either.

I once wrote a poem.

And the poem strangled me.

I wrote another

And it held me.

How do you know who is here for the slaughter

And who will embrace you,

Unless you see their hands

Reach for you?

You know you cherish them

When their absence aches-

A non-existence of ache

That attaches itself to you.

And sometimes we cherish those

Who slaughter us.

Like God.

Or the hands of our lovers.

I think the kindest thing a God could do

Would be to leave us alone;

To not stand there, peer over our heads,

Look into us, quite so literally-

Not keep a track of the actions,

Of intentions;

Or disapprove what we became.

Gods bring catastrophes

We are not ready for;

Bring forth wreckage,

Not knowing what to do;

Gods cause so much damage;

I mean Hands.

Hands reaching for things

They do not know how to hold yet.

Perhaps Hands should leave things be,

Unclench those fists,

See how much there is

To simply caress.

A.G.

Inevitable

We were a prolonged sunset,

Something beautiful

That we knew 

Would end in darkness anyways.

We were a mouthful of words

The tongue couldn't help but mess up.

We were a tiny cat

Who climbed the big tree

And forgot it had yet to learn 

How to come back down.

We went skydiving,

Up, up, up 

And the earth pulled us back down;

We free fell into our own demise

And made a mess,

We left chaos behind.

Boo.

To acknowledge the Monster is to say

It is here,

That it has been here all along;

It is to stand in the dark with a terrible thing

Hoping it does not devour you.

To be hopeful is to be terrified

Of anything otherwise;

It is to hold on

To withering threads of optimism

As the likelihood of the unfavourable

Gets the guillotine ready for your head.

To scream Monster is to say

Here stands a terrible thing

That scares me;

You cannot simply

Take the elephant out of the room

And throw it under the bus,

You know?

To be scared is to admit

You have something to be scared of

And something to be scared for.

To draw a monster and ask yourself

What makes one,

Is to ask yourself what you consider

Dreadful enough to be called inhuman.

To tell stories of your childhood

Is to say it is long gone;

It is to acknowledge

Childhood pushed you off the cliff

And ran away.

It is to say you have been

Free falling ever since,

Trying to grasp at things

That do not stay.

To have an inheritance

Is to say that

Everyone in the family is dead.

To scream Monster

Is to stand in the dark beside it

And say you know terrible well enough

To know what a Monster is.

To say you are here

Is to realize there was a time

When you were not,

That there will once again

Be a time

When you won't be here;

It is to say you don't know

What time is anymore.

To be alive

Is to be terrified

(All the time)

And hopeful,

Even if the guillotine

Is getting ready

For your very execution;

It is to turn the lights off

And sleep in the room

With the Monster

And pray like hell

It does not kill you.

- A.G.

so maybe there will be no coming of age.

maybe there will be no moment, signifying glory;

hell, maybe there will be no glory.

maybe we'll simply be two people who were here and then weren't.

the gods will not line up moments for us to scavenger hunt our purpose;

maybe we will not have a purpose.

or a god for that matter.

in one moment you're driving home and you're singing loud with your best friend;

in another you get mistaken for a man with your helmet on, the bulky death bike and then you get out of a ticket when the policeman sees your face and you come home in giggles.

in another moment you've decided to live through another day.

so maybe we will not be anything that aches when it is gone.

maybe we'll be mundane and chaotic indecision floating in an abyss of our own selves

and maybe you never get to meet that famous 2010 singer you liked as a teenager,

and you never get to learn the fourth language,

or go to that remote country

or kiss the love.

maybe there is no love here.

maybe we will go quietly, with naive hope that is false but you hold on to anyways

because if you do not have this hope to hold on to, there is nothing else.

to hope is to have the courage to pray, against all odds,

to pray that there is someone out there lining up things for you,

lining up lives and people for you to become.

to have hope is to be terrified of all the realities.

we'll go quietly, unnoticed;

and yes this does not match what we wanted to be,

but there are happy endings in all those poems and stories to make up for all the ones you never get to have in your reality.

A.G.

I am a walking grave

Of all the people

I did not let myself become.

This sadness is the only eulogy

They will ever hear.

There are skeletons which live in closets

That have been kept shut

For far too long

And the skeletons need their coffins

And the coffins their graves

And one too many graves

Makes a cemetry

I am the cemetery:

The door that locked its own kind out;

The graves, the coffins and the skeletons.

But I am alive, goddamn it!

Buried within myself

People I did not

Let myself become.

People were not meant

To carry so much of

What wasn't alive,

Coffins do no justice to the living.

Lives aren't meant

To be spent within boxes,

How the hell did

We get tricked into believing

They will do death any justice?

You are alive,

And everything

You could've been too,

Just not here.

But somewhere,

In another universe,

You exist

But are everything

You have always wanted to be,

And perhaps,

Someday in this life too.