I.

Direct in my arrows, slanted
In my writing. I lean on you.
Thousands of ghosts emerge
Through the wuthering
Heights, the weeping troughs, the
Abysmal butterflies wishing they
Were caterpillars.

Direct in my fears my tears,
Circular in my heart. I circle back
To you.

I could put your lies in a row like ducks
Duck, as I aim at you—
Duck— yellow, plastic and blue…

Swimming stoic, floating violent yet free—
I shoot them one by one with a
Water gun loaded with my
Red ink thick as blood, as my black ink
Flowing down my cheeks onto
My paper my screens—

When I truly needed some neon pink, some baby
Blue, some warm innocence wrapped in
The spooky darkness of a talking disappearing
Cartoon cat with hacksaw teeth. Regretfully
I digress— land in an ultra-violent
Mirage as the wounds in my
Soul speak and sing—

I let your her be; I let her bleed—
Only half-delighted by your bad karma.
Wish you dharma, absolution,
For you are a lifeless life for life in my
Absence. Yet,

I need your ghost to vanish. I need you to be
Off-topic, so I can move on from
Your kaleidoscopic, myopic, hypnotic
Presence emerging through the cracks of my heart—
Parts of your DNA still rest restless
Within my body my psyche.

II.

Why am I still swimming in your
Ocean when I am doomed to
Drown like the light within your
Shallows? Like a fish screaming in
Silence on the shore collapsed half-alive—
Wondering why she swam hard
And steady when she could die slow

Female body parts cut by the knife of your male
Gaze, an internal bleeding catastrophe, like fireworks you
Hear when you are home alone, look outside and
Wonder what they are ruin-celebrating now…

The parts of the whole— barely carrying
The residue, the shattered parts, with
Piercing shards contaminating the whole
The sum— less than the whole
For I am left with the shadow of a
Heart, a ghost of a heart;
Haunted by a ghost of the
Past I carry around.

The sum feels less than the whole. Less is not more. I keep miscalculating my actions' rewards, and end up with false alarms, false throes, birthing no new words, even to toss out.

Titanic's also rise

When I find myself writing about other people, those subjects that matter, I find your eyes blazing in the dark. They are demanding; demanding my undivided attention, where I feel divided, partitioning my heart from my mind. I strive to become a master of my own mind, only to fail and fall back into a dream, a mirage, a scream, a montage— of us dancing forever.

I surrender unwillingly to an unknown force I have known too well, like I have no choice but I know I do.

Clawing onto an idea of perfection is doomed to fail. I often get hit by the waves of the past. A blast from the past, blasting music from another era. Time travel made easy. Time that is dead and buried in boxes, in graves, if we are lucky enough to die only once— how many of us are actually alive?

Are we lucky enough to die in parts, and live in arts? Have we managed to download our emotional state within our consciousness to the clouds yet?

The moon rises. The sun also rises. The sun also sets. The sun also sinks. And the sun also sinks and dies. I find consolation in culminations, in endings. Ruled by the laws of impermanence, we all are.

One day, skyscrapers will swim in climate change’s baby sea. One day but our titanics may never rise again. They remain sunken, deeper than we can reach, let alone imagine. They may never rise again, and if they do, they will tell our sad stories, painting our happy times blue.

Along with Jack, along with Rose, who dies every time she recounts her. Story aching in her like all the fish and the stars who watched and heard the screams like sirens in a moonlit night, as if the sun promised not to rise again. Yet the tragedies are all followed by another day rising, gray or high, and you realize that the worst day of your life is 24 hours only.

Am I acting out of character? Have I become too optimistic to make my signature dark art? Used to being vampiric, parasitic towards my melancholic muses, are these the first signs of my exorcism? My art: my mirror, captures my shift in treasured desperation to unnatural hopefulness.

Did I birth new titanics staying afloat in glee? Did I let them be, sunken in a foreign sea, so I could swim lighter, swim free?

Did I find myself going off-topic, off-script? Do I need open wounds so the light could flee and land where I need it be? Or do I need healed wounds to mark them in glittering gold? Have I successfully exorcised your residue from my body, my psyche? Am I whole again or is this a fantasy?

The unseen part of the iceberg emerges, like the dark side of the moon. The dark side existed all along. Existing at all is a bliss birthing new tiny “titanic”s every time, when I find myself going off-topic, off-script, off-the-grid…

Titanic's rising like a blood in the ocean, enticing sharks like you, yet I remain alive— I must have found you dead in my script, or have my heart murdered your remains?