Book Series: A Divine Comedy At The World’s Expense: Phase I - Earth

Chapters: 8
Poems:

Introduction

Blinded by an angel-white light,

astounded, I knelt down in reverence
without question,
for the presence I felt before me
truly did seem divine and holy.

While I was suspended in a dimension beyond human reasoning,

I recovered my human senses except my vision,
but what confounded me was that upon reflection,
my life as humanity’s pawn was lost in a labyrinth
of excruciatingly painful goodbyes, memories
that I could no longer identify as mine.

Having no sight nor memory,

much like a blinded child, I cried like the wolf who cries to the moon,
hoping the being who greeted me into this purgatory
would comfort me like a parent would to their child,
and since I was a newborn fragment of light,
I was hoping the source of all divine plight
would grant me salvation by granting me sanctuary
within its halls of ethereal white.

Before my knees gave out,

a warmth that one can only feel on Earth
wafted over my skin,
as if I was being told that I need not be worried because
I was back in a home that I still had yet to live in.

As I stood steadfast courageously,

a being manifested in the air before me,
a swirling whirlpool of pure energy in a humanoid form,
within which simmered smooth reflections of deserted and broken skyscrapers,
of deserts and oceans that were swallowing the world,
and what loomed over this waste-land was a large orange globe of destruction.
But within its silhouette - I also saw palm trees and beaches filled with people,
I lost myself in this comforting visual symphony,
and as I laid my head to rest under a beautiful oak tree,
I started dreaming of my place beside the eternals
 on the white streaks of the crescent moon.

Chapter 1: Prescribed Medication - A Life Lead Well

P. 01: Buried Alive

Buried in the soft-white, ashen grey soil

That lies beneath the beautiful oak tree,
The next thing I knew, I was a new-born boy,
Freshly alive,
Marvelling over this edge of the cosmos with my eyes,
And when I did raise my voice,
I could speak sentences resembling a melody of choice,
Not noise,
But truly purity that was beyond all else,
In a dimension of being which was heaven in this hell.

Lifted into the air by hands that had seen hell,

The joyous remarks of people I now love embraced my self,
Then, the faces of two tired individuals graced my vision,
As they raised me to the sky hoping I could fly,
Disregarding the fact that raising me would have to be in accordance with a vision -
They smiled as they hoped loving me would dance to it’s completion;

A whirlwind of emotions - A sickening glow I can never forget,

As I turn 25, I stop to regret,
The fact that I am now much lesser than what I was then,
A boy who was lost to the abstract concepts of purgatory
And was lifted in the air by stars of brilliance.

P.02: It Seems Sorted to Me

Giving myself a leeway,

I now took shortcuts every other day,
Taking liquid courage,
Perpetually grasping to stay
in a comfortable state.

But I truly was alive when I saw

Lawns of Sonipat littered with bottles,
while fellow batchmates walked along the street,
Surrounded by loud white-noise - the ambience -
Whizzing past them were white taxis,
Taking their exit in a hurry;
We found a hack for living life,
They found a hack for making more money.
Bracing for impact,
The world inverted over fifty times
As I downed another red bottle to fuel my petty rhymes.

And when I woke up

I always found that my money was gone,
With eyes refusing to open,
And a throat as dry as the desert,
I struggled to gain my bearings,
Right before destructive tendencies took over,
And I ended up buying another pack cigarettes -
further blurring My vision.

P. 03: Delirium Tremens (Visionary’s Isolation)

Blurred visions lost in abstract shades of opaque blue and tangerine orange,
I saw them as I writhed in agony from scathingly harsh withdrawals,
They distracted me and made me forget my predicament,
Because at that time,
My constitution was similar to that of a patient’s.

The cigarette’s smoke formed illusions of grandeur

Within the dimensions of my mind - a white-washed room,
Smoking I rested, vying for a future where inquiring compassion requires no warrant,
I was alone then, because of which
the consequences behind my actions seemed exorbitant;
Amounting to barely anything I,
Asked for a sight brighter than the moonlight captured by my eye.

I hardly ever tried to ascend this morbid reality,

Because another day lost in a haze,
was another day that didnt shock my sanity
My focus, blown away by thick gray smoke,
Lazily I barely pulled past a mile of hardwork.

But then sometimes I slowed down, paused

Then thought,
If the world was truly changing or if we were all just playing hide-and-seek;
This was me trying to seem wiser than I actually am,
It’s a shame I didn’t put to use the gifted genius of a child,
Instead wasted time sinking into nonsensical plots and videos.

Now I’m aging my way to death, still trying to press rewind,

But hope, yes it sits still like a boat, making me as happy as I would be at home,
While reducing me to an indistinguishable piece of a much larger whole.

P. 04: Leo’s Dream

I may be nothing but a cog in this big machine,

but I am being real with you when I say that yesterday a cat I knew died
and my life’s problems seemed bigger than you can imagine at that time.
And to nullify that reality, I drank and philosophized,
explained to myself how lies and deceit are nothing
but projections of the mind I have become comfortable with:
What I really should have been doing is mourning;
But how can one, so adamantly and self-righteously,
come to terms with the death of a loved one,
without being intoxicated
with a love which can never be found in humans.
So I drank, quite listlessly I must agree,
slowly praying to a heavenly or transcendental being,
to comfort the peaceful soul captured perfectly within Leo’s dream.

P.05: hi THC (Hell In The Hotel of California)

Living 25 years on this Earth,

I haven’t seen much except
Each day overbrimming with questions, while
Each day the number of answers lessens,
But it doesn’t matter to me,
For I am content
Forever caged within my world of phantoms.

Now I am constantly in Limbo,

with no emotions left, like the caged bird that sings,
No longer recognising the cage I have been trapped within,
Happy with knowing what freedom is like, yet subjugated to the system;
We’re slaves to any society’s judgement,
so I tend to conform,
Realising I am trapped in a web of connections but
At the end of the day, also realising that I am loving
What it feels like to be in Hotel California -
- Is this what the lord of the skies used to sing about?
Then, everytime I connect with this nexus, the hive mind,
It drives me further into egregious traps sprung out of illusory words,
Making me lose all sense of my identity.

Guess I jumped on the bandwagon school of thought too late,

Still, I acknowledge this smoke that comforts me,
Making me lose my memories of flying openly,
Without a single care in the world.

Imagine me wrapped up by a quilt made of vague blue smoke,

Hallucinating a group of grinning hippies,
Whose voices humorously tell me to rise above -
This cycle forever spins.

Chapter 2 : Seasonal Allergies - Memories of This Life time

P. 01: When it Rains

I ruminate over the course of my existence,

Slowly turning into a shallow husk,
Bereaved of all the irrational things most humans
Are priviledged to obtain during the course of their life,
For example, an old hippy’s delightful dream.

This I said, as jealousy ran through my veins;

As heavy rain started to descend on my being.

Darkness, malice, and rain,

They go together don’t you think?
For example:
Like how a burglar thieves upon the incidence of midnight; or
How you have a sad and ordinary day when the clouds are grey,

And then it rains…

I think it’s funny that most of our lives work that way,
Riddled with the incessant chatter created by humanity’s multitude of illnesses.

But when it rains like it has rained today,

I feel ordinary, similar to a human who is tethered to morality’s boundaries,
Finding it impossible to shake off the feeling of being an outcast
Despite being entrenched amidst thousands of other personalities and good people,
I think I barely stick out though, just enough to seem odd to myself:

See?
I find myself distracted when it rains like it has rained today,
Rationalizing my existence,
Bored of the beauty that my eye is fortunate enough to behold.

P.02: The Ensuing Night

By the time the night falls,

The downpour is reduced to a drizzle, then a hail of snow pellets,
The air breathes: cold like December;
And here I am, writing poems on a yellow bench,
Creating a place to rid the anxiety that comes with my everyday lifestyle;
The crippling fear is perpetual, I just can’t do anything about it,
Only resorting to simply writing down what I think;
What I think, is a whole lot of nothing.

But then why do I think about what other people think,

When it’s already tough to keep myself fastened to trends;
Sheep’s clothing - I call it, and I am not going to lie, I wear pretty cheap ones,
You see, these kinds of things never mattered to me, I guess they should have,
But it is what it is,

I would anyway rather be more interested in mining gems enslaved by the dark winter night,
The night that has again left me with no dreams,
Dreams of her... or dreams that my neurology can never hope to portray visually;
This is only a little of what I think, which I am not going to lie, is quite little,
But the ensuing night is always waiting to take more of my thoughts away
In a puff of smoke.

P. 03: Summer

Days of this season were rife,

Days where 1.36 crores of people boiled
Days like this, when her smile stabbed me like a knife,
When a grown rose reminded me of strife;

Take note:
This is the stride of a man,
Who has lost his life.

Losing more things in the process,

He starts to deteriorate,
Constrained by stress and ailments aplenty,
He sits down letting his mind rest,
But then out comes a plume of smoke,
Sharp like a blunt or a cigarette,
And again begins his weary day.

Solemnly I swear,
I have resembled this man for aeons,
Begging for mercy and asking for money,
Just to get ignored, trudging along the strings of memory and inheritance
Like a pawn,
A man who forgets his mistakes as easily as he yawns,
An ignorant man controlled by forces unknown.

But the only thing that seems alive to this puppet,

in his real life show as a muppet,
is the somber sunlight as it drifts in during the afternoon,
shining a light in the car
where I’m sitting with a bunch of people - people I refer to as homies,
“homies” I’d refer to other people just as easily
who drift into my mindscape of serious solitude and smoked trees;

Mirages and abstract concepts such as these

the sunlight pierces through,
Hopefully space is a beautiful afterlife for my families
And I pray in hopes of having a place there too.

Chapter 3: Earthly Attachments

P. 01: The Journey Back to Unity Begins

One thing that bothered me as I began to leave Earth-

My journey back to becoming an essential part of the whole puzzle

began with no celebration or reverence of any kind,
ruled by the medicine prescribed by nothing but my assumptions,
my life truly upheld a dim light,
so I began ditching my earthly attachments
in a grave without a date,
in an effort to transcend my consciousness.

But for some reason something halted my rightful ascension,

Whether it were memories of seasons changing that held me back,
Or the phases of my life fogged by a cloud of pain
That slowly became fogged lenses that I wore everyday,
Nothing made sense as I was suspended in this Limbo,
Eternally waiting for an entrance that was supposed to be opened somewhere,
That would rescue my soul.

P. 02: Fogged Lens

I would like to remind you:

I was wearing fogged lenses at an age as crucial as this,
I could not touch or hear anybody, losing sight of the goal ahead;
Fogged they were because of my lofty notions,
They made me feel higher than most,
Grandeur allured me just as easily as any other temptation.

Generally, chaos ruined the day as a jazz band played in my head,

I was too oblivious to the symphony of the day,
Instead I concentrated on the cymbals and snares crash,
Allowing their sonic waves to ripple through my lens.

There is smoke in the air too, and I can no longer tell

Where I am or how high I have gotten,
This is when the mind plays tricks on you
by up-sizing or down-sizing your problems,
Yes, Goddess Mary’s shouts are loud and blunt,
Oddly comforting, it’s because of them
I can go to sleep blissfully.

Henceforth, you can say I stay high and perpetually medicated,

Asking the question for which the answer is blowing in the wind,
Barely noticing the barebones below my feet,
Agitated, I lie, in my land of smoking mirrors.

In the reflections of the tinted black and silver glasses, I see skyscrapers and upper echelons of
society dive into velvets of red;
a call for action
seems almost imminent,
its urgency, immediate,
blue collars and white collars will inevitably clash, out not to be slaves for corporate labour
camps, but out for blood;
while the Parliament’s ministers will be shitting their pants,
choosing to go with the winning side as always.

I’ll tell you what aspects of me my lenses carry,

they carry the spiritual imprint of every one of my possessions
This is why I tell you,
My fogged lenses keep me ignorant and deaf
To all the cries of help you hear in the streets.
While our young nation has conquered the desolation of the past,
since we are young, and the old are still alive,
we now, cooperatively, sow seeds of greed and superiority dyed in black,
For what is the crux of power, if not obtained through a taste of sovereignty.
If it were not for my lenses, I would be swayed easily too.
These fogged lenses are blurring my vision, what do yours do?
Mine dragged me into a dark well made of money, dirtying my branded shoes.

P. 03: Possessions

Another thing that bothered me-

Close to my chest, I always kept a couple grand,

the thought of someone taking what's mine made me mad,
Only the tripling of tiny digits on a screen soothed the anger,
sadness ensued, then time trickled as if it were grains of sand;
Rinse and repeat, the day starts again on two notes forming a grand.

Similarily, when my house increased by a square meter,

pride and joy swole up in my brain, enough to cause a seizure,
awed by the overabundance of vitality I experienced in my Ark,
I proceeded to call myself King in my tiny home,
Then I got busy
Building blueprints that would help me gain more.

Sometimes I knelt down and worshiped only one being with avarice in my heart, God,
for him and his Divine preacher(s), I believed,
could fulfill my dreams wrapped in Gold;
it didnt matter how much was left in my reserves,
Acquiring more could only have satiated my greed,
So with claws clasped together, I prayed for power
as I fell deeper into those pits which are filled with snakes.

Upon reaching rock bottom, my eyes were greeted by the Goddess of Darkness,
concepts like love and altruism shined through in the distance,
but she,
With malice dripping from her talons,
grabbed onto my shoulders and pulled me closer into the pitch black,
forever shrouding me in an ink-black coffin where I burnt upon ceremonial woodsticks,
her scent of temptation - enticed me like how a gambler
cannot resist playing another round - until I fell for her,
And forgot what love really was.

P. 04: Love

Love,
It hooks my attention, making me fly like a kite,
Midnight descends on my being,
Burrowing the image of tranqulity deep in my mind,
Till it resides, comfortably nestled in my silent rhymes,
Much of which will never reach you.

For I fight the devil herself,

She comes to whisper my name,
Distracting me from the coffin she is laying me in,
She is a temptress and a liar,
She is so good
That she can whisper me into giving her my earthly possessions;
As the Goddess of Darkness,
I recognize her as the evil being who halts my progress:
My journey that ends with you,
Thus I say,
Money-minded I may be,
Yet the prospect of heaven makes me yearn for you.

And when I think of you,

I feel I am stripped off of all my Earthly attachments,
Drifting into a quiet death that would eclipse my entry into the finest
Layer of Heaven, but for now
I remain a tangible body,
Whose gifted the pathways meant to traverse heaven,
Yet whose mind succumbs to the Nine Rings of Hell.

And just when I bury deeper into darkness with the Goddess,
A light shines as if a door has been opened,
Illuminating the ghosts trapped in the shadows of the Loveless Demoness,
As if my innermost desires have come to greet me in the form of light,
Trust me, in a world of deceit and pitch-black ink,
This is the respite from limbo I have awaited all this time -
So I left my 83 year old body in search of something divine.

Chapter 4: Ascension (Through Space)

P. 01: Light-Speed

The minute I entered the gateway,

I hurtled through space,
Crossed the atmosphere in split seconds, I must say,
Woefully appreciating the dimming shine of the Milky way,
Luminous like love, are the novae.

Beautiful like sand, and soft, are the hands of this illusory charade,
Yet, I dream of a life of contentment, my life,
While knowing that in the grand scheme of things
I am nothing but a grain in the universe's eyes,
A sharp yet dark silhouette, eternally waving goodbye.

Leaving my fellow brethren on Earth,

I guess this is my final act,
Ascension at light-speed, that is only a fact,
Hoping to come across an ark, an island,
Or anything that can make me feel the reverance I felt
Before my birth, beneath the feet of a being
Who made me feel as if I could too
Rise above the consistent struggle that is life
By leaving those who it did not deem divine:
People who love, are average, and have eyes full of hope,
People, who made me always feel at home.

P. 02: Outside My Own

But then
From the other side they called my name,
whispering empty words to me,
My dear, I have learned to quieten the voices,
Those which reside in a realm below me,
Beyond my comprehension now,
However, it is the sound of the other side,
And what it says that shines a light through,
Permitting me to briefly glance into a land
Which was always greener than mine.

And the world never learns to shut up about it,

Drifting aimlessly in space we,
Lost our own footing in the promised land,
Yet I, a man with a will of my own,
Continue to drift in my own space,
Diverging from her love, from theirs,
From anyone,
Hoping for the day
When perverse hypocrisies
Turn to dust and leave the idle minds
Of stagnant people.

Through peeking underneath their surface,

I have learned less, I did lesser, while
Standing on the same spot for a thousand years.
The thought of beauty translates into all I see;
A spark I see, in these stagnant people
Dampened by those rainy clouds that adorn their heads,
Twisting what could be forevermore grand than anything else,
But these are only visions,
My current reality is overloaded by black everywhere,
And even in space, the stars become dimmer every second.

P.03: Relativity

The world ceases to exist,

as every singular moment becomes relatively slower than the one before,
nothing made sense then, even less now,
attached to the idea that was once me,
I dramatically floated along the River Styx suspended
below the pathway to heaven,
transfixed to one state, unbound by time, and torturous by nature.

Memories slowly fade as this black river engulfs all,

what was once a mime sinking in the marine green,
no longer seems to resemble me,
my thoughts stay unperturbed,
mostly distracted by nonsensical logic,
as I row myself into deeper ruminations.

Sucked into this black hole,

caused by the collapsing of my previous beliefs,
inward I float, perpetually wasted in a land of my making,
images of the past swish right past,
I am no longer obliged to hold onto them anymore,
I’d rather imbed them in these poems,
then explain this feeling to you in a monologue.
P. 04: Dark Side of the Moon

My consciousness smiles through it’s helmet,

Coating it is the universe’s leftover stardust,
Should I wipe it and behold galaxies, even nebulas,
Perhaps even see the greatness within, or should I stay ignorant?
Content I am, toying with my death while floating free.
Should I fly away, away from the mortal fate of terror and destruction
That my people are aware of but so willing to dismiss?
Or should I stay and watch the present smeared in stars
And celestials greater than my own brethren?

My morality stays silent on the subject

Like the shades of the moon -
My mind,
Obscured in knowledge that I do not wish to possess,
Continues to wander off into the black distance unknown,
Nothing tethers it to my body, which is locked up
In the extramundane wane of the moonlight.

It whistles a billion light years away,

Jumping from Acheron, Lethe, to Styx,
Forever in bliss,
Completely severed from my ideals, which is why
My morality acts as if it were remiss
Towards my guilt.

Steadily it compiles a list,

Steadily making a fist,
Hitting dark walls with anger and serenity,
It breaks out of the the Dark Side of the Moon,
Then it flies towards oblivion, willing to keep up a good fight,
As it tries to reunite with my mind - to give it some light,
To give it some colours so it can perceive the breaking of the horizon,
A new dawn.

Chapter 5: A Dawn - The Ethereal White

PO. 1: Tangerine Coast

Time blends with space, turning into primordial soup

which reality seems to be sipping like fine wine,
It bids it’s time, already finished with marvelling at the moonlight,
it’s cruising on beach chairs alongside me,
as opaque spots in my eyes turn into
kaleidoscope shards, tinting the coast
in tangerine rays.

But I tell you, it was much better when I sat below

Palm trees drinking Pina coladas & Feni on a day
I can no longer perfectly remember.
I can only remember slightly leaning on the air,
meshing into the rest of the art that nature is,
while the sun rays refracted from the sea and into my eyes
sporadically like flashing hospital lights.

An illusory memory as blissful as this is more of a mirage,

making me love a version of reality
which only existed in my mind,
I turn marine green as I contemplate,
Whether or not if I am the only one possessing memory of this coast,
or if it's another mirage playing tunes in my head;

the dawn, it breaks out upon the dead,

soothing their soul and mine alike,
we all somewhere and at some time,
See the wonderful light
with tears in our eyes,
Hope - tries to stay alive,
Mimicking the sight.
PO.2: The Ethereal White

Whether it’s falling eternally or seeing space from an almost unrealistic perspective, my dreams
constantly exhibit a lack of a plot or coherence of some sort. This is precisely why I don’t see
the point in having dreams or even writing poetry. For dreams that take the shape of unfulfilled
wishes or nightmares are essentially the center of the poet’s plight, and what also makes his
poems tragically beautiful at the same damn time. Sometimes these contradictions even make
me depressed to the point where I start to sink slowly, listlessly falling out of reality into a bubble
where the world is only a by-product of my thoughts and inhibitions. This is probably why I
always used to think life in general is meaningless, because apathy was what made me
indifferent to my own circumstances, the situations I was putting myself through at least
warranted a certain amount of concern. However, rather than be burdened with alarmingly
contradictory statements and my willful ignorance, I now would like to strongly believe that my
life has meaning - and yes I know I say that while believing our existence is literally born from a
happenstance (the Big-Bang). Us breathing and eating and living on Earth might just be owed to
the random occurrence of a cosmic event that we are ourselves not even sure of just yet. You
might then ask why I think the way that I do, notwithstanding the fact that I am aware of the
meandering and meaningless nature of it all? The foundation of my not-so prophetic ideological
system can be traced back to my nihistic attitude. And when I use that term, I refer to the time
when I could barely care enough to live. During this time I constantly doubted my place in the
world; the shockingly vague and pessimistic affirmations I imagined into being part of my reality
simply played me like a pawn that was too tempting to not be sacrificed. Cigarette smoke
engulfed all the walls around me, I sometimes even struggled to breathe but I still refused to
care for myself. I can tell now in hindsight that a lot of what I was doing could be called ignorant
and completely self-destructive. I was busy hurting people close to me, my family, and they
could sense the direction which I was choosing to navigate my way in life through. Simply put, I
was chasing mirages which were hyped up by people who somehow resembled me and what I
stood for, which to say was a whole lot of nothing. I was actually just feeding my ego with my
half-hearted attempts at trying to portray myself as something superior, you can to a certain
degree call it narcissism. I was the parasite, my mind and my body were simply what I chose to
exploit until the end caught up with me. In a sense, I was truly the embodiment of humanity that
is also like a parasite, except humanity throughout history has shown to drain the essence of
nature in exchange for finding immortality and obtaining economic transcendence. I am sure
even after we gain the ability to sift through layers of space and arrive at a conclusion that
perfectly sums up the God Particle, even when we rise above our technological constraints and
interpalentary travel turns from a possibility into a well-advertised reality, we still will never be
content. Thus, I say, with a heavy heart, that I am much the same. Chasing an ethereal light, an
ethereal white that makes the white-washed tiles and the empty walls within seem brighter in
exchange for giving up a little bit of my grey soul. And even if my ambition to become immortal
one way or the other may be obtuse and very naive, it is still a growing fire that may engulf my
spirit and help me break out of the obsure shell that I have come to recognize as myself. You
can say that I wish this fire turns on the lights in my headspace where I am deaf, mute, and
dumb to the most prepossessing of dreams.
PO. 3.1: Marine Green 1/3 - My Life

The cost of this life/

A question asked with pity/
Accompanied me/
Prompting me to hide myself/
In soft waves of opaque blue.

PO. 3.2: Marine Green 2/3 - The Rivers

Am I so alone/
That I haphazardly cry/
Tears become oceans/
I am watching the seas rue/
As marine green rivers flow.

PO. 3.3: Marine Green 3/3 - The Marine Green

Sinking in regret/
Never can i be myself/
A fledgling in pain/
Spaced out while drifting in space/
Watching Amphitrite sobbing.

PO. 4: Ethereal White

I am trying to unearth the will to explain what I see,

For the feeling is indescribable like a dream,
I say the words ‘Ethereal White’
Because this kind of extraterrestrial love is bright,
Lighting up memories tinted like the tangerine coast at night.

However, right before the entrance of any metaphorical Pearly gate,

Breathes a physical manifestation encompassing what I hate,
A minotaur that instead of a bull has a lion for a face,
Has tendrils made of smoke and soot instead of horns -
An ethereal hellish apparition that can only desecrate.

And when I step out of the marine green hues dancing off of pluto,
I pick up a sword of gems made of Jupiter,
Running towards this demon who was part of my own soul,
I drive the stake of pure cosmic effervesence through his chest
- killing what was once me.
Ch. 6: Silver City

PO. 1: Heaven

The sword stays silent/

Killing off what was human/
Then I take a step/
Walk through the door of heaven/
I walk with my head held high.

PO. 2: No Strangers

This is paradise/
Above me are soft spirits/
Beneath lies no ground/
Around me are no strangers/
I only see family.

PO. 3: Paradiso Is Devoid of Slaves

Yet paradiso says/

Speaking in volumes so grand/
To free it’s strange slaves/
Who here are rotting away/
Singing an old sailor’s tale -

Cursed to roam as strangers to all,

Unnoticed they are forevermore,
To roam the accursed shores of the vault
Of Heaven which is devoid of souls.

PO. 4: Holy Waters

The ocean flows along/

Heaven’s comforting warm glow/
Feeding the eternal/
And this manic’s crazed spirit/
That feels sorrow for the slaves -

The ones who never made it past 9 days,

Outcast and adrift in the sea they cannot pray,
Looking up at me, they wish for my place,
Never making it past
Heaven’s Gold and Silver plated gate.
PO. 5: Playground

Yet we children are/

Still evolving as new stars/
The slaves who have scars/
Can have a light much like ours/
On the playground sits their hope.

PO. 6: Losing Grace

Memories lose face/

I lose grace pitying these slaves/
As symphonies play.

PO. 7: Banishment

Banished forever/
That sentence is delivered/
After the judgement/
Found my guilt is sorrowful/
Nobody stood on my side.

PO. 8: Admission of Guilt

It was declared so/

That guilt cannot exist here -
What you call heaven.

PO. 9: What was the crime?

Call such actions crimes -

To extend some sympathy
To the weak divine/
If we are fragments of light/
Why do we tow this cursed line.

PO. 10: Fragment of Light? A Dream

We lights are a dream/

Imagined reality/
For no law is true -
I fell from this nirvana
Just because of conjecture.
Ch. 7: The Premier Frontier

PO. 1: Descension Back to The Bottom

No more can I romanticize the abyss,

exposure to the light has brought a bliss,
Darkness blitzes my descension,
But I feel no apprehension,
for I have escaped a place
just as segregated
As Earth.

Falling back to the origins of another life-time,

at hurtling speed I descend from madness - lunacy,
crossing the styx, the moon, and the stars in the wake of creeping insanity,
until I finally lost the light.

Darkness connoted the entrance

to the halls of the Goddess of the Night,
remiss of the experience of dancing with an angel,
I turned to demons in my plight,
redemption and petty salvation were not worth a cent,
if my soul was to be taken from me,
this, I confess.

PO. 2: Arrival

Breaking the stratosphere,

I lose my body made of ethereal white,
And solidify like all that roams the Earth,
Tangible, flawed, and utterly fragile.

Suddenly,
The cold sheets of wind coating clouds,
Starts to pierce my body,
Frigid like icicles and cold caverns,
I fall back to the surface shivering in isolation.

Upon reaching the pit of nightmare,

Gaia orchestrates her appearance
In the form of green vines, bears,
And shrewd monkeys,
Who break the stone that covers me,
Then take me by hand
To visit the Cities and
Golden Temples of India.

PO. 3: Journey To The East

Once again confined to a life of mortality,

This divergence from total unity,
Disrupts the corners of my brain along
With the morose views and perspectives I
Had already left behind.

Once again trudging on a journey,

One with no set destination,
Heading East I am,
That direction is set at least,
Since it reminds me of home.

Once again I enter a familiar city,

Crossing narrow streets and ugly sewers -
The by-product of Hubback,
Yet I have to say one thing:
The city becomes beautiful when
The shine of the Sun colors it orange,
It sheds light on the sleepless nights of criminals
And brings life to the corners of the hollowed streets.

However, once again I will have to leave my city,

Since I am bound to my oath:
To resolve my conflict with heaven,
I am forced to obey like Sisyphus,
Cursed to complete revolutions around the world,
Doomed to enter and leave my home again, and again.

The decree passed, I think,

Represents a black hole which is eager
To rob me of my human emotions,
Before I get entry into the gates of allurement,
Gates which no longer seem as appealing to me.
Earth v. Heaven - which is worse?
I believe this is the right question.

PO. 4: In The End

One can imagine a journey like this,
braved with the intent to see the other side,
can never bring respite to the new man,
who has already experienced the comfort,
and brevity of silence.

As the roads lengthen,

they dip out of sight,
then they resemble a part
of the grand scheme of things,
one that constantly pervades,
and somehow evades,
the understanding of
the newly manifested man.

This man will have to walk this Earth for

another lifetime - submitting to eternal agony,
shifting listlessly from one plate to the other,
always encountering death,
For him, the lush green Earth will become a desert;
a place that was always known to be so rich,
that can no longer be loved -
East or West, North or South,
None of it will matter in the end.

PO. 5: Reaching The Corner

Upon reaching the end of a cardinal direction,

I realised it was a feat accomplished by many,
But understood by few,
A feat that can be achieved by running,
Chasing a reality that can never exist,
It’s true.

For what is a life without a goal,

A concept you surrender your very self to,
Something which has to be achieved;
A need,
Your wants are aplenty,
So you can never choose to sit still and die,
Without quenching the thirst of your morality.

And for the New Man, his desires no longer diverge,

Having visited two places which he used to call home,
His wants have truly been satisfied,
The walls no longer cave around his being,
He is finally free, thus I am free, shackled to no destiny,
No longer tied to any beliefs or sentiments;
An indifferent consciousness that is nothing
But mine.

PO. 6: All Things Upon Which The Curtain Falls

And finally, the act I was starring in has ended,

This was a horrid declaration: The end of my sentence,
Excommunicated once from all that was once heavenly,
They now ask me, even invite me,
To come back to their forever outstretched hands,
I shy away, for such traitors, I can never be content to lay in bed with.

Only because I refused to bow to the divine,

Only because I proved the mettle of a human,
Only because I stopped to raise poor souls who were once
Just as lost as I was drifting into a world of purple oblivion;
Only because of these so-called crimes, I was ousted,
So now why should I beg to differ,
And fight against the ones who tossed me aside,
No more can I compromise with the sun,
For I seek my own way into the light,
Not heaven,
But something lurking
In the infinite cosmos of of your eyes

PO. 7: The Primier Frontier

Stuck at a point beyond the past

But quite a ways away from the future,
Ditching all of my self-righteous and cruel faces,
I gradually start to creep into the white light of the moon;
Steadily embracing a future that waits for me
at the end of the Yellow Road taken by few.

You, the one writing this, I’ll remember you,

When I cross over to the other side, I’ll be waiting for you,
Till then amass your experiences, fill the reservoir that is memory,
And spill it out like fine sand when you meet me at an upper echelon,
One that has confounded us time and again, which exists above your moral dilemma of living,
It begins in a place that is nestled comfortably away from heaven and Earth,
A site where learning stops, much like how our thirst stops,
So we can begin to start yearning, and living our fantasy.

Your life / my life, it is a fantasy furnished for another soul

That has transcended into the cycle of living above all else,
Keeping that statement in mind, taking it into my heart,
I start to wonder,
Whose life, which fantasies will I be reliving again,
Until eternity ends and all types of realities clash and combine,
dilute themselves into nothingness.
Me/you, we’ll be like P.I’s standing and drinking beer
On the Dark Side of the Moon,
Finally having escaped the mundane modes
That are Earth, Heaven
And here I am, drifting aimlessly in space.

Chapter 8: Discovery

PO. 1: Swords and Arrows Alight

Penmanship which sails through the expanse,

Writing unholy scriptures with eloquence,
Who am I, perhaps a djin?
Or maybe a king? Never to be answered perhaps.

I am searching,
Hoping I find something beyond,
Something more than what I have ended up with,
Will I ever find it? Or will this
Search become yet another distant memory?

Questions plague me,

As I drift alone in the wide expanse,
Believing in something more than myself,
For what else, if all else fails,
But the belief in the divine can never be assailed.

Despite the hail of swords or arrows that hit it,

The ball of light still strikingly reflects of the surface
Of the dark moon - on which a holy being resides.

PO. 2: Dreams or Reality

With outstretched hands,

I beg the ever-expanding universe
For nothing but some quiet respite,
Will I be granted a boon?

I already escaped my world,

How much longer must my penance continue?
Oh how difficult this journey has been,
Do my prayers bear no significance?

In my dreams, I belong,
In reality, I am only drifting,
Meandering meaninglessly,
In my dreams however I ignite.

A raging furnace,
Flashing figments of imagination,
Unsung songs filled with heroics,
Will they ever come to fruition, or remain alight,
In the confines of my mind?

PO.3: Full Circle

Space filled with an array of floating candles,

Burning brightly they are,
As I lay wrapped up in the cold
The white-blue surface stares blankly at me,
With not a sign of pity or empathy,
Whether I am sniffling or not,
O’dear, the moon really is unforgiving.

And as I keep wishing for warmths,

The candles come closer
Only remaining an arm’s-length away from me,
Alas, but I have no strength,
I cannot hold them and keep them for myself.

For what are these orbs of divine light,

In which visions of families and happy people thrive,
On a closer inspection, I recognize a few of them,
And here I was, a fool,
Believing I had left them all back on Earth.

Nonconversant these orbs of memories are,

Yet they speak to me in volumes as they inch closer,
Withering away, I hope they get close enough to
Allow the flames within to burn a bit longer,
And mayhaps they might also prove
To be worthwhile companions
That can shield me from my ever-lasting hurt.

For what is a young man to do,

After having engaged in self-proclaimed enlightenment.
I am left with nobody but myself in the black of Space,
I guess one could say it is what it is,
A wise man once used to say
That space is not a frontier to be conquered alone,
So I believe I must find solace within myself
And in these shimmering orbs of love.

And so what if I did in fact leave everyone behind,

As these candles grow closer to me,
I arrive at a sound conclusion,
That nobody really left me.

As I lay by myself,
Underneath me shines the moonlight,
I think nobody really was left behind,
They have all been a part of me this whole time.

PO.4: Building Faith

I must ascend once more,

Bring myself out of the muck,
The lies and deceit that I have
For the longest time
Been telling myself.

As much as I wanted to leave the exosphere,

After having achieved what I believed to be impossible,
I have realized,
That I really do hate this unforgiving cold,
The warmth I receive as I hold one candlelight,
The moon could never have given me this,
Bliss.

For the longest time I have been quivering by myself,

No longer can I stand this isolation,
I wish to be,
Once more a part of something
Greater than me,
Whether a king or a djin, or even nothing,
The only thing I wish to be now
Is a wish granted for someone else,
Just like how these candles,
Are a gift granted to me unwittingly.

PO.5: Enlightened

To twisting roads and highways aglore,

I travelled through it all,
And made it beyond the shore,
Disregarding sands of gold,
I did not foresee what was in store
As I crossed a horizon
From which none can recover their soul.

For what was I thinking,

Leaving everyone behind,
Was I simply blind while pursuing,
Or was I trying to hitch a ride,
To a world where a King
Can be as immaterial as a rhyme.

For once in my life I believed,

That I could be something more
By ascending above my already-established lore,
However, as much as I strived,
I can never be what I try to show,
So now I question for what did I roar,
And throw a hissy fit in the effort to drive
All the people who loved me
And my insecurities,
Away from me.

It is truly a glorious mess,

No matter what I do, I can never rest,
In an effort to fly and soar above my nest,
I became a shell of a human being,
Like a bird with no wings,
No enlightenment is on the moon, only things.
PO.6: Setting Off

Taking a deep breath in,

I take a shaky step forward,
Hoping that the candle-light may guide me,
Hoping that this time
There will be a conclusion to
This ever-lasting epic.

For I can no longer walk,

For what should I continue down this path
Of endless tragedies and melancholy,
With no solution in sight,
It is all due to a lack in foresight,
Intelligence aside,
I have to be brave
And dive deep into a dream,
For my reality - it was all meant to be.

And as if a newborn has just opened his eyes,

My focus adjusted to the blinding light,
That shone through the nebula,
I wish to become something more,
Without leaving behind any of my loved ones,
And without losing myself,
In the process of trying to deceive fate
And become a pseudo heretic.

Once again, I intend to start of on a journey,

With no destination in mind,
I may go West, but East does not sound too bad either,
All I know is,
I have been in a staring contest with the Abyss for too long,
And I must once again set off on a journey.