Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
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if i look back, i am lost
taylor price
Game Changer & Make Some Noise
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One Nice Bug Per Day
d e v o n
The Stonewall Inn
YOU ARE THE REASON
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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@hillbentboy
Nearly 12,000 years of human civilization and nobody has ever been able to measure a soul or describe its function. Because it doesn't exist.
There's nothing called a soul. Yup, you heard me right.
A soul is a gathering of feelings that make you what you are. Feelings don't pre-exist. They clay you to shape as you go through life.
A soul isn't who you are born with. It's who you've become.
And then after decades and centuries, by the sheer will power of buoyancy, you again resurface, all of a sudden, just like that, and you remember that you are still alive. And you gasp at air and you gag on oxygen and your eyes crack open like seeds waiting to germinate. And then you meet the blue sky, the nitrogen lined spacesuit of planet earth, and you remember who you were and who you had forgotten to become, and there’s a sigh of relief, a letting go of stifled complaints never uttered, and you slowly begin to realise that you’re still alive. And in just a few minutes before the weight of living this life starts to drag you back into the ocean, you memorise everything you see in that instant. The blue sky, twenty three vagabond clouds - a few aloof and some afflicted, eighteen seagulls, seventy six flying fish of which only sixty were safely returned, my two hands all shrivelled in the water, and the vast emptiness of a world that reverberates with only the sound of my breathing, only to finally see, that you are still not there.
Always remembered. Never forgotten. 25th Feb. ❤️
What if all of this was nothing, just a passing fog, the faraway bark of a dog in the mountain announcing a passerby, a wail of solidarity with a lonesome moment, what if all of this was nothing. My face freezes in the wind, it’s dark and the winding road hides behind a veil, the dog barks again and it’s stranger-o-clock in the evening, I trudge on. There is a story of a sage who lives atop this town in the snow, he is five hundred years old and visits no one, maybe the dog forewarns, maybe he is nothing, what if he was nothing but just a story breathing in a cage. I trudge on. The dog follows me, a friendly distance maintained to not usurp privacy, a show of solidarity with a lonesome man making sure he doesn’t get lost, he doesn’t know I have come of age, it means nothing to him. I can see the slivers of snow enlightening the hills, shimmering like phosphorus of ocean waves, I breathe heavy exhale a fog, I stand still for a second and the dog stops too and waits, I look into his eyes moist with tenderness, tail wiping away the sadness in the wind. What if all of this was nothing, just a chipped moment of time’s forgetfulness, a wedge in a rock to hold your fall, and then I wonder, what if all of this was everything.
#hillbentboy
It took her tedious minutes to recognise him, his face sifting through sand in little dunes, changing shape, hue, through different variations and probabilities of facial acquaintance, till a familiar countenance emerged from the far reaches of her outer memory. Vivaan, she exclaimed, suddenly recalling him from college. Remember me? He glazed at her eyes, with all the twenty years in between now and then, with all the candy floss colours of a time gone, the haircuts, the bell bottoms, the discotheques, the looking at her from a distance and looking away, the anonymous bouquets at her doorstep, the evening walks below her window when there was nowhere to go, the crestfallen summers, the heart wrenching nights that condensed into long forgotten poetry, wishing her well from afar as she drifted away slowly like a leaf floating on water, and the cold sunsets in the boulevard orange and forever suspended like teardrops - and he smiled and said, his voice reminding her of windswept valleys: yeah I think so. And he wondered why remembering was so damn easy, and it was forgetting that took so long.
It’s a long way to church, this Sunday, the red white and yellow chrysanthemums picking up pace and beginning to bloom a couple of months too early, the rains still not forgotten. My bed crumpled under the weight of last night, your sweat that has secretly been stealing your scent sleeps vaporised in a blanket over me. I remember your forbidden places, no not your vagina, your armpits from where you evaporate, your navel that rises and falls like dynasties, the deep abyss between your big toe and your second where you hide your laughter, the exhalation from your mouth that bathed me with sunlight, your unspeakable tongue. We crucified the lord before the motherfucker was born, we exiled him from spring and kept the wine just to ourselves. We released our breaths, the breeze that pollinated the flowers, and the birds absolved the Sunday from our sins. And you sit there laughing and I sit here thinking - it’s such a long way to church with you, any given day.
He stood by the window and surveyed the exposure of the evening collapse in a heap, the birds madly chattering like schoolchildren after the final bell, the chatter getting louder and louder like a wave into a crescendo, and at its peak all the birds would just go quiet, all of them all of a sudden; and after a brief reverberating silence, they would repeat the cycle. And he wondered where do birds go to die every day. In all his life in the city he had never seen a bird dead of old age in the streets, and there should have been many because thousands die every day, hell he couldn't even remember seeing a middle aged bird, let alone an old one, hopping around with slight difficulty, a natural outcome of life. And then what about the rats, the mice, the lizards, the roaches, the snails, the stray dogs, the mosquitos, the cats, the spiders, the flies, the bees, the moths, the whole kingdom, where do they go to die. And he realized that in a city where there should be millions dead every day, he was not witness to a single one, the city was a deathless paradise for its fauna, they never die, they just merge into the background. Apart from the ones we kill, of course. But still, where do they go to die he thought, and he searched his city, his mind travelling the roads, the parks, the backyards, the nooks, the crannies, the bookshelves, the gutters, and he realized it couldn't be the city, and his mind began to wander all around the metropolis, the movie halls, the skyscrapers, the prisons, the subways, and he wondered absently if there was a place where humans go to die.
He stood by the window and surveyed the exposure of the evening collapse in a heap, the birds madly chattering like schoolchildren after the final bell, the chatter getting louder and louder like a wave into a crescendo, and at its peak all the birds would just go quiet, all of them all of a sudden; and after a brief reverberating silence, they would repeat the cycle. And he wondered where do birds go to die every day. In all his life in the city he had never seen a bird dead of old age in the streets, and there should have been many because thousands die every day, hell he couldn't even remember seeing a middle aged bird, let alone an old one, hopping around with slight difficulty, a natural outcome of life. And then what about the rats, the mice, the lizards, the roaches, the snails, the stray dogs, the mosquitos, the cats, the spiders, the flies, the bees, the moths, the whole kingdom, where do they go to die. And he realized that in a city where there should be millions dead every day, he was not witness to a single one, the city was a deathless paradise for its fauna, they never die, they just merge into the background. Apart from the ones we kill, of course. But still, where do they go to die he thought, and he searched his city, his mind travelling the roads, the parks, the backyards, the nooks, the crannies, the bookshelves, the gutters, and he realized it couldn't be the city, and his mind began to wander all around the metropolis, the movie halls, the skyscrapers, the prisons, the subways, and he wondered absently if there was a place where humans go to die.
I still remember the call from Mayank. I was evading him and he insisted on meeting me that day, today 24th Feb, 2020. He said 'We HAVE to meet today." He had never been so forceful. For some reason he was so insistent, I gave in.
I had met him a few times, an exceptional poet on insta, and he came all flourishing, showing off one of my writes saved on his phone, saying it was his favourite. We spent the whole day together. Drinking, lunching and finally dining late into the night.
He died the next day. Woke up and had a heart attack. I didnt know. Wondered for 3/4 days why he wouldnt return my messages, wondering if I had offended him somehow.
I think it was after a week I got a call from his sister and got to know, because I was the last number dialled and I was the last pics on his phone. She just wanted to know his last hours.
His sister messaged me today. I think forgetting is a beautiful thing.
To Mayank.
And she walked out of his chapters a hundred times, each time fading a little more than the last, like a vignette screen that never slams the door but whimpers away into the endlings of a story.
Far away, in the rustle of the leaves, her grumbling turned into sighs of a thousand apologies that she wasn't ever big enough to muster, and her shadow became smaller and smaller until she was no more than a whiff of regret.
Meanwhile the needle in the record player cracked and wheezed to announce the finish of a song and slowly lifted itself with resolve and detachment to another beginning.
The vinyl began to rotate again dispersing another new song, a new morning and the world kept on turning, churning magic from the crevices of its weatherbeaten skin.
Let me write you a song, let me get it all wrong. This narrow village is so pretty, the sun sets so fast past the hills and it gets cold, but the warm lies in my hum. We had it all right baby, till we got it all wrong. But if that wasn't so, we would be content and happy, but there would be no song. So it was right all along.
I just took a chilli, crushed it, and spread the seeds around as I walked in the evening. Better than killing a hundred harmless flowers.
Chillies, because mother loved them.
#worship #mother #dontkillflowers
What if all of this was nothing, just a passing fog, the faraway bark of a dog in the mountain announcing a passerby, a wail of solidarity with a lonesome moment, what if all of this was nothing. My face freezes in the wind, it’s dark and the winding road hides behind a veil, the dog barks again and it’s stranger-o-clock in the evening, I trudge on. There is a story of a sage who lives atop this town in the snow, he is five hundred years old and visits no one, maybe the dog forewarns, maybe he is nothing, what if he was nothing but just a story breathing in a cage. I trudge on. The dog follows me, a friendly distance maintained to not usurp privacy, a show of solidarity with a lonesome man making sure he doesn’t get lost, he doesn’t know I have come of age, it means nothing to him. I can see the slivers of snow enlightening the hills, shimmering like phosphorus of ocean waves, I breathe heavy exhale a fog, I stand still for a second and the dog stops too and waits, I look into his eyes moist with tenderness, tail wiping away the sadness in the wind. What if all of this was nothing, just a chipped moment of time’s forgetfulness, a wedge in a rock to hold your fall, and then I wonder, what if all of this was everything.
My mother was not my friend. My mother was not a soft lap. My mother was not my comfort zone. My mother was not my solace. My mother was not the one who would defend me. My mother was not the person my friends wanted to meet. My mother was my sparring partner. My mother was my opponent. My mother taught me how to take blows. My mother taught me that life is a boxing ring not a park. My mother taught me to defend myself. My mother told me that life is hard and I am too soft. My mother taught me to keep it real, and real is gritty. But the biggest lesson my mother taught me was to never ever become a Mama's boy.
The longing to eat an egg roll
Your grandmother's sandpaper skin
First visit to the planetarium that would change your life
Your first kiss had to be stolen or else it's not a kiss
Your regular barber who was on point with your chin line
That old woman beggar who promised me God will help me marry the girl walking beside me not knowing she was my sister
I gave her ten rupees as I laughed
That was my weekly allowance
Life is about all the things you will forget
Until you remember
This is life, I say to myself, as I look around in a daze at the city ablaze with the afternoon light, the sun slightly crestfallen in October, the breeze thinner and more agile, the sky caught in the middle of a pillow fight, the feathers from the pillows scattered in a Kodak moment of serendipity. She is gone and the world feels lighter and I wonder why because she was never excess baggage, the weight of a heart that can never be measured in kilograms even when it becomes the heaviest thing you have ever carried. She is gone and the world feels lighter, probably because the truth is always bitter but to stand up to it and look it in the eye makes the truth real, and what’s real is what matters in the end. And this life is real and I am real and this moment is real. And I feel light like the blue sky caught in the middle of a pillow fight with feathers flying all around me. And the heart knows that like autumn leaves feathers too will one day learn how to fall, and fall they will when they face their truth, and fall they will to keep it real, and fall they will without doubt and in all sincerity, and fall they will, but without ever knowing what it means to feel heavy.
I stepped out into the sun and there was nobody, not a single soul anywhere, and the empty road with all the discarded cars that stared perplexed at the sudden disappearance of man pleaded with me to take a stroll because it had lost all sense of purpose. And the books waved at me from hollow bookshops that reminded me of human skulls and emptied out minds, the guitars leaned against the lampposts with a vacant look that seemed to echo like sound, the hat shop waited for me to bow in recognition but I did not, I didn’t want to, because I was searching, I was searching for myself in a crowd. And there was not a single soul in sight, and the trees groaned in despair, the relentless waste of precious oxygen filled the air in listless anguish. The clouds in the birdless sky wheezed by, I thought I heard a whine of a wheelchair or maybe it was the memory of nobody’s rheumatism. No bees to pollinate, the flowers had already begun to wilt without a season, what day was it, which year, which age, and I thought maybe the elephants would remember. And if there were no elephants there would be somebody, there is always a somebody. And I adjusted my hat in the mirror on the sidewalk that threw back at me with all its contempt my exact invisible image, all dressed up but nowhere to go and no one to die for, and so I sat down to while away my rhetorical time in soliloquy, on one of the wooden benches by the park, right alongside fifth avenue boulevard after you take a right from the bus stop, the exact spot where I disappeared from existence, that evening when you finally forgot everything that was ever there to remember, about me.
@hillbentboy @prosepoetry @poetry @love @universe @invisible