Love in the time of dystopia

One does not enter into a pas de deux
To be suffocated by the garish smell of roses,
Haunted by the lamenting ghost of Petrarch,
Asphyxiated by the abhor able lies of fairy tales, or
Stifled by pledges of love that even
God is incapable of.

We are but mortals,
Plagued by the disease of incapacity,
Living among those
Living putrid lives, cowering behind
Facades, veneers, suffixes.
Adorned with various ornamentation of aggrandizement.
Brandishing pitchforks and bibles.
Sounding barbaric war cries of desperate psalms
Over the hills and the valleys

And yet we flood, parched, heat scorched basins in deserts,
Deaf to the echoes of yelps resonating from
A distant Babylon
A barbaric tumult.

You could have been the spectral orb that
Descended into the decrepit microcosm of my
Non-existence.
Such clairvoyance and astute discernment.

We talked
To the proximity of dawn
Deep conversations
Till the imminence of a new day.
Which beckoned us to our respective
Pigeon holes, miles away.

The mundane somehow dressed itself
Resplendent in couture gowns

But you know how they say,
It is always a placid, languid calm before a raging storm.

A thousand scars,
Festering wounds.
But some say decomposition is an innately beautiful thing.,
Perhaps it creates fertile soils
To sow the seeds of regeneration.
A baptism of fire.
Who would have thought that we would emerge
Scarred but unscathed.

I huddle,
In a fetal gnarl .
A silent-guilt ridden catharsis.
Apocalyptic Merapi.

All was white hot. All was chaos.
We’d both wish we were
Masters of the art of repression.

But we are happy now.
We put down our shotguns and bottles.

Indeed, purgatory is at our door steps.
One thousand years of a monochrome rapture,
Sucking the righteous into incandescent clouds.

But not you, not me.
I’d like us to be left behind, on this
Godforsaken wasteland,
To witness the epic destruction of Mother Earth.

Climbing trees, scaling canopies to have a glimpse of the world.
Crumbling, nevertheless.

We were born afraid,
Nourished by insects blood,
Birthed from gilded loins
Scars are collectibles,
Part of growing up and old.
A masquerade, a macabre parade.
Martyrs died sanctified but insane
We salute those who fell before us,
While we traverse from
Pigeon holes to panic rooms
Deck the nondescript mundane
With Bohemian crystal chandeliers
That could have fed a starving nation.

I remember stroking gilded roses with a shortness of breath.

There is something rather lyrical in the windows, reflecting light from monstrous cranes. I thought I saw Orion’s belt. I gulp the slush of frozen wine in the light emanating from the leftover tea lights we bought for our Sunday beach escapade to some man-made beach. A beach, a fabricated beach of reclaimed land and exquisite imported sand. A beach, nevertheless.

I remember the horizon laced and lined with the lights emanating from the lights of a thousand ships. If only the they had been mobilized and summoned by some legendary beauty by a jealous lover. Helen of Troy perhaps, with a beauty so ridiculous enough to move a thousand vessels. Oh Agamemnon, you foolish cuckold.

A sigh from the shortness of my breath extinguishes a tea light and I scramble to relight it with an adjacent candle only to be mildly scalded by molten wax.

I continue to scribble incessantly and ramble in a frenzied handwritten soliloquy. Reciting, with a pen, a monologue, nobody would bother to read. These pages might just end up feeding the famished flames. But to delete is an action of such convenience.

Slush wine melts from the heat of my tongue feeds my ataraxia. Bacchus, Epicurus, I
eschew all faith in an afterlife. This bottle fuels a fecund mind, orchestrated catharsis.

The sound of traffic, the scent of dried flowers. The waft of cigarette smoke. The dancing shadows from the gyrating flames are companionship tonight.

A night alone is like one hundred years of solitude.