A.ri.Ma

A footstep drawn to sought An impeccable hubris adorned the chest They trudged night’s ghastly field In their hand, a witty trigger of inked sheet

The pathfinder is en route Abysmally dragging their feet Crossing plethora of thorns Their flesh naked to scrap

The rotting stench of cadaver Only served as a magnetic pull Towards a throne of ashen Burnt and wasted from its usual gold

Let us count along And award them a satire hymn To the void filled core of those who fell Yes, fallen victim to their follies

With a cilice cuffing them at ground level And their wings splinted apart What purpose do they serve Other than means of embellishment?

For this glory that resounded In an abyss where none escape Us, pathfinders tainted the page With acrid inks in the colour of red

Lame imitations of a pride Merely showing marginal bravado This place has kept us alive By the end page burned to our sanity

Still, the night flowed alongside As a solemn company to those who seek Someday it would pay, yes But would it be your greatest escapade?

I recalled the days past When vastly enclosing black Greeted me along with their scattered lights They turned the murky depth of muds Into a reflection of their own

This entity itself is a mishap Roughly cut on its edges Artificially blended with robust colours Just the way a quirky artwork Being shown in a dark room

Such imperfect form that the artwork behold Was buried beneath layers of satin Admired as a paradigm Placed high enough For nobody to ever come close

Outstretched pair of arms Would only become an obstruction Because under the light they emit They created a shadow borne illusion Of intertwined hands Being left merely to lick their own wounds

Even though it was yet to be put down Layers of satin started to shed Leaving a perfectly well-placed flaws Accentuating the art in its wake Capturing sights in their haste

This whimsical gallery has been opened And onlookers rushed in Amidst them was one early wanderer Still asking why they were here

Those onlookers created a clamour Such aggravation to the wanderer As they tried to piece together Shards of imperfection left astray

While the crowds shouted in euphoria The art gallivanted through And the wanderer turned their back With only a barely completed puzzle Of subtly blended hues That wouldn’t ever fit the art Tightly clasped that it bleeds

An enigma wouldn’t even be enough To lead the paragraph into perfection Only the wanderer stood silent Torn between to stay or to leave Because only by the one who spoke That the voice will be heard

And yet the journal would still be laid out Bearing the scratch of pale blue ink And the foreseeable blotch of tears It’s for sure that the art wouldn’t be owned Still, it would be drawn all over here

By these exaggerated set of words merely waiting to be heard

I recalled the time when I thought of life as an equivalence to the questionable theory of Schrödinger’s Cat. At the very least, mine does held an undeniable similarity to that of the cat’s fate.

But maybe, the wrong lies on my cowardice entity. The one who refused to open the box. To befall the unforeseeable reality on my unsuspecting superposition. The one that is absolutely afraid to know either life or death marred the inside and just be comfortable in knowing neither.

The me who abhor corporeal present moments more than anything.

And no words could ever describe how much I wallow in self-hate over the bitter realisation that dawned upon me. How much my self-deprecating thoughts haunted me from dawn to dusk. And how much my unacceptance of this agonisingly sudden burst of emotion taunted me.

For every waking moments, I plead so that those world of desolation would be given back to me. The crushing, yet comfortable silence that distinguished my inner world, from none other than those plethora of abominations. Wicked noises, infinitely void of meanings.

And don’t we all love irony? About how much we hated those buzzing noises, yet still basked in it. About how many times we cursed upon them as evil doers, yet still unrealistically ignorant regarding the fact that we are one of them?

Which brought me back to the point where I realised that I’m not the only one aimlessly wandering the depth of ambiguous conscience. That this mental turmoil I undergo is nothing but a speck of dust in the face of universe. And I should not have lamented over it, let alone being a victim over it.

Surely, saying so would be an exaggeration of my part. For the concept of fervour is something hardly understood by the likes of me. And now, all I can do is to hold myself down. So this surge would extinguish itself and leave me. Allowing me to reclaim the long past halcyon days. Which taught me the importance of words, so I may use it wisely, and logics, so I would not be dragged over unnecessary shenanigans.

Thus, I put my thought to an end when two arms joined at their maximum point. Leaving me with a surreal sense of satisfaction, and an oddly not so off-putting peace.

…as I swallowed yet again, a bitter sense of longing.

Crossing the line between a restless night and a plain morning The stagnant silence drove me into a hazy state Reviving the buzzing masses into statics Emptied yet not shut

Stuck between alertness and nothingness With the murky black to bring me alive The glistening pool of mud It won’t close, not even one bit

My mind might have tricked me Is that a parallax error I see? Two arms echoed gallantly Mocking, resting on the first quadrant

Sure, let’s have it that way

I’ll go contemplate the weight of life Just to multiply it by the distance it goes through That’s the power it needs Care to join my mirth?

This is getting tiring Those arms broke through the fourth quadrant Now on to the next thing How should I decode this rebellious tempo?

Another cycle of PAT? Fluctuating rush of red under my skin? Why would my hippocampus be here!? God above, I never asked for this

Pray tell, what kind of jest you played on me For it stirred the mud even further Dismissing the melatonin within a blink Am I right, shadowed star of Acedia?

You who brought down the wall of this icy chamber And played with the caged fire underneath Face me, the one without care What fluctuates within the night you grasped

That way, this resounding silence might be no more Either classic good or bad will do For I missed the time when ivory is a lullaby And the serene call of dawn is not a sleeping drug

When those two arms are blurred from my vision The shadowed star, yes They sway between sights Waiting to haunt the upcoming dawn