Mr. Queasy, the fish.

She turned the wooden tune about six times before the melody sprang forth. Humming to the rhythm, Little Susie swung her legs sticking out of the balcony, watching everyone walk in slumb’ry agitation, immersed in deep thought about money or something to the effect of economics and drinks. Needless to say, no one heard her humming, yet she carried on turning the wooden tune and humming.

One day Little Susie, the girl who sang with the tune at daytime and noon, appear’d dead next to the scarlet-coated flight of stairs. Father had left home, mother had died, and grandfather’s soul was a bygone memory Little Susie fought so hard to keep in living, along with her life itself. Nobody came too soon. She was there screaming, beating her voice in her doom, yet no one heard. It was not different from her cruel life in an isolated corner, where all of us put her and kept her there with our indifference. Every day, she turned the wooden tune, but nobody heard her humming pleas.

She lie there so timidly, in a fashion so slenderly, one cannot doubt the frailty of a little child. What to do when, upon screaming, nobody is there? A full hour pass’d ere we assembled on the child’s forsaken house, to see the girl who was dead. Suddenly a voice from the crowd said this girl liv’d in vain, with such agony and strain, half of us broke in tears, seething in pain, feeling the slippery scarlet between our hands. How much can one bear? How much time till one of us felt her despair? The days stroll’d by nonchalantly, neglecting Susie’s needs in her humming prayers.

Only a man from next door knew Little Susie; oh he cried, as he reached down to close Susie’s eyes. He blinded her vacant stare, bereft of life, with a white cloth that made haste to turn red, and lifted her with care, with the blood in her hair. We came too late. To scream while no one is there… To live whilst feeling there is no hope… to pray and receive no answer…. It was our fault, even the man from next door who knew Little Susie. Neglection can kill, when no one cares. And Little Susie fought so hard to live.

Oh mate, let us not kill Little Susie! Can you not hear the air muddled with prayers and cries of help? Do not push Little Susie down the flight of stairs. 

Cynic is he who
laughs heartily, not with Life
but at her, instead.

just like paper-boats,
people wander off— adrift;
caught up in a stream.

If you bear with me, I wish you to picture in neat colours several images, and make of them what your heart thinks is becoming of the case.

A person bending their knees, and then sprinting, amid a roaring battle-cry, into a massive flying kick, only to crash bluntly against a wall of steel, without making as much as a scratch unto it, whilst sustaining several fractures.

A paper airplane dashing, airborne, with grace and elegance unto an open classroom, only to meet with closed shutters, activated at the time of arrival. The paper is rendered crippled and bent, losing its beauty between two plastic blades.

A hammer raised unto the sky, shining with the afternoon sun, whilst taking careful aim at a nail that awaits the blow. The hammer dives in a swift movement unto the nail, only to bend it into a most weird shape, useless and less rigid than butter on a midsummer day. The wood is most certainly not pierced, and it waits in disappointment, contemplating the epic failure produced thence.

You decided what to make of them? Dumb question, I understand.  I will just elaborate on mine thoughts.

Fresh ideas have so many tints and colours, textures, shapes, fragrances… Upon the beholder’s eyes, some are dark purple, with blotches, oval shaped, and carry this putrefactive smell of a flat’s residues, rotting in the sun; some are perfect circles with an olive-green hue, and smell of roses and of far green countries under a swift sunrise. Splendid, bland, incomplete, or simply dull, as it is, ideas fly upon this world, turbo-sped with rockets.

What happens, then, when an idea collides with a mind that has been closed with heavy locks, dusty and rusty on its hinges, that will not take any visitors, will suffer no guests, will have none of it? There is a huge explosion at the doorstep of the mind, and the idea evaporates with the smouldering blazes that are swept away by the wind. The idea verily might go to waste, unto uncharted skies where no one will ever look upon again…  That is the fate of some great ideas that have flown into closed gates.

What if the idea was positively worthy?! That is terrifying, that a fantastic idea collides against a closed mind and vanishes from this world.

But wait, there is more. The explosion lasted for an instant, less than a simple heartbeat, and the smoke vanishes into thin air with blinding speed. There is nothing… And yet the mind is alert of such by-gone intruder, and immediately flees into a bomb shelter, without previous bomb call. No wail of warning filled the sky, but the mind is already in motion, locked even further, deep in a bunker, dragging what it can into the walls, positively quivering in fear despite never having seen the nonexistent mayhem.

This is mindless ranting, so if you bear with me for a moment, let us wrap this up in a nifty envelope. The mind is to have its gates open, welcoming foreign riders for an ale and at least letting them sit upon the hall table and share their views of the world. Now, it is to have a stead fast determination and some judgement, for when the foreigner draws blade and tips the table in an insulting fashion or something not becoming of a proper guest, it ought to be thrown out by the citadel guards. However, the mind is to listen at least, open its vaults of knowledge and light the beacons, for as annoying, brazen, rude, charming, eloquent, astute, etc. the foreigner may be, there is a bit to learn from its words ere it departs.

Open those gates!! Do not let the idea crash upon the gates! Do not flee, enveloped in panic, when the rider comes hence. You know not for sure what accompanies it. There is no bomb call wailing. 

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The host with a flourish bids everyone welcome
to the gaudy and grandiose banquet alfresco
that is Life when unmasked.
The crackers surrender their colorful prizes
as hanging piñatas hide garish surprises.
The band is cacophony chiming delightful,
the names on the place-cards all parody spelling.
The wine is served lukewarm and sour!

But if still you should want to attempt the endeavor
of deducing some order from turmoil so lively
Alas! Then you leave empty-handed.

It was in the midst of such a night, so very long ago, that they had conversed in hushed voices in the candlelit halls of the Caesar’s manse. The patches of yellow light flickered meekly, unfolding themselves over the surrounding furnishings but unable to stretch their rays very far. In those hours before dawn, the blackness was heavy and pressed around the two figures, chafing fiendishly at the meager beacons the little candles posed, as they lay timid and melting in their ornate holders.

Calphurnia was troubled. This man– her husband, he was, and no less than Julius Caesar himself– this man was wearing such an impassive face for one faced with so many a sinister omen. Death sneered at his visage, breathed its vile breath upon him. But he was unmoved. Somewhere deep within her, she knew her efforts were futile and he would not be stopped from doing what he pleased. But she still persisted, she still begged him stay.

Had she not been his wife, Calphurnia would have thought him an incurable fool of a man, –what demented arrogance! what arrogant naïveté!– But she understood. He would go out to where he pleased when morrow came. Nefarious omen or no, he would go out carrying his impassive expression of always.

Said she that such recklessness was empty, that there was no merit in his follies.
A million poems can be writ and a myriad ballads sang of heroes and braves, but is a romanticised death worthier than a gamble at life, however bland? She kneeled before him.
Her words did not reach him. They were lost, they were entangled in his pride and dissolved into his solemnity before they could reach his ears.

The heavy stillness, the clarity of mind that the darkness allowed for had erased the frivolities that daylight tends to reveal. For those were Calphurnia’s woes, of course: frivolities. Entirely valid in their own right, of course, but frivolities still.

He dismissed all the warnings in the world, for he knew them to be flimsy and without sense. Death meant nothing to Caesar, and as it breathed down his throat, Caesar still looked at it with the same dignified stoicism, ever unwavering.
He would go out when morrow came.

There once was a man from Nantucket
who took a TI from his pocket.
He wanted some Pie,
he punch’d in SHIFT '∏';
without Pie he went back to Nantucket.

Today I am here,
but tomorrow I am not.
…see you in four years!

    A man walks a dusty road in slumb’ry agitation, wherein his senses convince him that the entire weight of the world and possibly other planets rests on his shoulders, crippling his already-weakened back to the point where he can no longer walk. The air itself is mucky with negative energies that seem to filter the entire road he treads, dragging his feet, into a specific direction the man knows in his heart he has no real wish to pursue but cannot help it at all. His mind, treachery and swirling in its own whirlpool of passions and grievances, is set ablaze even further when his weeping eyes are entirely ignored by those along the path, who in their own fashion contribute to the whole package he drags by hurling with remarkable dexterity weather’d stones into the bulk. The man starts to wonder if these people are fit to be called humans, for there is naught a human attribute that can be said at moment’s notice about them, except the ensuing cruelty they are ever ready to display without previous beckoning or need. And so the man, scraping his shoes, now reduced to mere slivers of rubber entangl’d with dirt and weeds, with the rock and stone, walks alone with only his apparent heavy luggage on top of him, making him crawl.

People oft feel the relentless weight of this world and other planets in distant galaxies sinking, uncalled, into their shoulders, that disfigure their complexion and deviate their path into the easiest one at hand, with the least slope, because hey… my back can bear no more, I beseech you! And so the darkness of others and the treacherous mind give the final blow unto the heart of men. Almost all people can say within their conscience that this is not an isolated incident, that it does have some veracity within each own existence. I daresay some even feel the tingle when something extremely familiar knocks at the doorstep with a gentle touch even now.

Negative energies abound, and humans are like sponges that absorb the air and the spirit of whatever touches them the strongest, ignoring other energies floating, hovering, airborne, waiting to be chewed and swallowed with ravenous hunger. One needs at times to feel the darkness, only to allow oneself to caress the light even stronger, gently rocking and forever invigorating. So if you feel Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto (for it is a planet, I say,) and possibly the distant green planet’s weight upon your back, if you feel the darkness of others slapping you across the face with strong wrists and harsh hands that have never in their life span heard of a moisturising cream, and their stones cast viciously upon the whole package that is verily enough, then, my friend, do as you ought to the moment you “decided” to wander with that weight: Stop, drop everything, smiting its ruin upon the floor, and say “It ends tonight.”

Your life is so much more precious, beyond other people’ s reckoning or acknowledgement -Who are we to say what you are worth in this steaming noodle soup?. If you must, digest all that darkness in your system and hurry to the loo, and let it go, before you might have a bad case of the runs. Transform the darkness into light, and be filled with the positive energies that are calling you via megaphone, that are within your hands’ grasp. I assure you, the sun will shine the clearer, the stone will seem softer, and the world will smile upon you, gleaming with beauty. Your shoulders will let out a massive sigh, and you will walk upright for the first time in many days. ’tis time.

It ends tonight.

Ah, isn’t it lovely how we always seem to sit and stare at things in obstinate defiance, awaiting for epiphanies to somehow reveal their succulent secrets to us? But they always come uninvited anyway, in their own time, so there’s no point in rushing them. The secrets of life are covered inside such an exquisite candy wrapper. We might as well unravel them slowly.
Even when unsatisfying days seem to pile up, gathering in little rows of diagonal marks on calendars, surely the skies, at least, are still beautiful; and if you but look closely, so are the myriad foibles and fallacies embedded in loose, everyday words.

Life is a cake of two equal parts frustration and fun– any other ingredients are merely faint flavourings and colourants.

Each sees a different panorama–or perhaps the same scenery in a different light, but what gives. (Humans are interesting things indeed, look at them ponder universality as mere individuals!)

It would be so wonderful to sidestep everyone’s masks, just brushing them away! And instead, gaze at the same scenery they see, as it is reflected in their own eyes. (Points of view are, after all, the epitome of identity.) If I could be allowed a merit, oh, that would most definitely be it.