How Else

Hello, you,

I am writing this letter today, in the same manner I’ve written countless others before. Same rhythm and tune, like composing a song.

It will float in the ether, waiting for a fire to start, dust particles lit aflame from friction, burning words because they never belonged.

That’s how it feels, when words escape a weary soul, a bow and arrow in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what he holds. I shoot the arrow until my arms go numb, sorry if it lands near your heart, while you were dreaming of a beyond. How else could I describe the affliction one suffers when words fire your soul, a fever with no threshold, burning for far too long.

I have crafted a world like none before, all in my head with these fingers and hands full of holes. As much as I try to grasp, it slips through like liquid gold.

So I cut it short once again. Another one in the books, another one with no end, just a sudden stop, never making it past the last bend. Perhaps I am wrong, blinded by foolish make believes, same rhythm and tune, I compose the same damn song.

-A.Garcia

Wish I could write all the better words

perfectly stacked and arranged

trail of papers tipped over

discarded and burned

or feathers crimson red from blazing birds

Some of them meant something

A towering fall, even the gods looked

A giant pillow, my face headed towards

-A.Garcia

Untitled (not found)

A subtle whisper, it titters at the edge of sound, its there

Barely, minuscule in its presence

Ever-present, like air

A touch, so fleeting, never enough

A question, should I dare?

Lay it out, if you must

That the soul conspired a rampant affair

I said with an earnest nod

With a flame so bright it burnt my heart.

-A.Garcia

Flowers sprung in the month of May

Winter frost evaporating away

What is meant to stay?

Can I peek at what you view?

Can I listen to your hearts tune?

Can I marvel at what is meant to be true?

I know, its desire cutting through

I set free the stone in my shoe

I set free my love for you.

-A.Garcia

Color

What is it they say? “What you seek is seeking you.”?

And what if everywhere you look, it’s all the same color, the color blue?

As far as the horizon, once painted red, orange, many different hues.

And, look at your hands, same as the horizon, even the bird that past your eyes just flew.

How to differentiate, what is meant to be true?

If what you seek is stuck in a limbo of color, where confusion reigns, results the same across an eternal view.

-A.Garcia

Perfect Heart-Shape

Why the tears?

Why the weary look?

The heart, heavy as a block of cement

Why the fear?

Why the page from a dreary book?

It’s the soul, leaded with lament.

Do not bite the perfect heart-shaped pear

Do not silence words with despair

Do not sit and wait

Release your shoulders from the weight

If it’s a heart you are meant to sway

Pray to heaven nature finds a way

-A.Garcia

Walls

We build walls to safeguard our hearts, building high, no remorse for the future, heartache crumples your soul into parts .

Slowly, the rays of the sun give up, not daring to sneak through the cracks. Grassy roads around the wall disappear, not a friendly step will dare to trample, a fortress now beckons your heart to stone,

you succumbed to fear.

Pain is no more.

The face of what you were is torn.

You are safe, oh so safe…and alone.

-A.Garcia

In a darkened, lonely room, your mind or within concrete walls…

You think the sun belongs to you

Perhaps the fear you outgrew

Thought you hid the answer someone wanted to hear

The sun warms this way the same, dear.

You think the moon illuminates your path

The road ready for your steps to dash

The earth spins for us all, dead or alive

Certain things are not worth the cry.

-A.Garcia

Free

I fret at times over my words, on what they mean, how they’re perceived. On sunny days they’ve kept me caged, iron bars over the truth. Especially recollections of letters, the ones from the heart. Guilty of thinking they were always too much. Did they provoke a scare? An addled mind, that thinks and cares disproportionally, perhaps slightly out of touch. So silence comforts the soul, hesitation gripping the throat, breaking fingers, fear to speak and express.

Do you understand? Maybe you don’t and that is the point. It doesn’t matter if they are disregarded, brushed off as lint on shoulders. It doesn’t matter if they are slapped out of the way, treated like a mosquito that buzzes around your head looking for blood. If they are taken for granted, as easily as the air that fills your lungs, take a step forward, bask in the sun.

They were never meant for you or whomever. I’ve always believed words are spells, an energy for something that takes very long to return. Maybe it goes bust, it doesn’t land on a perfectly manicured tarmac. Ideas form and not always will they be understood, much like the meaning of love and life. It’s a whirlpool that eventually will draw what you put out, in.

Such is life, everything has a film on it anyways, a filter gone grey with dust. A mask that is worn so well, the real human of flesh and bones forgets to exist. It appears easier that way, not to dwell. But I digress, it’s the illusion that matters most, correct?

But those words have always been seeds for a much larger tree. And large trees take time to grow. Patience and care and love.

My words, they are meant for me, in all their joy and sorrow, they set me free.

-A.Garcia

Fleeting 2

The wind, how it caresses your cheeks
A wandering ghost
Just a mere passerby
Time, in a silent night it still creeks  

If only to catch the petal flying by
So you wait, you linger
Nothing comes, always late
Touched briefly by a fluttering butterfly

Time, with all its weight
How it comes and goes
Enthralling, how it all has been done
You there, staring at an empty plate

All you ever get is the fleeting warmth of the sun
All that you have to give is for you in the end, you alone
And that has to be good enough
Much has ended, even though it barely begun.

-A.Garcia

They put a gun to my head
All cloak and dagger, whispers in my ear
Secrets they wanted to hear
The sun rising again was all I wished to see
Not a word about clemency
Mercy or an appeal
Speak now and shed no tears
Life had a nasty habit of putting me in my place
But certain secrets died with me
Kicking my stomach straight through my rib cage, heart fluttering with fear
The blood pounding in my head
Was it the last thing I would feel?

To be continued…

Ghost Story

Story goes there was once a lonely ghost lost in a labyrinth of thought. For eternity he knew no more. Deep inside a dark forest, he lingered perpetually in a stupor, stuck in a limbo he never knew.

The ghost could not understand why his oblivion seemed to continue endlessly, shuffling mindlessly from one spectrum to another, drowning in fears and paranoia. His world was all opposites, contradiction after contradiction. A visage of what he hoped for, yet was never brave enough to go for. His path was a circular one, the visible trail sunken from an aeon of the same decisions, left him stuck to a single, muddied, misty line. There was no end in sight, all possible options he always chose to ignore. Fear of the unknown held him back. On occasion, specters in a different yet similar track, would cross his way.

Visions flashed before his eyes, of the difference one moment could make. He refused to take the path his heart knew, permanently chose to ignore, like a curse laid upon him, driving him to be an eternal bore. Subconsciously, his mind spoke to him, of the answer to end the calvary, yet the heavy blanket placed over his heart let little of the light in. The answer lingered amongst a smoky haze just above his head, obscured by a halo of smog and deception. Every time his ghostly hand reached up, the smog thickened, obscuring the answer once again.

Tired, angered and in search of meaning, the ghost slowly tried to set a new path, to find a way to end this eternal slumber. As he looked back, the new trail seemed different, brighter. So why did he still hesitate? The circular, vicious cycle pulled and pulled, like a sick experiment on Newton’s laws of motion: objects in motion do tend to stay in motion.

Yet the force of that other mysterious path pulled, it exerted the same opposite force, pulled like a raging river, caved a canyon in a new, bright direction. Its impact so great, the ghost contemplated things other than the same. New possibilities no longer filled him with scare.

Slowly, something started to feel different, he felt it in his bottomless stomach, a feeling that seemed familiar yet strange. His heart beating wildly, drawn to this new energy, head spinning, flying high filled with a million buzzing bees. The dark forest seemed bleak no more, somehow, he felt a presence that kept him from the fray. An instinct started to creep into his senses, like a midnight wanderer intruding in his thoughts. A new life flashed before his eyes; it all started to sway. Clarity pulled the lonely ghost towards a brightness that would not give way.

The light grew brighter, a new sense of existence started to take form, for he was being born.

He was human once more.

-A.Garcia

Saudade

There is a Portuguese term that I love; Saudade.

It has no direct translation to English, because more than a word, it is a feeling, a perception of a longing and desire for something that may not even exist or something that may not happen again.

The awareness and sentiment is constant, lingering and ambiguous. There is no proper way to do justice in explaining, it has a melancholic nostalgia, both happy and sad. It is steady, eternal, ever-present. It lingers behind every breath. Behind the eyes it dawdles, the message it tries to convey lost in a sea of fear, misunderstanding and shrugged shoulders. Dead end streets past what you thought was the last turn, indifference it meets in every corner.

If only the term had a voice besides my own, it would drown your sorrows in longing, yearning whispered into the vessels of your heart. Its grip hugging your form, cradling with warmth and realization that nothing is how it should be, nothing was as it should’ve been, nothing will be as you dreamed. Find yourself awaken with an empty start.

It is a poetic sentiment, ingrained deep in the soul, no explanation enough to justify, no vindication waiting through a forest of bamboo. It sits in your heart, heavy as a stone and leaves you with a burden of thought, memories not yet told, or formed, languishing, all fractured, disheveled and blue.

-A.Garcia

Malfunction

A malfunction brought us here. An electrical discharge, way back in ancient time.

It’s all one big story with nowhere to go. There is no end. There is no beginning.

It is a cycle that repeats with voracious intensity, insisting to teach something; if only to be in tune with that frequency. Something is definitely in malfunction. A button pushed when it shouldn’t have. A door stayed open when it was better off shut. Swallowed whole by a giant black hole, we’ve tumbled into the profound and now are dust. Our misled desires tricked us with pain. In the eternal timeline, it’s impossible to move without making a sound, waves created with every thought, not possible to contain. Awareness alone is disrupting silence, leaving no sign and thickening the plot. Story says, that was the only way.

Eternity not enough to make up for the giant detour, a new reality is needed to stop going astray.

Stuck in this enduring story, with nowhere to go, a new existence is being traced out. Deep in the malfunction possibilities reign, because in endlessness, creation is bountiful, not merely clout. All along the way you will find more than one clue. In the emptiness, breath is exhaled, every mistake turned into something new. Our strongest wish, to be, is awarded a million times over, cascading, overflowing everywhere, like that misty, morning dew. Officially, existence is waiting, the answer we have to our plea. A tidal wave of possibility, frenzied with appetite, like the fury within a raging banshee.

So that story, the one with nowhere to go, is just a circle, where much we repeat, but much we see coming. Flower by flower, going along once again, the bee feels its hunger. Lessons learned, possibilities opened with every single choice. So with malfunction and all, that electrical discharge back in ancient time, by a spark of luck let us all be.

-A.Garcia

Lightning

Just the other day

heaven cracked a smile

A rolling light across a black and purple sky

It rolled through with a thundering sound

Surely the gods wicked at play

Masters playing a game

Much to earthly dismay

An electric show

Melting the toughest layers

The only way to cleanse the way.

-A.Garcia