MOONBEAM

like how I need her night

to light up my day;

like how she’d need a while,

she won’t come this way

why don’t you see her out?

there’s no fashion in disgrace;

cashing in

on the fall within,

on everything sustained

it’s better to be than not to be…

what’s with the white

when it’s time and only time?

what would this given do

if I can’t live my line?

and what’s her moonbeam

but a comfort to the eye?

a blessing in disguise,

when I’d rather see her naked;

her naked love tonight…

For all intents and purposes, this could be my experiment, which in itself gives it the innate value that it's one of my best ever. Not saying that as a flash of ego, it's just that it's something of a kind that I've wanted to write for so long, you know, like the 'starting in the middle' or the absence of relevance of any sort. And yeah, I know this is proving to be too much of pathos, but I don't know... I am what I am, and that's like 'everyone else' minus the pretence.

'Battle Studies' belongs to the Mayer lot. I guess that's how this belongs to my 'Book of Rhymes'. Tenth in line.

PERFECT SENSE

“The thing is… I’ve played a sport for more than half of my life.”

“So?”

“So”, I said, “you’re only saying this-”

“Yes.”

I was walking on a road that would nauseate me at other times and I knew I was doing it only because she was doing it, and that’s not sacrificial or ‘making do’, and I’m not ‘conforming’ either. People come in two kinds – like and dislike, and sure there’s the in-between but that’s the point: They’re not people at all. And needless to say, like and hate are two different frames of mind, not necessarily contradictory or mutually-exclusive so I can just be sure about the ‘frames of mind’ because it would be too chaotic to like something and hate it too, that points at duality of mind, a mental multitask that’s utter bullshit. My point is that to get to liking something you’ve hated for long, well… It’s just an evolution and every person is perfectly capable of that.

“No”, I shook my head. “I can’t do it.”

“Why not?” she smiled at me, curiously.

“Well…” I shrugged, “I guess I’m not that masturbatory.”

Her laugh was more of a reaction than anything I could have asked for, in response to which I looked away grinning, shaking my head in disbelief at the nonsense I had just said.

“But”, I tried rectifying my position. “But… Knowledge is, perfect sense.”

She nodded as her hair nodded with her. “Knowledge is perfect sense.”

You should have looked at her. I mean, I can still be placed under the allegation that this is fleeting, this notion of her that I had cemented in my mind and you could say that cement dissolves, given its time and space, but you should have looked at her. ‘Kes’, and incredibly so.

I looked at my wristwatch, something I wore just to highlight the occasion.

“I lost my old wristwatch”, I said to her, still looking at it. “I never threw it away.”

“You shouldn’t compare-”

“No I’m not”, I shook my head again, looking at her. “I don’t have a compulsive mind, it takes its time… I’m sorry about that.”

She could see that I was fighting emotion, maybe even tears but this was a test. Even if she had meant exactly she said and nothing less, this was a test.

“You get accustomed”, I began, strained, and I decided then to not take the bend. “Getting used to love isn’t reason enough to quit, is it?” I asked her while she quietly hummed ‘The thrill is gone’ – too suggestive for me to take. I had stopped walking and she figured that out after a couple of steps.

“I’ll see you tomorrow”, I said, looking down.

And I could visualize her being incredulous with her smile.

MAN ON THE SIDE

"The King", she said.

I said "I'm right here. But I can't do the moonwalk."

Is this sadness, though? I mean, every word said appears to be heftily laden with doubt and that's doubt beyond overrule, because while to overrule is completely up to oneself, at a personal level, this doubt had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with her, or it had everything to do with me and she had nothing in it whatsoever, and since there is a nothingness and an accompanying completeness in existence, there can never be a part-clarification. And to clarify in entirety would still remain at the place where it's always been: forever a foot from me.

"Poetic romance", I said. "Heard he's so very giving that he overshoots it."

"To each, his own", she said.

This is not an email conversation. And that means I can see her, face to back, for she's always faced away from me whenever we've spoken and maybe that's because that's the part of her I admire most, not out of my fetish but her exceptionality. Particularly those moments in front of the mirror, doing something I dislike but not of her, for she is someone who could possibly turn me, making me like it, for I would somehow detach the glossiness from it, sizing it up to be purely an act of necessity, not of beautification of outer self, but as a stronghold on inner confidence that only merely shows on the surface. Or maybe I would like it only because she does it, and that would be reason enough for me.

"If that's the case", I lazed, "then you have just cracked the judicial system."

I sniffed, not letting go of the half-smile that so supposedly reinforces me and I reinforced it with this twitchy stiffening of my left jaw that had strangely become habitual. And I had just said something that made me earn a look from her, from under the very same eyebrows that help cool her burning eyes (I know, I know!).

"What of Gandhi?" she questioned. "What about Lewis Carroll?"

"What about you?"

She paused, open-mouthed, fighting with all her feminine brute to snub the smile that tried to show, as the obvious eventually came out.

"Do you do this as a profession?"

"You know I don't", I smiled.

"Well", she turned back to the mirror, still stubborn, "how much do I know then, right?"

"Well", I mimicked her. "You know about the King, you know about Gandhi, you know about Lewis Carroll, and oh, you know I'm a half-geek who thinks he's just a tenth of what you are."

I bit my lip in the same "Let's see you pull this one off" kind of way traditionalized by Ethan Hawke in 'Before Sunrise', and I was struck by this thought that told me I was pushing this whole 'Being a bundle of everyone else but myself' thing. She remained quiet, the room was dark but I could feel the heat of her breath and the rush of her blood and that made me feel so like a mosquito all of a sudden, pointlessly buzzing about her.

"Excuse me Miss Busybody", I almost sang. "Could you pencil me in?"

She laughed and laughed and laughed, and I realized that I could actually regret what I say.

"I know", I sighed, as she proved wrong an assumption of mine, being incessant with her laughter.

"Hey.." she said as she subsided. "Study beckons. I'd see you then?"

"Yeah well", I paused. "Sure."

"Ta Ta."

And she hung up.

I fell on my bed, rolled on it, punched a pillow and thought that if the best I could currently do was to quote an obvious John Mayer, then I clearly needed a life.

But then again, wouldn't she always have said the first goodbye?

THE 'WAITING ON THE WORLD TO CHANGE' TOUR

"I am not a nomad,
I am not a rocket man,
I was born a house-cat
by the slight of my mother's hand..."

- 'HOME LIFE', John Mayer. 'HEAVIER THINGS'.

I am not a nomad. I'm no photographer either. I don't know if my mobile phone thinks for itself, but really, what a time for 'Waiting on the world to change'! Of course, I picked it: Because I wanted to walk John Mayer's walk, I even tried a head-toe picture on see-through glass. I guess I don't need to say how I failed.

But at least I got to savour myself.

'WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM?'

where aphrodite is

live in los olimpo

I’ve always had this vision for a long-form concert. Goes back to when I was the backdoor anvil boy who dreamt Aulos, and I guess I could dream even now. But music is not a dream, it’s beyond a dream. It’s what’s there, it’s real and it’s all there, except that you don’t hear it because the door’s shut and she’s got the key. Same as the key to poetry: She holds it all.

I took my time. Still didn’t get it, though. She’s just giving me sneak peeks, inches of progress. I’d get full-frontal when I’ve got my foot, but for now, here’s the inch that I managed.

I got half her mind but a zero claim,

‘cause of a distinction of a ‘different lame’,

like I was born to lose and I can’t sustain,

What do you think I am?

A little closer when the day begins,

a look at my mind, you turn your back again,

a shifting road’s the shape you’re in,

What do you think I am?

You have me number but it’s always you it’s for,

What do you think I am?

Am I the fowl you flayed, for a feast that’s on?

“Get us a plate to serve Hephaestus on”,

better be sure before you taste me, son!

What do you think I am?

You have me number but it’s always you it’s for,

What do you think I am?

Burn me some light as you tie to this stake,

the fire could be mine, so see what you take!

Let me wave to my world,

she won’t mind that you’re late:

What do you think I am?

What do you think I am?

No one to listen to the blues anymore. No one to sing the blues, it’s all just ‘I shit you because you’d shit me back sometime’ and it’s sad how people don’t actually get sad and fall into this… moody depression, where you write her to fight her, and that’s what I’d like to be doing, because that’s what I’m all about.

First prospective single from ‘where aphrodite is: live in los olimpo’. Cry with me.

'N'-THINGS

"See, I refuse to believe
that my life's gonna be
just a string of incomplete
never to lead to me anything
remotely close to my home life..."

- 'HOME LIFE', John Mayer.

'Heavier Things' - An album that happened to set the stage that he stands on, right now. Back then, you know.

Not the same man, no, I do know that. I'm not kidding myself otherwise, either. He said he's waiting on the world to change, I guess I'm waiting on him. A lot of things past, a lot of things said, it's said people crack under the strain anyway, but it still hurts, for I've never seen him as 'people'. Maybe I should. Maybe then, he'd prove me wrong. Either way, I'm still here. I doubt if there's the remotest possibility that he'd be reading this, but I'm still here.



I guess we're 'In Repair', now. Not together yet, but we'd be getting there. I hope.

ASSASSIN

Since I've already established that my life is a bunch of phases, one leading to another and the other to another 'other' and so on, I guess I don't need to establish the ground I've already established again, because then there'd be an additional ground that's actually the same, and hence, having made sure that I start with something completely absurd, I go on to my subject material. It's an observation, actually, and I've happened to find that while this 'writer' me is quick in changing phases and recognizing them too, the 'reader' me finds it hard to keep up pace and hence there're periods of lag, and periods of uncertainty, and it's always resolved in the end, but all the same it's a late realization, and that's what I'm dealing with right now: A recent discovery of what I've been in quite a while. Nothing big, exactly, though. Nothing philosophical, yet quite substantial all the same, because it's been a change in my basic form, the form I adapt to write things, and analysis on a personal level has shown me what's caused the change too. So it's not like it's a mystery, it's just that it only needs to be revealed for the picture to be complete. So I guess I'm just playing Scooby-Doo here.

I've been repeating lines. I don't know what poetic device that is, but I've been stressing things over and over, and I think that's kind of contributing to a pop-music feel, than the usual folk-acoustic strum I write to. It's not a change in life-pattern that I see, merely a change in personal trends, and that brings me to what precisely caused it, you know. 'Assassin'. By John Mayer, five minutes out of his 45 minute ride in form of 'Battle Studies', and honestly, it's one of the most exhilarating songs I've listened to, and I believe it's got the second-best beginning to a John Mayer song next to 'Belief', and an all-round show at that. Got me face to face with Steve Jordan, and I guess I could be begging him for autographs if I were 14, and since I'm not, I guess I'd just be blogging about it. Fair bass guitar, and a total riot from John who walks on a tweak of a solo that only tells me that he needs nothing to write something like that. Sounds so effortless, you know. Simple words, hard-hitting all the same, I think you need to get a hold of this.

"I should have turned around
and left before
the sun came up again,
but the sun came up again..."

I'm not testifying against myself as having totally ripped off a hit single, I guess I hardly mind because (again) no sane soul would tell me I'm being unoriginal, because heck, I think people would have to make-out what I say to be saying that, or well... I don't think they have to, to do that, I think that's what people are. But honestly, this song was all the way with me, running around inside my head as I thought of 'Night-time', which ought to have been a Nick Drake influence, but I think it's all for good, because a Nick Drake influence to a John Mayer beat is like a Charolastra's dream come true. Pop and poetry, combined together and no one's there to see the same. Well, they're there, but I don't think they'd see it coming. Even when it's staring at them, straight in the face. Sun-Eyed. Furious.

Here's a bit of 'NIGHT-TIME' to end this post:

"...'cause it's Night-Time,
when you should be holding tight to
stolen sights, and dying's denied;
and it's the only time,
that you don't have to be with her,
to be with her: it's the night."

Well, I don't 'steal sights', they just come my way, but I guess the effect's to understand that there's nothing out of the world in a dream, except the weirdness in entanglement and the whole 'connections', you know. And I love my dreams, it's the only place I wouldn't die and I'm not being Utopian saying that, I'm just enjoying a piece of nicety that I'm offered anyway, and face it: You would too, if you liked to live and not just hang around. It's sad to be one of the second kind. So close to the third, yet in no way 'accessible'. Period.

'SECOND SIGHT'

It sucks to be a stand-up act, you know. This isn't my defense statement, I'm not standing up for them, it's just a realization from my part, that all it takes to demolish even the most whole-hearted of efforts is a 'not so funny' stare, or lesser enthusiasm in return, or the slightest bite-back of a yawn. But I don't think it would me if I were doing it (neither do I think it would frustrate anyone doing it) though, because everything is going to sound funny to me, because I'd probably suck in everything I say and I'm going to be at the centre of my own world, and it's kind of hard to not listen to the sun, you know. The Sun's never going to suck, however dull I might find the day to be. I guess that's what a state of Godliness can do to a 'non-God' being. Or a God to another God, if I can take the liberty to brag.

I know I'm being snide. I would've started this paragraph with 'I guess', but I guess I knew enough to 'know' for sure, and I know for sure that I'm being extremely snide and insensitive lately, and I don't know if this is a stint or a temporary state of mind, and although both might sound similar, they're not, because I intend a 'state of mind' to last longer than just a 'stint'. That's just my vocabulary, I guess. And as an incentive, or rather as an indicator of this stint or state of mind, I got this concept, and it's not like it has 'everything' to do with my state of mind, it's actually something I've been observing ever since I got to know that a girl's a... well, a girl, and it goes back to the time I was seven and there's this ten year old girl who made my bus rides memorable. No lies. And the weird thing here is that while she's got the stamina enough to last this long, to be living this long a life of ten years (and I believe she'd live longer than that too) I find that the girls I've seen subsequently, have shorter lifespans and it's like a Geometric Progression, and they're just dying out, left, right and centre. And I can't seem to get myself to do anything about it, because I'm thinking it's good that they're fading away, because then I can make myself believe that there's going to be a time and a person and she's going to reminisce the girl from my bus and she's going to find ten years to be a piece of cake, and she's going to be like, this powerlifter, or someone back from a female Tour De France, and she'd just go on and on and on, and I'm losing my point.

'Second Sight'. It's not about this 'special someone' who's so eternal and so omnipresent that she's everywhere: It's about everyone else. The ones that have a lifespan of a second, of an hour, of a day, of a week, of weeks, months, a year perhaps. I'm not going beyond that, because then it'd be like a close-call version of this 'ideal girl' and I'm no fantasy man, you know. Plus, I'm on this spree of writing for real-life music, it started with 'Paintball', and writing this, I got reminded of this slightly cheeky John Mayer (of course!) song called 'Sucker', and it's not much of a rhythm, just a simple doodle on an acoustic guitar with some... nice lines, like:

"Sometimes,
I wish that I was the weather,
then you'd bring me up in conversation, forever,
and when it rained,
I'd be the talk of the day"

I don't need to explain those lines. He's not as complex as me. Wait a while, you know, I'd get back with what I'm saying, and what I mean when I'm saying that, all in due course. When I feel like it, that is.

SOMETHING'S MISSING

It's not a provocation of Mayer craze, but I really feel that I'm missing something here. And unlike every other writer, I felt this revelation of mind, of mine was vital not because I need to inform my people that something's not right with me, but because I needed to talk to myself and I needed to tell myself that what I'm doing is nowhere close to being 'right' and that's not a negation, no, it's sort of the contrary: I don't know that I'm not being right because I'm being wrong, it's rather like I know for sure that I'm not being right, but I doubt if I'm being wrong and there's only one explanation behind this ruckus: I'm being nothing, currently.

Maybe I am being something. Maybe I'm being a boy, maybe I'm being a boy that's trying to be a man, maybe I'm being 18 years old, maybe I'm being an insincere sportsperson because I'm not trying hard enough, and maybe I can stack this ensemble on and on, but the bottom line is that I'm not being what is 'normal' to me, and it's a stage where I'm not wasting time, but killing it, and there's a difference, because wasting doesn't leave a trace, but this killing act, well it's bound to leave behind memories no pleasant than what I am now, and that's an all-time low in bitterness. And I'm inactive, yes, and unproductive, yes, and I'm completely aware of the fact that I can't possibly talk myself out of this, because more or less I have to do something to sweep out the cobwebs and tell the spiders to find home someplace else, and it's not like I'm not trying, it's just that I'm not trying hard enough. I drew something, sure, but it's nowhere near what I can manage when I'm totally productive. I haven't written anything in ages, and music's sounding monotonous to me, except when I sleep, in which case I just don't hear it at all. I guess it's an ailment, and I'm glad to give it my name if it's not been given a name yet.

No words, no patterns, no music, no cinema, no seriousness, but a hell lot of ideas and a notion of this state of mine and that precisely is, this state of mine. Like having three pens and only two hands and trying to write three poems at a time, and I guess I've got to do something to get out, and you'd know it too, on seeing how pathetic my analogy was.

'PAINTBALL' - THE ESSENCE

I don't know if this made it to the charts, but it's one of the songs of John Mayer I've listened to least, so I had to triple check on the lyrics and go wrong in the process, trying to make out what he's saying (words, not meaning) and I'm not plagiarizing it. 'Half Nelson' has hints of 'Stop this train' in the way the lyrics go about and I always find I need some music to make my words work, and I feel I don't have to look around a lot to hit on the music I would be making if I knew to hold a guitar right (which I happen to, by the way, so it's just an expression). He's always said the words in my head as I've thought them, only this time I've tried to make it more comprehensive, you know, write a whole lyric on an existing piece of music and hey, who knows! It could be my cover.


ABOVE: Reminds me of times at Kid's world, but I'm told that they're paintballs. A splash inside each.

"I'm never speaking up again,
it only hurts me;
I'll rather be a mystery, than
she desert me;

Oh, I'm never speaking up again!
I'm never speaking up again,
I'm never speaking up again...

starting now..."

translates to:

"I'll never play this paintball game,
to only get soaked, and
the ball's not the only thing that gets
a total breaking-in;

Oh, I'll never play this thing again!
I'll never play this thing again,
I'll never play this thing again...

Except this time..."

Song's 'My Stupid Mouth'. Runs 3:45 and I had my mind in it only for three-quarters of that time. Guess that's all that mattered to me. Wait for it: No joke.