Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Echolocation of the Caged Tongue

A failed writer and a caged bird.
Wings emasculated and legs tied.
Fingers stuck in my ears.
Tapping the voice in my brain shut.
Forcefed ink and forced to puke poetry.
I try to regurgitate meals of ponder.
Thoughts gnaw the metal as a relentless hunger.
They pluck a feather.
Dip it in the inkwell of my mouth.
To make it a quill.
Days become decades.
Bits and pieces of reality evaporate.
Ink congeals at the tip of my tongue.
The inferior umbilicus is trapped.
I close my mouth as I widen my eyes.
I gulp the blob of ink.
I chew the quill.
The mind hopes for a clot of words to release.

No one comes near my bars.
They say, a stench lingers.
No one comes to open the cage.
They say, it is my asylum.
Why?
Is it fear of my wild heart?
Or, is it repulsion of my rotten belly?

~ Oizys.

Monday, September 11, 2023

The Unweaving

Tonight, I sit on the precipice of my own undoing, on the verge of a cataclysmic event I can only describe as "The Unweaving." The world around me has morphed into a grotesque and nightmarish tableau, where the colours have bled into a sickly, bruised palette as if the very essence of life had drained from the world. As if someone has squeezed it to make it devoid of any emotion. Once-vibrant reds, symbolising passion and vitality, have faded to a feeble, pallid pink, a feeble echo of their former fervour. The verdant greens, once representing growth and renewal, now appear jaundiced and tainted, reminiscent of decay rather than life. Once serene and calming, the blues have transformed into a murky, ashen grey, reflecting the weight of a world burdened by sorrow. These desolate hues now intermingle, painting a grim tapestry of a world beset by malaise. It is a place where hope has withered like a dying flower, where the vibrancy of existence has succumbed to the relentless march of despair. In the shadow of this bruised palette, the air is thick with the stench of decay. It clings to every breath, a noxious reminder of a world unravelling at its seams. The once-fresh scent of earth and nature has given way to a putrid miasma as if the very essence of life itself had curdled. The aroma of decay is a relentless spectre, seeping into every corner, every crevice, and every memory. It haunts the alleys where laughter once echoed and lingers in the halls that once resonated with joy. Now, it pervades every nook and cranny, an inescapable presence, a testament to the relentless passage of time and the erosion of all things vibrant.

The morning sun, once a symbol of hope, now casts long, gnarled shadows that writhe and contort like serpents. My footsteps echo through the barren chambers of my soul, empty rooms in my broken mind, reverberating with a mournful, discordant symphony of despair. Each step feels like a rusty blade carving into my fractured psyche. Each leaf, once young and soft, is getting crunched and crushed underneath my feet and getting stuffed in the cuts and bruises, their tender innocence sacrificed to the brutal landscape of my existence, each bruise and cut now holding the remnants of a world that once held promise but has since crumbled into desolation.

The mundane rituals of existence have become rituals of self-flagellation. I scrub and scrape my skin until it's raw and red, hoping to wash away the stains of regret that cling to me like a malevolent parasite. Each moment etched in my skin feels like an open wound, a relentless reminder of choices made and opportunities lost as if the past were a relentless predator gnawing at the edges of my body. The mirror reflects a visage distorted by torment, a visage I can scarcely recognize as my own. The eyes that once held a glimmer of hope now stare back, haunted and hollow, as if they have witnessed the darkest depths of the human soul. It's a reflection of a self fractured by the weight of regrets, a face worn and weathered by the storms of anguish, a portrait of a soul adrift in a sea of remorse.

My thoughts are a swarm of locusts, devouring every vestige of serenity within me. Doubts, regrets, and self-loathing spiral into an abyss that threatens to consume my very essence. It is a descent into madness, a grotesque carnival of self-destruction. I see the voices in my head as they deplume me of my vision, like someone pinching the wick to snuff out a candle in the cavern. Each whispered thought is a deathly squeeze, extinguishing the fragile flame of clarity that once flickered within. In this cavernous silence, I'm left in the inky blackness of my thoughts, groping through the labyrinthine passages of my mind, searching for a glimmer of understanding that has been cruelly slaughtered with forced subservience and indoctrination.

As I scrawl these words with ink as dark as my cavernous eyes, I am both the executioner and the sacrificial lamb. This unweaving feels like a gruesome dance with the demons that reside within, a waltz of self-annihilation and freedom. With each stroke of the pen, I unravel a piece of my own tapestry, shedding the weight of the past like tattered rags, and in this act of self-deconstruction, I discover an odd liberation, as if dismantling the old self paves the way for something rawer, unburdened, and authentically broken.

Tomorrow, I may wake to a world no less distorted, but I will be reborn from this same wreckage. This same chasm. This unweaving is not an end but a metamorphosis, a baptism in the blood of my own suffering, and a testament to the yield of the human spirit. It is the relentless yet foolish resilience to rise from the ashes, to unearth some worth in the fragments, and to precariously juggle the duality of existence—the darkness and the blindsight, the broken and the each scattered pieces—as the raw, undeniable core part of being. It is in this ongoing battle that the haunting truth of my humanity reveals itself—a truth woven from the threads of vulnerability and resignation, despair and exhaustion, and the ceaseless floundering between the fragments of my soul and the sad, stubborn life that still manages to find its way in.

- Oizys.