Do You?

The guidance is outside
You just have to say it so
It's been years
Will you still deny it, no no
Love will die and love will go

You'll still remain then
Squeeze it into your eyes
You'll still feel then
When you saw this weakness in the skies
Thought that was you, that you'd fly

Now you know that isn't true
All your dreamings rally on for you
Seen some years
Been those years when your words came true
But everything I feel's just a clue

I feel you've already been there
Not what it means to be here
The only difference is what
Might be is now and that much freer
Well you know their faces are clear

The windows are wide open
That you're staring wide-eyed from
It's always better at home
That's why we work a bit and some
We need the money to come and come

I'm so drunk i don't care if
You killed me right now
C'mon you're alive
Now you'll know it's true and how
All the songs under a violin bow

Are never for real
It's always better a holiday
So much better a holiday
So much better that way, oh!
You're gonna make somebody love you

Well do ya, do ya do ya wanna
Wanna wanna go
Where I've never met you before?
Do ya wanna wanna go
Where you've never never seen you before?

Do you?

Blackbird's Egg

Ephemeral and lasting these sons of constant attention remain, swimming seas of white and seeking like brave fools the short-lived happiness that words bring. A bloodied chest of rubies with a curse screaming above their head, and I am pushed away, slowly, steadily, and I deliberately forget to fight as noiseless wonders fracture to an unforgiving life. My hollowness has been stolen and in its place is a black bird.

[caption id="attachment_819" align="alignright" width="420" caption="Broken sky, wholesome rain"][/caption]

A dreaded wall climbs high and lifts magnanimously on its bank a small green frog. The calendar is moving away, tearing slowly across the lines, the numbers are released up and down both at once. Ripples settle down in silence and the moon comes to watch a storm gently falling asleep in the morning. Jan-jan-jan, one by one, push the sun out. Was-now flaps its wings in a blur but white lingers, a black sun rises in the north, and the morning blooms now-was.

Dissension and debate rage on the outside while a sharp illness pricks within. Give me your promise, broken at birth, and exploit my choices as a preference. Blood on the world's hands and scratches on the queen's back, the marauder runs into eternity behind the pillars of creation. Reason gives fast pursuit but the catch is never done. Why must it be when the end is the end is the end? Raindrops slither down the damp wood and our fires won't burn for any bribe. The crime is only slavery... not you, my darling.

I'm a radioactive toy filled with evaporating purposes. Keep my right to freedom and keep my right to the skies. Give me the freedom to give up when I longer can, give me the freedom to throw my arms up, give me the freedom to shed a tear. To cry shamelessly. Dark patches of dried blood flake away into the wind while the sun sets slowly beyond the mountain, and sunflowers meet the Earth whence they came. The leaf, is airborne, skyward, as a souvenir of the true day.

Alive With A Colour Of Death

Solo winds of loneliness /
Neutrons fly alone in the wind /
Lust you can always trust /
Even after lakes crumble to dust /

Eagles fly around me /
Call it death trying to surprise me /
I bleed a new colour today /
Day after night after day /

We shall sail for ever /
Fie upon the sad wings of destiny /

The eagles have come to find us /
Find us where we will always be /
I don’t know what to say but shout /
These are the tidings of failure beyond doubt /

Please let’s let the fire go /
The cloudy skies of the dreamer /

Have an old rain to pass on to the solo winds /
Why have you achieved nothing amongst the gold /
Did you fall again amongst grasses tall /
Do the stars not seem to care at all /

Should I have sorrow /
Return my soul instead /
You’re still wearing that smile from yesterday /
How do you separate the night from another day /

How do you know the prospects are all gone /
A day went by and fooled /

I thought that you could strangle me /
Wake me from these sleepless dreams /
Atlantis is drowned and now lost /
And the purple stalker continues his quest /

Can you hear the saints weeping in Hell /
Out in the cold and run of the mill /

When the stars fall in a blue rain /
I stand alone in the purple haze /
A prisoner of your eyes /
Of your eyes in the morning light /

A posse ad esse!

Any reality is better than this one.

Nebula had lifted early, his sanguine underbelly hoisted with the rising currents of this cauterized morning. The blue and green rays of light sprang through the miasma of constriction, vacillating between some vague yellow of progress and another pink proclivous of preservation, infinite lines bent around a myriad wrong choices and half as many right ones, bastard bubbles of turbulence surfacing here and there, intermittently. I turned away, shielding my windows with two vulcanized tentacles that seemed to have prostituted their comfort for subconscious pleasure; despite the desuetude, they stiffened in a trice to their embryonic vigour.

Smoke was soon at hand, seeking some sign of a susurration, some sedulous sweep of season over my stirring silhouette. I was a weak guest, a mannequin doomed in the confines of her hospitality to announce prowess, to proclaim achievement, to provide attention, to attain perfection, the convolution conspicuous for everyone to contemplate on, for my soul to smoulder under, for in the absence of fight, I am slave - united not by blood to some ancient sinew of perseverance but by endurance to a thew of rebellion; unfortunately, the cerise fruit needed years to ripen, to turn chartreuse. Until that spell conceded, I could and would survive in that receptacle of patience, walled in by a past fecund with enlightenment. Also, coffee, fulminated.

Propaganda occluded, with errorless aplomb and occupation, every orifice of audacious idiocy in the abode, a wild lope across the thousand tiles leaving a spoor of precipitous overawe assured by augmented obeisance or a reservoir of obloquy accrued by authority, all so voluptuously asinine as to leave some Communist speaker tower somewhere horribly jaundiced. A momentous blow to the occiput being the cause, so astounding was the devotion to routine that all the reproofs of religion unduly lolled forgotten under mountains of conciliatory atrocities, held by the throat in the throes of commitment.

Mansuetude was marked the hour of the coming of Sister, a distant vengeance stained on the blunt side of a knife, dried like dead blood, and it was dusk. Any reality, was it prophesized, to have been better than this, for in this hour the verdict is altered: she is the first among equals and second to none. Nefariously humbling was the spirit encumbering my desuetude shoulders – as had advanced the quick night. I suddenly found myself rapt on the other end of the swing of time, nay, a pendulum, and all was reset, for what had commenced with putative note now had crescendoed with palliative counterpart. Servabo fidem! Hic sunt leones! A posse ad esse!

A posse ad esse! A posse ad esse!

Notes

The above is intended to be a work of surrealist creative writing. Each paragraph describes a different time of day, different people, different objects, different conflicts - all at the same time. Feel free to interpret, to deduce, to infer, to be offended even.

1. Most of the words in the second paragraph, commencing with "Nebula...", place a stress on the alveolar ridge when they're pronounced - making it sound reinvigorating and aggressive when read aloud (alveolar plosive, dental plosive, uvular trill).


2. The first line of the third paragraph has an obvious alliteration in the first line.


3. The second line of the third paragraph has an alternating alliteration ("announce prowess, proclaim achievement...").


4. The whole of the third paragraph is built to reduce the stress placed on the alveolar ridge, instead diverting the tip of the tongue to the alveolar process of the lower mandible (alveolar fricative).


5. The fourth paragraph involves frequent usage of the phonetic alphabet that describes the pronunciation of the word "awe" (/ɔ:/).


6. The penultimate paragraph ("Mansuetude was...") contains a prosaic acrostic - with an ambivalent dedication to a friend - as well as completes the chronological cycle begun in the second paragraph.

On The Reawakening Of Dreams

As I was writing the entrance test that’s part of my application to the Columbia University today, my flow was broken, nay individuated, by the third and last question in the paper: “If given one month to report on a topic, what would the topic be? How would you go about studying and reporting it, and what media would you use to garner the maximum width of audience? Ensure that you don’t exceed 500 words.”

Of course, the last line was a terrible jolt to me; since I wasn’t being allowed to use the word-count companion, I began to type slowly, deliberately, counting each word as I put it down. Looking up at the clock, I saw that I had some 30 minutes remaining before the time would be up. I stopped typing and paused to think.

What would I report on? I had known the answer to that one for some four years, “The Impact Of Languages On Society”, but I could not go beyond thewhat of it all. You see, since the time I had completely structured the dream, per se, for myself, a lot of things had changed – the answers to most, if not all, of thehows had assumed different shapes and, with them, the whys, too. For example, if I were to present any statistical data after sampling and surveying (the methods for which have not changed significantly in a long time), I would have done so with tables with a small write-up accompanying each table. Now, I’ll have the tables, yes, but they wouldn’t be the nadirs of my hypotheses. Now, I have the Google Trendalyzer – more recently, it powered the Google Zeitgeist – together with Hans Rosling‘s Gapminder. With the coming of opportunities in programming and data visualization, the gap between raw data and the intended conclusion may have changed for the better. However, by being allowed to assume multiple perspectives with unchanging ease, the width of the audience that understood the praxis grew because the solution was now compatible with all the different ways in which the problem was being perceived by different people.

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Prof. Rosling"][/caption]

 

With that also increased involvement: presenting problems and solutions as seemingly dissociated elements only alienates the target audience because a) they feel excluded, b) they see no valid argument, or c) both. With the coming of Gapminder, which is a sterling example towards illustrating the consequential upgrading of perspectives it heralded (and, subsequently, the Trendalyzer), initiating increased audience participation became a 2-step process. In other words, affordable.

Soon, audience-participation and audience-inclusion was everywhere, eventually but quickly transcending crowd-sourcing into cloud-networking, where proactive attempts at bettering it only made it more intuitive. It was no longer necessary that I had to have all the resources to execute my projects; I could even be so much as a singular contributor – the plurality would be derived from a global network of research groups.

What did this mean for my hows? It meant that the long hours I had vouchsafed for perfect data representation had become short minutes, and I had time now to do so many other things – perhaps even spend them coming up with new ways to garner more meaningful data and chamfering the the conclusions. With more participation easierly (yeah, that’s a made-up word, but you get the semantic drift) available, undertaking standalone projects, or even aspiring to do so, would be foolish. In other words, unaffordable.

I went on to complete my paper so quickly that the examiner was surprised. I am sure I exceeded the word-limit but a few words, but I’m not worried. I’m sure they’ll get the point.

By widening the scope of the problem to include a malleated range of parameters to understand change at one end and widening the compatibility of solutions to address a longer list of issues at the other end, technology and the latitude of human thought have reawakened my dreams to a brighter world.