Oú Est Dieu?

god has forsaken us

A bittersweet romance recounted through the lens of our withering world. For us, humans, are the only disease
to our very own essence.

For E.
Where Is God?

the train still sounds and the ground shakes,

the foundations of every house
two blocks or closer rattle.
the wind still moves,
carrying the scent of the season for miles
as we sweetly embrace the crips of it on our pink cheeks.
the birds still sing,
a reminder that we have not yet destroyed every living being.
our mothers still kiss us,
they wrap us in their tears, for they love us.
but if there is love, where is your voice?
must i call upon a god to save me now?
for one day,
the train won’t sound,
the wind won’t move,
the birds won’t sing,
and our mothers won’t kiss us-
for we’ll be gone.
if there was a god,
why believe he would let the love in this world perish?
Annihilation
i look for you in everything
i see and count the intricate
ways you could softly
destroy me.

you are the fresh lick of an

ocean wave, and the stinging salt that follows.
you are the gentle caress of a
ray of sun on a brisk day and the cold shadows that creep behind it.
you are the smell of a deep forest after a night
of thunderous storms and the damp upturned earth that lay in the wake.
you are in every beautiful thing, just as you are in every tragedy.

a force of nature,
stroking the thin chambers of my heart
with your roughened violent hands.

only something so beautiful

would leave you wanting to be annihilated by it.
Burnt Village

but for the brief period we burnt,

we took up the whole sky,
a whole town on fire.
hiding in basements and back alleys
waiting for the evacuation call
and all the necks were broken
looking up to the ebony sky
to catch a glimpse of the lovers on fire.
children holding out hands
to catch flakes of ash
as we smoldered to a bitter end
and stacked the village carbon gray.
we are in an urn somewhere
in the shelves of eternity,
locked in a filing cabinet
and we exist only in the memories
of townsfolk and back gardens,
hoping they’ll never go under again.
Beautiful Lies

beautiful lies are insecure truths.

i miss dark truths and half truths, because two truths are not true.

how many lies does it take for a lie to become beautiful?

could you feel loved in one lie?

listen, and you can hear the birds chirping away, they’re a beautiful lie.
watch, and you can feel the cool waves crash at your feet, they’re a beautiful lie.
look up, and you can see the silky clouds wend away in the sapphire sky, they’re a beautiful lie.
all i need is a first world lie in a third world time.

if you make it seem true, then that would be a beautiful lie.

would you want to live forever?

veritas numquam perit

…so pursue truth.

And Venus?

gods - zeus, poseidon, apollo, hades, dionysus-

goddesses - aphrodite, athena, artemis, persephone, hera-

i could’ve called on all of them, whether they be full of benevolence or malice, my knees painted with earth’s soil,
head tilted to the cotton candy clouds, where secular airplanes fly.

tears fallen, and i’d beg, “please take me away from here.”

because,

you were no blooming otherworldly tale of early maiden’s questioning eyes. you were no stolen kisses under crocheted
blankets and leftover stains of sweet tea, lips pursed for any chance of fleeting glee.

you were a man.

the first of many,

the only true after my father,
you took and you took,
but you never gave.
you were all blue. still are, i assume.

tell me, venus, planet of love,

were you also destroyed by global warming?
the way gaea, great mother of all creation, was?
did your people want too much too?

“hurt people hurt people,” they say.

is that why i still can’t fly high?

tell me why, when i try, my wings encase me in liquefied wax like icarus flying too close to the sun?

is that why i bleed lifeless, venusian red?

but most importantly,

is that why man is maimed with the hurt of you?

Past&Future

we are the issue,

like once it wasn’t you,
like we lost all our virtues,
like we had nothing to go through.

do you know what’s the black dog?

of course you do not.
yet it might be in our epilogue,
all because you refused a dialogue.

will you once realize

what our words symbolize?
what’s after the present is the prize
we have to pay and we can’t vaporize.

we are the issue, once again,

but we know it’s all a chain.
we also know we can’t obtain,
all the world is now pouring rain.
The Air Tastes Like Heartbreak
when will it feel easy to breathe again?
when will i not be counting and saving
breaths for the moments i’m passing
where i need them?
i have carefully built my lungs,
but no matter how clean they
were cut or how masterfully they
are woven, they are all but perfect,
and cannot be anything but human.

and that means they are temporary.

and that means they are fleeting.
it will not feel easy to breathe again.
as long as we keep inhaling raven colored oxygen,
as long as the forests fabricated to keep us from escathon are made into graveyards,
as long as we keep drowning our inky and rancid sins in the cerulean of our oceans,
as long as ill fated men and women paint their palates the colors of mass genocide of sadistic forms,
it will not feel easy to breathe again.

when will i stop wishing and dreaming and pondering?

i keep fantasizing of us, running away. away from the cracks of this land and fading ember. away from storm dusts and spark
of thunderclaps. we’ll ring the whistling of rewritten stars upon our back. we’ll reach the end of the ocean and build a new
world for us. a world where there’s only you and me. a world where butterflies are free to feast above our honey-tangled
heartbeats. we can tuck lovebugs into our fingertips and write poems into the porch of rainbow shacks. we can dance above
moon-slicked puddles without worrying about what may come. we would come united.

but we is no more.

as long as we is a foreign word, unfamiliar to our severed tongues,

as long as we is an open gate to the abyss of the unknown and the evil,
as long as we is an issue not to be spoken about, not to be addressed,
we will remain entombed beneath the soil we have spoiled.

so we will not address it, and it could just be anything.

it is out of our control now, right?
and we will not address it,
because you lived through it, and that means i will too.
Ubi concordia, ibi victoria