I press ctrl + z then cant help but press ctrl + y

fixation
like trying to slowly scrape off the residue
of a low quality paper sticker
stuck on the middle of an asphalt road
during evening rush hour.

turpentine or drinking water

which is which, I don't know.
there are no distinguishing labels
printed on low quality paper stickers
that leave stubborn residues when peeled.

everything looks clearer

and reminds me of nothing
when I look through
the sprocket holes on 35mm film
rather than through developed negatives.

the train travels back and forth on its route.

in certain frames of reference,
I am speeding ahead with it
faster than I can ever run
till it reaches the terminal.

I am made to alight
as it prepares to head back
to where I came from
and am now not supposed to return to.
i'm supposed to suck at running backwards.
minimal breathing

new cars dont smell very inviting with their leather interiors.
the cost of a car would afford me enough pairs of shoes
to walk the same total mileage it would cover in its useful life
but my lousy legs and weak heart and short life
would not let me walk that far.
somebody should tell me:
considering that with every inhale
I hold my breath for as long as I can,
what is the least number of breaths I would have to take
to complete a drive to somewhere
where I can breathe easier
both in and out of the car.

across the street

there is a huge hospital with many wards
in it there are a handful of
dying patients breathing with the help of oxygen masks.
in the hospital's parking lot theres this dude who isn't dying,
breathing with the help of a tube connected to his cars
exhaust.
internal

in a cave I can tell myself everything I want to hear

and have the rock faces slowly distort the frequencies
till my echoes are faintly reminiscent
of your voice, sans reassurance.
a stalactite breaks off and falls on my head.

at parties I want to glitter after shots of goldschlger.

I will still be standing in a corner but at least I will feel nice
from a distance, just like the night stars everyone loves
the stars I wish to be cremated in
if I died a financially wealthy man.

listening to pep talks to prime for

insomnia and other battles fought in the dark.
ah, the familiar feeling of punching and being punched
both raw sensations hitting at the same time, as if in cahoots.
sometimes the fluorescent tube flickers on and I get to see.
weird how everyone i'm fighting looks exactly like me.
never calling off the search

exhausted ship still finds energy to charge

whenever presented with false signs of land.
land to rest and feel safe on.

how many celebrations have we had for naught.

how numb we are to the sensation of hope now.

fishes in stacks as with letters that can't find a way out.

there are no edges or precipices to look down from, but
not being able to see an end doesn't mean there isn't one.
we see the pointlessness of repeated circumnavigations.

the paths our footprints made misleads others.

I think we'll start to love the waters we are buoyant on a little
when more and more people come to join us, under us.

I wonder if the energetic seagulls above

tire from flying in lemniscates.
I wonder if they crash and sizzle, unnoticed.
and if they do
I wonder if this is our prophecy.
balancing act

maybe people dreamt in colour more

prior to the invention of television
nonetheless, even when everything is in black & white
things still feel ever-present.
it would be cool to swim in oceans
opaque, deep enough to go under
but shallow enough to get out of in a jiffy;
found one contained in a gigantic inflatable pool
held together by scotch tape
the same way everything else is.
there exists more tape than cracks
this reassurance needs to be reiterated every once in a while.
quick, scurry to hide every microscope within reach,
make sure to break the more powerful ones.
today hears no bell from the ice cream man
who sells refreshing glue stick popsicles
perfect for hot afternoons and worsening desert cracks
on unkissed lips and just about every other part of us.
save for the soft whir of earth's spin, there is a state of quiet
there is not even the gentlest breeze
when all windows are shut; the curtains don't flutter
and now, even without any sticky support,
houses of cards slowly tower into skyscrapers.
1

I have a six pack that makes girls swoon

I put my six pack in the fridge
bed

give me a giant pillow and a pair of strong

clean hands of the appropriate size
so I can smother the world.

everyone is desperately looking for a blanket

heavy enough to make any attempt at getting out
extremely laborious, hence quelling their impulses
and keeping them in bed so they can try to fall asleep.

in the dead of night, everyone's tucked in

but theyre still constantly thinking
about this coveted heavy blanket
and as a result, can't fall asleep.

I am imagining the world huddled in one giant bed

in a mess of continued war, rough sex and love;
mostly war, with the rest following in that order.
inveterate tendencies remain unchanged.

let the probabilities play out.

if we're in the right place at the right time,
our phantom limbs wouldn't want to move either.
finders keepers

diamond mockingbirds fall out of the sky

now wishing they were annihilated on impact
as individual feather barbules are strung together
into a rope with multiple ends
still splitting; all of them
being pulled
in an n-way tug-of-war
ad infinitum.
yes this is art no this is not art

the affluent and even those less well-off

buy art to frame on prominent walls at home
in ostentation or just so that they can be
constantly reminded of their inadequacy.
'I can never paint like that,' they reiterate.
it got me thinking about the number of
art graduates who, upon completion of their course,
flip their certificates over to try and create
their first true work of art.
halfway through, they flip it back to the front
and decide to just frame it on a prominent wall at home,
permanently masking their inadequacy.

I will be an installation piece in your

junkyard museum; let's make this exhibition
for the garbage flies happen.
peeing in a fetid toilet, I think about
fountain by marcel duchamp
and I am left hoping that
ignoring my inadequacies,
I am art to whoever interprets me.
naps as a coping mechanism

big spaces are inherently attractive

because for me to feel an abundance of space
requires an absence of space-occupying people.
but even in this seeming isolation
my social life is fine: I still have friends.
imagination is a metaphysical dimension
not yet theorised by physicists.
formless ghosts wish they could add me on facebook.
they can't, but I assure them were still friends, nonetheless.
I run towards a sprawling marble-floored space
recently polished and sparkly clean.
the floor is littered with thousands of toy marbles
spilled by grown-ups. I anticipate slipping and falling
back into a childhood I once had not too long ago.
unconsciousness is liberating
the noises in my head need to be orphaned
they've grown up to become adults
whenever they speak it's always in the form of
shouting at the top of their voice
dogmatic and just plain obnoxious.
i'm a child, I get tired easily
please be quiet so I can take a nap.
I am writing this from the afterlife fyi/fwiw

this plane is going down and

calm mayday calls to air traffic control
gradually turns into
'i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm so so sorry'
through the inflight PA system.
all of the passengers are crying
the air stewardess beside me is crying
and blaming the seasoned pilots
with over 20,000 hours of flying experience combined.
the pilots blame the plane: a state of the art boeing 747.
in the midst of all this chaos, I feel like a kid again.
what an opportune time to feel nostalgic.
I hold my hands up and mimic gripping a yoke
pulling, while the warning system blares
'pull up pull up pull up'
I blare back at it
with the same indifferent, monotonous voice
'i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying'
I sucked so bad at flight simulators
back when I was young and still played them.
I don't know if I still suck now
I won't ever get to know
not enough altitude left.
this is not a virtual simulation. this is real. oh my.
I catch myself smiling
then my black box recordings end
and I don't register anything after that.
the impact crater probably looks stunning
both by itself and as a pareidolia
of countenances seldom seen.
2

I would very much like for someone to stand very far away from
me then yell at me loud enough so that I can just hear them
and it wouldnt be loud to me.

seems like its too much effort for most.

sometimes we are the same

you're tonguing the raspberry ripple ice cream

it's colder than you are.
you're tonguing the finish of a vodka bottle
it smells a little like stomach acid.
you're tonguing the doorknob
it's static, round, spherical. balls.

it's not supposed to be like this

no, no it can't be.

there's comfort in nonchalantly crashing

expensive cars into guardrails at high speeds
without dying or suffering even a scratch
then flickering back into existence in a brand new ride
shortly after.

thighs apart, the wireless game controller

feedbacks your virtual deaths to you.
it's pleasurable.

your beagle knows not of how humans work

or stop working.
oblivious, he continues chasing his own tail
till he gets too dizzy and barfs
like a human would. you notice,
but there's only mild anger.
this is a rare, brief moment of mutual understanding.
he will probably chase his tail again the near future.
you will keep yourself in this ouroboro.
victory titles

thank you cabernet sauvignon for this wine.

16% alcohol by volume, 84% of me left unsettled.
if only someone could help me
drain my blood before it spoils
and put them in those
dark green bottles with exquisite gold labels
instead of a sterile plastic bag.
i'm no capri sun, i'm too old to be juice.
in an air-conditioned room, the aircon blows out cooling
sighs of relief.
I lie on the bed and tuck myself under a thick blanket
my heart rate finally slows to below three digits
I sleep well.
what is the utility of thin transparent doors
when it comes to ensuring privacy?
I think I got them on purpose,
I wanted you to see me like this.
and it's like everything is a goddamned contest:
I think you'd be jealous
my mess is more beautiful than yours.
inner space

I don't remember anything before

'run away' and 'give chase' in the same sentence.
from what, after what, I don't know.
time, down the path it unravels, probably.
running increasingly fast
so fast, the ground can't keep up with me
the doppler effect goes haywire.
frail metatarsal bones are white
only because they've wrapped themselves up
with bleach white flags in surrender.
my heart is slowly beginning to
contemplate but not comprehend
the sheer magnitude of infinity, in terms of beats per minute.
I do the thing anyone who's out of breath would do:
breathe. I stop for a while to breathe
for the first time since I started running, and I see that
everyone is frozen with their mouths agape,
as if in wonderment
or so it seems. they're not amazed.
usain bolt is not amazed by my running.
usain bolt is also frozen.
I think i've inhaled
a vacuum out of this place.
parasitic life forms have discovered my lungs
to be a great place (the only place) to thrive in
and they do.
farthinder

if we pool all our money to buy a second-hand car

and then sell the brakes
we will have enough cash for petrol and food
to go on a mini road trip, I think.
where friction will not let us go
we will find out by way of experiment
in an uncontrolled environment.

there is probably an implicit sense of envy

considering that we are contemplating this
while seated in the viewing hall of an airport,
watching huge commercial jetliners take off
every minute or so.

I believe that cars, second-hand or not,

can take off like planes too.
and I don't know about you, but my life goal
is to be a human speed bump
on a highway with a 120km/h speed limit.
curtain call curtain fall

little brain operating with clockwork productivity

churning out by the dozen
self-contrived better versions of myself.
they sever the tethers with their standard-issue serrated teeth
immediately upon complete manifestation
then escape into parallel universes, where there's
a single new chance to fulfill my optimistic prophecies
or at least I think that's what happens. i'll leave it at that.
in resignation, I feel much lighter and purposeless enough
to spend entire days walking around
aimlessly, sitting on benches,
buying tickets to go see shows I have no interest in
for some generic sense of normalcy.
standing in line, sitting beside strangers, elbows touching.
I am early for a circus show and I see them setting up.
the fire eater for tonight's show chugs a litre of paraffin.
the act opens spectacularly. halfway through the show,
a distressed baby elephant finally snaps
and charges through the circus tent, out onto the streets
stomping over several tiny pedestrians and killing them.
this feels like a prophecy not told before
the baby elephant is now my spirit animal.
he will either get away with murder or be put to sleep
either way, it's a favourable outcome for him
or maybe i'm just assuming everyone has the same outlook
as I do.
we're all part of one huge perennial circus show
both spectating and performing.
audience, may I please request that you hold your applause
till i'm no longer deserving of it.
3

I am standing in the middle of the road

there are some cars I am not afraid of

you call me

I complete the crossing to pick up

forming the tallest mountains with polygraph spikes

posed with all the wrong questions, I answer

with my head and only that
I look up, to the left and pluck words from there.
facades are born in the presence of ideals, contrived
in longing imagination, not necessarily obtainable.
I tell my friends that i've met my favourite famous person
though we didn't manage to take a selfie together,
spoken to her online and other
verbal evidence of contact and closeness, however brief.
the jealousy of others towards me
makes me feel elevated, in a way
but there is a kind of unexpressed
embarrassment in me, undetected
beyond the capabilities of modern polygraphs
I can feel it, and
it has a terrible fear of heights.
the aforementioned half-truths re: favourite famous person
are transient as with most social relationships
my friends will soon forget that I ever told them all those
things
and I will forget that I ever told them such things too.
it's a universal eventuality; records are wiped clean.
when we browse random facts online and come across
a study that says adults lie about 8 times per day on average,
we call bullshit.
just my luck

this is both real life and a sci-fi movie of sorts.

our civilization has made tremendous progress
without utterly destroying ourselves.
we have become much more advanced beings
with improved resilience, and are now
competent in outward projections
of all undesirable destructive emotions.
the protrusions on your head are an ever-growing
tangled mess of bomb wires, not colour coded.
I am buying lottery at the barber
where you're getting a haircut.
the lottery is based on the stuff on your head
it's a live draw here
but without the usual monetary prizes
i'm not quite sure what would be considered winning.
cosmological redshift

bedroom linoleum and duvets soiled with dirty footprints

patterned with ergonomic machine-cut grooves
of all those who've been to places
every grain probably worth its weight in gold
as travel miles clocked towards loyalty programs,
I sweep them up and keep them in glass vials.
tell me about this vastness I read of in geography books
and am supposedly a part of; my oceans are chlorinated
and doesn't comprise of any ships or sailors,
message bottles or plastic bags
printed with environmental messages,
fishes or dead fishes, bodies or dead bodies.
polaris is useless if I can't stay afloat
to swim out of here, out of everything
every time I go under, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth
pretty sure it doesn't taste like this anywhere else.
the mauritian sun is the same one outside my window
I am striking yet another excuse off the inexhaustible list.
there is an opaque darkness, even during daytime.
the internet shrinks this world; I have this marvellous
invention manifest as photons all up in my unwashed face.
through my online activities
I experience an inversion of distances
and then a general, uniform rarefaction.
maybe I would feel better if I had this that those

I descend into the tiny void where you now exist in.
a fast tune is playing at a low volume
to keep the silence from getting too terrifyingly loud
the hum of the old air-conditioning also helps.
it is hot outside but what really matters, you tell me,
is how the temperature outside affects the temperature
indoorshere.
a sniff and my olfactories come alive with aroma
(for the lack of a better word)
from the metaphorical pizza
you've been trying to ration for a few years now.
other enemies

those contrived reminisce

the interpersonal relationships forged
on cordial terms in pleasant dreams,
now left unvisited.
unceasable recurring musings along the lines of
'how did you go
from supine with hands behind your head
to standing stiffly vigilant with hands
behind your back, concealing a blade
intended for self-defence.'

ive been staring into the mirror for five hours.

4

to quench my thirst
I usually have at least two cups on the table
one with water and one with a diluted flavoured beverage
owing to my laziness of having to go to the kitchen

I keep all my electronic devices on a slight elevation

just in case I knock a cup over

I notice the envelopes and handwritten letters I stack

for that purpose, of all things
the infiniteness of everything

you are giving a powerful speech

about something you strongly believe in
on a big stage that you easily dwarf,
going on and on till youre breathless.
I feel you
I often forget to breathe
even when im not occupied with anything else.

in a sports car, 0 to 100 in x seconds

or on the cracked shell of an old snail,
ill get there, just half the distance left to go.
and half of that.
and half of that.
and half of that.
it goes on and on.

child strapped in the backseat

watches the accompanying moon wax and wane,
falls into a deep sleep and wakes up hours later,
asks: how long more till home,
grows up, grows old, and dies.

everything im running away from will never catch me.

pangaea broke apart and so will everything else

infinite connecting flights

intercontinental from europe to asia
entirely within istanbul
and other journeys
over seemingly large distances.

a rotting stench emanates from the sirloin steak

exquisitely plated and served,
but left uneaten for weeks.
I nudge the motionless man beside me
he vanishes. now I have two armrests. and food.

wingspan as legroom, please

my legs are quickly forgetting how to move
muscles hugging bones like bolsters to sleep.
what is my destination?
a plane can fly on empty
but only for so long.
attempt empathy

checked into a hotel thats one-way, entry only

infinite rooms, all vacantchoose one, theyre all the same.
echoes in my head now immortal.
the bellhop pries off the luggage thats fused to my body
offers to bring it up
and beyond what the elevator buttons can count
via the stairs. he is sweating profusely.
when he sets it down, utterly spent,
i say thanks insincerely and dont tip
he remembers me for the rest of the day.
everything he carries thereafter feels feather light.
groooooovy

there is a song in my library with 521 plays

but I assure you i'm not that loser with only 5 songs in his
ipod.
tons of lyrics passive in my head
in languages I can and cannot converse in.
how many words are there among all languages
how many words do I really need
how many words will I actually end up articulating
in attempts at essential self-expression
and to compensate for my mouth's gross underrepresentation
of the quantity and decibel of my thoughts.
decently dressed

thrusting through a crowded two-way

my eyes are fixated
on the black sneakers i'm wearing
along with the supplied white laces that are
too long, so I shove the excess under the criss-cross lacings.
I keep looking down
to make sure the laces don't come undone
and flap around and make me look clumsy
nobody likes to be laughed at
nobody likes to see things flapping around freely
especially the thing I can see when I look
down at myself.
5

in a small nuclear family of three, both parents work two jobs

each, earning minimum wage; they are hardly home. with
assistance from various external aid agencies, they manage to
live hand-to-mouth.

their only child, a three year old, is home alone, hungry and in
search for food. he manages to find what his pops mentioned
were 'food stamps.' he doesn't know what 'stamps' are but he
sure as hell knows what 'food' is.

he eats the food stamps.

everyone goes hungry for a few days.

touchy touchy on the daily

on a recent trip to the local zoo I got to touch an elephant

rub vigorously on its tough skin
to elicit a slight, slow-motion movement
which was rather underwhelming
and a swift ear flap which I interpreted as
acknowledgement of my presence.
then I got to feed it some fruits.

I thought about what it would feel like to be that elephant

I thought about how it likely feels on a daily basis
being touched and fed by humans.
I wonder if that elephant thinks about what it would feel like to
be human.

on a daily basis my skin doesn't know if it's capable of tactual

perception.
on a daily basis my skin is cold.
on a daily basis I am hungry.
how are you im good wbu

no matter the festivity or lack thereof

the best gift, it seems, are ornamental
unlabelled ampoules of tears
sealed with colourful desiccants.
nobody realizes that
realistically, this is what they actually want.
alternative methods of intimacy

in the near future I will sign up to be a cop

go through the required training
and become one.
then I will cut myself up into thin strips
sprinkle myself with brown sugar, barbeque sauce
and other appetizing seasonings
place myself in an oven
become hot.
lay strips of myself on a plate
together with eggs
get impaled by a cold stainless steel fork
or better, picked up by your warmer fingers
placed into your mouth.
feel good.
your importance may vary

doctor breaks the news countless times every day.

if he nods a few times pleasingly
he is likely to receive ecstatic handshakes
which he promptly cleans away
with his bottle of hand sanitizer.
if he shakes his head, then no handshake.
a good day is when he goes home with a full bottle.
at select funerals, he shows up briefly
to mourn the slow death of uprooted flowers.
fight or flight or freeze on the spot in utter fear

you bare your ivory teeth, trumpet loudly

in a self-defensive display of aggression.
everyone charges toward you to pull your teeth out.

in prepping your eventual escape via jet ski

an important step is to lubricate the waters
by licking every molecule at least twice.

at birth, your parents unanimously decided

to cross your fingers on both hands
and wrap the contortions with ten rounds of electric tape.
6

a few have told me that I need to stop looking at the ground

while I walk and to look ahead instead, because what if you
knock into someone or something / you cross the road, dont
see a car coming and get knocked down

neither of those has ever happened.

today I found five dollars on the ground.

maintaining cautious apathy

caught in a compulsive perpetuity of

reacting to your reactions, as you do mine
its mutually detrimental.

your body, dissected

proves infinitely harder to pile back up than uniform bricks
the chaotic dissonances within you evident
from all these incongruous pieces.

someone has probably conducted a quantitative study

on how persistently strong the winds have to be in order to
frustrate a person enough
that it makes them give up trying
to light a smoke for the very first time.
in venting their frustrations, they squat down
to set some dry grass on fire
soon an entire forest is on fire
and the winds, persistently strong, spreads the blaze.

anything can be fitted back to its

original configuration, complete whole
in a certain way, provided one knows that certain way
notwithstanding that, even if something is broken
as long as it hasnt completely fallen apart
dont touch it.
two tickets to the autopsy

front row seats

a scalpel slices open the stomach, pries open the thin skull
with surgical imprecision
the pathologist intern starts pulling out

an hors d'oeuvre of modest dreams, unfulfilled

soggy extra-salted shoestring fries
a black cat's tail, still wagging
neurons in a pile-up of epic proportions
anxiety medication undissolved in a four loko lagoon
tiny clocks aggressively chewed out of working condition
a single useless sock full of tear holes
deer antlers which are all soft and weak
a bitten-off tongue
the silenced from the silent, and an accompanying shit ton of
letters which make up unformed words but they do not really
make up anything because the supposed words are still
unformed so they are just meaningless letters which couldve
and shouldve been canned and sold as alphabet soup.

the autopsy ends

there is applause
and more questions than it began with.
the lucky ones

she opens her arms and clamps you in a warm hug

which you are more than ecstatic to receive.
then you lick her arms for a taste test
yes it tastes like typical guest snacks, courtesy and all, great
but not quite like breakfasts specially prepared for you to
begin your mornings with.

your mom shouts at you from the kitchen

to get your lazy ass down for breakfast
waking you up from your dream.
(penrose)

knees battered with bruises of a justin bieber purple colour

you were a child cradled in parentheses
things are no different now.

I see you still tumbling down an infinite staircase

people have died falling down stairs but nobody can be sure
until the person comes to a halt at the bottom
so, as long as you keep falling, there is that benefit of doubt.

"parentheses contain material that could be omitted without

destroying or altering the meaning of a sentence."
vicaria

the faucet dispenses its last stale drop

I am thirsty, tonguing for water in the dark
at one in the afternoon
my fridge in its current state
is able to fit a dismembered corpse.
months unemployed
an impressive net worth of $50
which I decide to spend at a restaurant
for one last false sense of stability.
I order more food than I really need
if there's even such a thing
leaving me with nothing and I can't tip
the waitress who's earning minimum wage
she understands
I experience vague feelings of sympathy
and I no longer feel piteous.
when I get up to leave she is still there
she smiles at me
says goodbye, thanks for coming
see you again.
7

a soldier sleeps on a crude pillow stuffed with bullet casings

he is beat up and tired and hasnt showered in days
he sleeps soundly and dreams a nice dream

inside his rib cage it is cold