Empire

A prince doesn't soil his fingers 
With the filth of mundanity; 
Pedestrians and plebeians must 
Walk down a separate road- 
One that is cobbled with their bones 
And with their blood, 
Because that is their destined path... 
A prince must bear the weight 
Of his bejeweled crown, 
And raise his heavy head, 
And carry it to the highest peaks 
And the shiniest thrones- 
Wage wars against his demons, 
Win battles against his foes, 
And win gold medals of respect 
From the ones that now stand 
With bowed heads before him- 
Happy to call him their King...

Meet-Cute

Some handshakes stir you up like secret appendages you didn't know you had, that convulse, retract and redirect your energies to a different direction, with a sharper momentum and a clearer vision. Like a worm squirming out of a despondent muddy hole, you move with this momentum guiding your motion and escape the fate that you thought had been set aside by God for you.

The first time I met him, I could tell without much of a time lag that here was a man engulfed by layers of secrecy and walls of steel that wouldn't allow the entry of external forces or curious candidates. This was the first thing about him I noticed, and perhaps that was because this seemed to mirror my status-quo with such a congruent similarity. We sat on opposite sides of a wooden bench, coffee mugs separating us and our minds, both on guard with a very German precision, as if we were both scared of any form of mental penetration or emotional confluence.

However, our attempts were quite futile and our efforts at remaining heartless were thrown on a cold hard floor and stomped upon by a higher power that had carved a very different path for us.
Some people are meant to be prologues to a story that shall eventually become the one that you are remembered for even after you're dead and gone. That evening, when we shook hands, I'm certain I didn't know that I had just met my prologue. The stirring that I felt in my thorax was probably due to those eyes or those shoulders, I told myself. But no, I had just been pulled out of the sea and thrown onto the sandy beach of the island we would grow to call our home.
My story had finally begun.

Monologue

When the walls of the day press down too hard on my chest, compressing the heart and squeezing the mind, and when drops of molten worries find release from my tired eyes, there isn't much that I allow myself to depend on to make things better.
A warm cup to ring my fingers around for company when no one else shall hold them, and the haphazardness of jazz to remind me how topsy-turvy the world truly is- these two are my saviors from such particularly nasty days.
Jazz, to me, is the perfect marriage of the unexpected disorderliness of the saxophone, the loud pompous bass of a trumpet, the unassuming presence of percussion, and the minor falls of a piano that was made for the spotlight. I find my anger evaporating like camphor on a hot stove and my worries seeming relatively insignificant when I listen to some Coltrane. With every chaotic melody, I feel more indifferent to the negativity that seemed all-encompassing not so long ago to me.

We crave all our lives for warmth, familiarity and acceptance, and I find myself getting all three in generous quantities from my coffee mug. No, it does not make me demented to assign such importance to an inanimate object, because a person may let you down and turn their back on you without so much as a second glance, but the coffee mug shall stay with you through that stormy night and remind you with each sip that courage and strength actually exist in that brilliant black liquid that caresses your mouth and soothes your heart, elevating you to a happier plane of nonchalance.

Sometimes, the easier solution to a problem is to simply not care, and to retreat back to that island where you'd been living on before the rains came and turned your lands into happy forests where the squirrels played, the robins chirped and the roses bloomed. But that won't lead you to the paradise that you've always dreamed of; specially not if you know that it's within a walkable distance.

The goal is to live a happy life, isn't it? I must remember that happiness, ironically, doesn't come easy. We need to chase it, woo it, win it, and cherish it when we have it in our lives.

Like The Beatles said, "Take a sad song and make it better.."