Fade

All relationships start off with so much fervor. Each of them is based on confidence as they start and as time passes, the confidence wears onto faith. Then faith quietly turns to hope and most people who are in relationships don’t even realise this progression. Finally, comes the acceptance, if logic and reason is applied. Otherwise, despair lurks like a predator in the shadows.

I have had friends by the dozens over the years. They have come and many have gone. A few have stayed around. But eventually everyone realizes their own inadequacies and the relationships falter. Distances help. I always wondered how they could. But they do. Familiarity really does breed contempt. However, I will say the strongest relationships pull through time and space constraints. Most do not have the temerity and or the will to stick on.

We all begin with so much care. Ambitions seep in and miles get interlaced between hearts and the desire to continue. We think we will keep in touch. But what happens is that the heart is morose when alone. The moment other people step into lives, the older ones get pushed back in the queue that happens to fall into place. Even the most fervent and intense relationship gets tested by time. Feelings remain, I suppose.

Feelings. A quaint noun. They signify all the shades of grey. From the darkest to the faintest. That’s how most of life’s heart goes. Dark to light. When you meet someone and find them fascinating, feelings grow intense and vibrate in their blackness. As time goes on, and it flows onto them, the colour fades. It depends on how dark they were to see if they last or fade into nothingness.

Then there are other colours merging into them. It is an ebb and flow. Like the tides upon rock. It is all a matter of time when the hardest rock corrodes and falls away into the sea. But that doesn’t mean the sea isn’t the better for it, or that the rock while it lasted never lent its support to land. Its entity changed and it went from dark to light.

Dumb

I don’t want to waste time,
On insensitivity,
Or on a so-called friend;
memories turn bitter and sour,
As disgust takes over in the end.

I can only look to myself,
For I gave myself again,
To those who chose to hate
And bestowed only pain.

Maybe I am not to blame,
I am not the one in the wrong,
I cannot change the rules of the game,
Just to make myself strong.

I know enough of love by now,
Of how quick it can break,
Under the pressure of fame,
Or the balance of give and take.

Yes, I am not the one to blame,
For opening my heart and home,
To anyone who betrays both.

I regret my heart,
I regret its feeling,
I fear it, itself,
Prevents its own healing.

I am dumb like a tree,
That shelters and cannot stop
The ax that ultimately,
And unequivocally,
Shall make it drop.

Et tu, Brute

There are words that can cut like knives;
I have no use for the likes of such;
And when friends brandish them for woe,
That does seem to account for much.

They spin through the air and draw blood,
Much like some martial arts movie;
And they are sent with desires to wound
To decimate my self completely.

I see the glee in the eyes as they take aim;
The thoughtful precision of a taunt,
The cocking of the brow and curling lip
That releases the word designed to haunt.

I have never known the pleasure of this;
Perhaps it goes against my grain,
The way I was taught and reared and loved
Not to strike back in kind; but refrain.

In laughter, much is said that wouldn’t be,
In laughter, wounds are made as well as healed,
In laughter, words are made and broken,
In laughter, much malice is artfully concealed.

It depends on how we choose to use it;
May a smile, that softly reaches the eyes,
Overtake a barbed word, that spins forth,
Before a patchwork of marked lies.

May soft eyes, genuinely, care to safeguard
Tender feelings and genuine pleasure;
May everyone be happy and sane
And let what is leisure remain leisure.