Tehvitan Ibele

Withdrawal

So. It has been close to a month since I started my break from World of Warcraft. The fact that this game has been a part of my life so long, I logically assumed that there would be a void. Lately I've been filling this deep well with exercise, reading, and LSAT practice, while suffering slight existential crises. So. I did what any intrepid explorer of the twenty-first-century would do--I searched Google. Now, apparently my mind over the years has taken "The Twelve Steps of Addiction" and "The Five Stages of Loss and Grief" and combined them to form some grotesque amorphous bastard mass of a program my unconscious has taken upon itself to title "The Ten Stages of Bad", beginning with elimination of the problem, magic inbetween, and eventual resolution. I consider myself to be a person of theories, moral and otherwise. As my saxophone teacher once said, "Do as I say, not as I do." It is then perhaps even more unfortunate, for me, that my template for addiction resolution looks the way it does. Over the past day or so, I've developed several partially educated guesses on what this magic may be.

One: Epiphany of a way to rearrange one's life to replace said addiction.
On the whole improbable, since rehabilitation renders some basic mental processes useless. Having exalted mental ruminations apart from total insanity are most likely out of the question.

Two: God.
Well. I am wholly unreligious and I'd probably burn in hell if I believed in it, but everyone needs something to have faith in. In concurrence with Shepard Book, faith is not about believing in God, but believing in something, anything.

Three: Moderation
This seems to be my favorite of the three so far. Practicing self-control and limiting intake, reorganizing priorities. This unfortunately probably only works in cases where there hasn't been a chemical dependence to whatever you may be addicted to, but you can argue there is a psychological dependence on non-chemical addictions.

Well realizing the problem is always the outset of the battle, but as a person of theories, I can safely say it is not nearly half the battle. Insight requires action and vice versa.

Four: Anything that works
I know. I'm brilliant.

Chuang Qian Ming Yue Guang

Underneath the pale moonlight, my hands rest upon my knees, bathing in the pools of bitter black and white. The night whispers sweet memories to the leaves and the trees. I can't help but think of home. I was alone. I once gazed from far away, those tortured trees--they rocked and swayed--clipping the stream of life, the rays of tranquil night. Now again I sit, head bowed, wallowing in scattered rays. I am alone.

When We Wake

He considered himself relatively tall, slouching just over six feet. Every morning when he woke, he was happily reminded of this as he stretched, ankles resting on the chipped wooden bedframe colored black as was his hair--as was his clothes. He would relish in this fact since seconds before, every single day, his mother would carefully open his door, sit by the edge of his bed, and remind him that everything else about him was, at best, average.

It was summer with the glint of cars parked for Sunday concerts, the fresh smell of eucalyptus trees, toxic, mixing with scents of pine, the dogs playing with the grass, languishing in the unearthed memories of spring now singed by the constant rays of sunlight. He awoke amidst a flurry of chirps, birds, resting on branches and power lines, singing the sacred melody of afternoons past, lazy afternoons where purpose had no place and things simply were. His black hair seemed a small shrub against the white of his walls as his mother greeted him with blue, black, straw and raspberries.

"How are you this morning dear? Did you sleep well?"
"No, unfortunately."
He scratched his black hair, half-thinking, half not.
It had been a month since he enjoyed any true rest.

It felt wonderful. He bounced his ankles against the rickety wood. He had finally woken up before his mother and...
"What do you look so happy about?" spoke a voice, soft and dense.
He stopped bouncing.
"Never have I seen such a lazy person in our family. Nor have I ever seen someone so happy to be failing summer school after failing his last semester of college."
He gathered, feebly, those last few remnants of logic left to him.
"You should know you are wicked."
She grinned, softly, slightly, vile.
"I do what I must."

Time passes and all things pass with it, bound to this immovable power, freed by its eternal, unchanging, solitude.

He got more ill every day. The colors she brought him in the morning began to fade to black. And sometimes worse, they would fade to gray. He was told to sleep more, but he grew tired in his dreams. As he dreamed, he seemed to wake in another body much like his own, with no control. What worried him the most, was that the dream only changed by minute degrees, like daily routine. He would wake late, not to reds or blues, but to cold, terse, and pained. He watched himself game and eat. He watched himself sit, mesmerized by static and noise, invisible strings attached to his increasingly heavy limbs, watching, watching, watching. He watched himself burn.

She sat next to her son and saw his eyes flutter.
"It's summer, dear, not spring. Please wake up."
The people had gone home, only ghosts of tones remained in their ears.
The dogs wandered back to their owners, leaving the grass to soak in the sun's last few warming rays.
He sat up.
And smiled.

Fifteen Minutes

In a second or two can few words carry through
And lay waste to an unstable mind,
(There has been no person as lazy as you...)
Must be cruel, but I haven't the time.

And to you I can never be kind.

As minutes pass, in spite of my speaking,
(And talking is easier than doing,)
Cities and towns etched deep in my sight crumbling in the slow summer heat,
Flecking her ice cream cone with dirt, dark as dream itself,
Piling peat against unrelenting peat,
As she disappears into the storm of rot and decay.

If states collapse in merely minutes,
Then worlds with ease can Time devour,
Grotesque beast, Time, with its slow-chapped power
Seconds and minutes upon unthinking hour.

Firelight

There against the firelight late last night, he sat. No one knew his name (no matter), but he wore a silvery chain about his neck and when we sang he must have heard and broken through those branches.

The listener adjusted his collar.

Our chords and melodies stoked the flames, sparking din and havoc in the boy's mind--he was moved to furious tears. Not sorrow nor happiness, but sheer confusion. He cried through our chorus and wailed through our song, tears breeding anger and tears, until finally he stood up, eyes burning with our words and disappeared.

He wept for the countless wisps of smoke, rising from burnt wood as unearthed memories, withering away as his childhood was--as he was. He sought the firelight and song, because he remembered, and you said he appeared but he was there all along, dying endlessly among the yellow tips of fire. The scorches on his face, what you call maturity, etched eternally in his gaze, is the cost of experience. And you last night, as many others, watched him burn and twist, watched the forging of crassness, the stripping of emotion, and necessary sacrifice.

The man adjusted his collar once more and disappeared amidst a glint of sunlight.

For A Mother

Dear mother, I am sorry I have failed you, since I have tried not to for all my life. When I was young, I had worked hard and saved few hours for play. We traveled cities far and oceans wide in search for what, I never knew, but now I know the search was all you ever wanted. I am sorry I have failed you, for as I grew--as you did too--I was softly led astray, by wicked hands and piling demands, and pleasures old and new. I have led you to tears, tears embittered and anguished from watching me drown, unable to save me.

I have failed you time and again, and no doubt will in the future, but that is the mark of life. Though I have suffered many failures, I have ushered successes as well. You say that I am grown and out of control; wayward is shall wayward be as waves afresh roll landward from the sea. I thank you for your worrying. I am still young, but old enough to understand. I am uncertain, of almost everything, but I believe in my ability and my self.

I hope we may travel together again, searching for what we may never know, among the rising tides and sleeping moons.

Fog and Mist

I can darken lights of day,
For hours upon hours.
(And so can I), said the mist to the fog, with soft indignant showers.

And with the Wind I carry far,
(Well, she is my friend too,)
She wails with fury when we're apart,
(And with me, she's born anew.)

I bury mankind's faces in the folds of my discontent,
Until all their sense is stripped away, their few emotions spent,
(And I suspend their dulled dark dreams from atrophic eternal lament.)

When I lay 'cross the graying skies, all those beneath, my slaves,
I'll rend their souls from flesh and bone and send them to their graves,
Their pain shall lie in unheard screams, their fear held, everlasting,
And I'll own all, save empty husks,
(And I shall mourn their passing.)

Softness

She smoothed her hair, handful by handful, under the sharp blasts of the swimming pool showers. Eying the blank ceramic tile, square by square, from her toenails, her eye balls moved in clicks upwards, the wheels turning in her mind, searching always for the next rung to catch. Water off, tie hair, check lock, goggles slide carefully over her gray-blue eyes; long ago in California she devoured waves from the bay and kept them in her eyes. The glass dome invited the sun, and the sun accepted, gilding her body with the last rays of daylight. There were three signs, dissecting the pool into three bodies--slow, medium, fast. "You know," began a voice, "so you can choose to drown quickly or slowly." Her mouth slipped into a smile as she approached the water's edge. Unable to sustain any longer, the sun steeped its tired body in the pools that were her eyes, splashing slightly, spilling only a few tears. As the moon slowly rose, she did as well, lifting her body from the water, pearls and tears sliding down her back, her eyes were tempted by the moonlight. She touched her lips. They were soft as mine were soft when last I saw her. Touched by moonlit kisses, and by the salts of the sea.

Reminiscing (Two)

Revenge of the Dead

Screams of souls fill newborn night
As I stand still 'gainst black twilight
Etched upon the forest's sanguine blight.

I cannot say what led me here tonight.
Unrest, perhaps.

These trees I've touched in light of day
Now sputter, cough, as they laugh and sway
Mocking me with branches vile;
Breaking wood forms twisted smiles.

The moon surfaces from the darkened sky—a ray alights—
But only to bring my shadows,
And the third that walks beside us;
I had hid in the daylight.

These trees, familiar trees, violent trees,
Hold and seize,
For I once breathed the mist of the battlefield upon their faces—these familiar faces—
I waited, hoped, for their cold embraces,
Wanting not their lingering traces or humanly graces,
But their hatred, malice, anger, and appetite
Never came.

I hide in the daylight.

Reminiscing (One)

Here is an old poem I recently dug up, written when I was in the 7th grade, titled Revenge of the Dead. As an exercise, I have recently rewritten it, but the rewrite inevitably retains some of its former elements, and also inevitably, does not. Here is the original poem for reference and necessary comparison:

Revenge of the Dead

The screams of the souls fill the night,
But not one figure stands in sight.
The piercing screams continue,
But further I go,
Darker and darker,
To where no one knows.
The further I go,
The more agony I feel.
It feels like an arrow, an arrow of steel,
An arrow of steel that goes straight through my heart,
The pain is incredible, where do I start?
The trees start to laugh and the sky starts to fall,
The ground starts to burst and the animals grow tall.
The victims of hunting and warfare I see,
All of their cries come to haunt me.
"It was not me!" I said with a cry,
Figuring anything was worth a try.
But I killed all these victims! I knew very well,
I was the one that sent them to hell.
"Liar!" they all said and "Liar!" again,
I felt a frightening shock right the.
This sight was incredible (but bad) to see,
All of their weapons were pointed at me.
Tearing through the flesh, skin and bone,
Then suddenly came a silencing tone.
After they attacked me, they just left me there,
Making me take all the pain and despair.
Lying there helpless in my pool of blood,
My last breath of life was lost in mud...