Death trembles beneath my feet, it shudders in my wake.

Pulsing with my every heartbeat, every breath I take.

Fields of stone and broken glass, and chrystallized human souls.

Dreams of a forgotten path, and the silent bell that tolls.

Bones embedded in the statues, were long ago a living man.

And dawn with its radiant hues, has nothing for this shadowed land.

Statues lined, they marked the graves, where great heroes fell.

Souls drifting in a daze, under death's witching spell.

I walk the unholy lands, where angels fear to tread.

And hand in skeletal hand, I wander with the dead.

Ask anyone, "How come you here, poor heart?"-
And he will slot a quarter through his face.
You'll hear an instant click, a tear will start
Imprinted with an abstract of his case.

For generations the answer has always been no. No one remembers and nobody cares to ask. Asking a question is deemed criminal and now slowly the silence grows...

In my head everything was perfect, and every note resounds in harmony. All I seem to offer up are discords and every note I sing sounds out of key. And every time I play with passion, I start breaking strings...and my voice cracks when I sing from my heart...guess that's the price I've got to pay to know that I'm alive. This melody is tearing me apart because we're all in the same machine, each one with his own broken dreams.

Here, all hopes and dreams are scavenged from the floor and fed into machines that feed on vacant eyes. All of my dreams always find me far beyond these fake fluorescent skies. I know there must be something more...if I could only find the door, then I could free myself and see the world outside. Daylight breaks on you and burns away the grey that suffocates your soul. For now I hold a key, and though I may be lost I know that I will find my way. I search endlessly but every time I've thought that I was near...the smoke and mirrors lead me astray. Time it seems will suffer at our hands. I look for exits in the haze, the dense electric twilight maze.

Daylight, they tell me that it's just a myth; they try to betray me with a kiss. They tell me that it can't exist but they might never know just what they missed as daylight pours fire into my eyes, pours grace into my pain stricken life...breaks in and lights the way, because I can't live without the day.

So you say that you're a dreamer? Well I'm a dreamer too. But I won't sing your lullaby, however well intentioned, it's neither good nor true...the pallid dream is just a lie.

Sometimes a belief held true, is proved to be an outright lie. But it seems we always knew, in some unspoken lullaby...I'll see you at the rendezvous, we'll raise our voices to the sky, and though some say there'll be no coup, we'll never know unless we try.

Your apathy of thought has lead you to believe, that things are what they're not, my friend you've been deceived. The easiest route rarely leads to the truth. I see the self approval glaze your eyes, you know you're right no need to worry why.

When every word makes perfect sense, in every single line you read...but every single line seems to conflict undermining your creed. And the perspectives that I see is a Picasso reality. I'm seeing truth through sheets of opaque glass. Where does reason stop? Since when did following your heart become a sin?

And now I lie here shaking on this bed, under the weight of my regrets. I want to take the bullet the one aimed straight for your heart. I want to meet the wolves halfway and let them tear me apart. And the world would stop and listen, these scars could speak in volumes...but who has ears to hear? That's not the way they do it here.

I've never been this cold, the fire's gravity compels. Like planets cling to the sun, I feel my orbit start to fail. Like moths to the flame I come, too close, and all my oaths are burned. As stars begin to run, all my accusers take their turn. And calling the curses down, from my lips lies like poison begin to spill. And then comes that awful sound, the sound of prophesy fulfilled...and then I met your eyes, and I remember everything and something in me dies...the night I betrayed my own.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

[Pastor Martin Niemöller]

He touches my soul with his words...
Dares me to love him...
And then leaves me in my endless grieve...

He tells me tales of wonder...
And takes me to places...
Letting my imagination go far away...

He holds my hand...
And seems so true...
And all of a sudden he disappears...

And I...

I sink in my grieve...

i wish i knew what you had meant to me, before you went and left me wandering...

My deep, dark secrets are mine to keep.
As I creep away slowly, while the whole world sleeps.
And before you know it, I'm standing over your head,
While you lay thinking that you're safe inside your bed.

A cold breeze flutters by,
Sending chills all down your spine...
Before you can look back on your life...
It's time to say goodnight.

A thorn in the bush is worth a bullet in your skull.
And that hole in your head means more than you know.
But the greatest joy that I have ever known,
Was standing over you to watch your eyes close...

I put pennies on your eyelids,
You're just a passive thought now..
While I live on for one more day,
You're just a memory in the ground...

And at those weird points of time, where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream.

[Edgar Allen Poe]

Take the dream and times by two, now take the true and prove untrue.
Close your eyes and try to see, being there and yet not be.
Feel the heat, that seems so cold, take the young, that made them old.
To follow where the bright light goes, with closed eyes see, the dark light flows.

Never do we know the past, until we know, the moment last.
The sense we make, the sense we see, in life we take too cautiously.
To make the knowing be confused, to use the mind, we never used.

Let the darkness, and the candle, lead you to your greatest handle.
Hit the head, and hit the key, against the wall so wakefully.
For there will never be a path, that has more good and yet less wrath.

The white flag is waving....

This anger seems and thoughtless beings,
A tender kiss that's still lingering
I implore you to testify
Devise your thoughts
Commit a question to the breeze
and then release

Hatred draws on silk and stencils
to know why
you must understand broken pencils
Lost and decay, they were led astray
Unable to erase their foolish ways

Of hearts and hand grenades
It's all the same
so replace one with the other
And as I take cover
The broken pencils will rise
From their silken prisons
And clarity will be carried away

For another day this will seem simple
Pain sick mud washes off
And you may scoff, but try to realize
You should internalize the thought
That it's not always your fault.

His hands rested lightly on the keys, piano keys.

Stark black slapped almost barbarically on white; a seductive trail of dark sins marring would be perfection, lingering over a perfectly arched neck and tracing the hollow at one's throat, where soft white skin is found to be exposed and vulnerable.

He smiles, captivated by her pain- yes, sweet pain, the eventual root of his demise, the eradication of all the pieces of his soul. Her pain, captured in his eyes. His pain, reflected in hers. He could never tell whose was whose anymore- perhaps it was all hers... or all his. His soul was in pieces, each singular existence intricately woven into a tangled web of errant delicate threads too thin to deduce one true color- resembling nothing of the iridescence of transparency but neither mirroring the unfathomable black of his being, and certainly not white- white was always too innocent, too ghostly. The death pallor.

White was eternity, and black was hell. He knew this, thus he knew of the misconceptions. No, dear little ones, Hell wasn't red; Hell was embedded in these keys, softly and silently until with a slam of finality the smooth, elegantly curved black lid bites down on one's fingers, fingers which had once run feverishly over the entire length of the piano, tainting white with grime, oil, dirt, forgetting that the partial can be more than the whole.

Fingerprints from hell.

He observed now, then in one sudden fluid motion uncrossed his ankles and stood up, pushing away from the piano and almost knocking over the small leather topped stool. Almost, but not quite, he thought, proceeding to languidly brush himself down. And now, ever the observer, he saw.

Black droplets sliding off the smooth skin of his pale, translucent arm- blue veins too evident on the inside of his wrist, dripping languorously into the recess of what lay beneath, the ripples of which sliding outward as silently and stealthily as the steps of a predator hunting its prey.

[One day, I want to hear you play the piano]

Dark waters as beguilingly calm as the looking glass of vanity, mirroring his every move, action, intention, but it wasn't vanity imprinted on his mind, she was. He loved the way she thought him a manifestation of evil in raw, physical form. Each note, each key, each tone, each pause woven into a rhythm that pulsated with every rise and fall of her breath- oh yes, he knew she was troubled by it- her large, haunted eyes showed it; her sensitive snow white skin betrayed by the sizzling of a red hot coal poker, by the poignant smell of charred flesh that slid like a thick, dark honey down one's throat. She said he had betrayed her. But then, she was the one who had willingly taken away his blank, white mask to reveal the grotesque malfunction of the immorality which had once lain happily dormant beneath it.

She had pulled out the monster with her own hands, such small hands, so gentle, delicate, so easily...

crushed.

He was the sole figure of guilt riding into the haunts of innocence.

[I want to hear you play death]

Death was a tough game to play; death was everything. It was in a way of every conceivable object ever to be imagined, seared into their destinies like black writing on a pristine white page, until with a sudden jerking motion, that page is either ripped out of existence, or into existence much like the way a black hole rips into the universe, leaving only a jagged torn edge in the little black book of their lives as a forlorn reminder of the page that once was.

He took up chess, and the stake was her life. She had laughed it off, trusted him completely, eyes almost as soft as her skin, lips vulnerable as a child's, slightly chapped, with a single indent in the middle of the top lip- the old description fitted like a glove- roses filled with snow. Smiling, she had reached out, ignoring the hunter's stalk of ripples sliding out in ever expanding spheres... that is, until they had slid over her. He took a white chess piece, an ironic parody of the knight in shining amour, twirled it deftly in his fingers and with a powerful flick of his wrist slammed it on a black piece, crushing it so only splinters remained. Force was power. It was then that he thought it was a pity, had he known the piece was made of wood perhaps he would have been more careful. Now the piece was broken, irreparable- or no one had the patience to stop and pick the splinters up, glue them together. There were too many of them.

She brushed the splinters off with her hands, hands not unlike his own. She had always loved neatness- another angle on the conceptual purity. She had thought that there were many pieces like that left, that each piece was the same- a single insignificant element of a whole to be disregarded and easily replaced.

[I want to read your soul]

He leaned forward, observing the other player, the opposition, the nemesis, and hearing, as though in accompaniment to the lingering echoes of falling droplets and the quintessential melting away of his soul... the piano. He heard the piano player.

He wasn't the player.

Lilting music spoke of the desolate emptiness which signified nothing, drawn out notes bittersweet and resonant, echoing within the dark confines of his twisted mind, urging him over the brink. So simple, just one, little step and-

It was then that he realized, he was the one who had been branded.

Chosen.

Special. The word was bitter on the tip of his tongue.

Long, pale, slender fingers flashing fast- a blur of white, a smudge of grey, and a tone that was but the more definite under the harsh lighting. The black band around her ring finger flashed mockingly at him.

The darkness wasn't his, it had only slid over him, carrying him along with the current, and she, the creator of the mask, had watched. Silently. The prey never knew it was being hunted. He realized in that singular moment that injustice and immorality, death and hell, pain and suffering, they weren't always black- weren't always ugly. It was sometimes an aching tangible beauty, bathed in soothing white warmth, a corporeal thing, a touchable sustenance so close and yet always dancing just out of reach, so frustratingly far away. If only he could stretch a little further, he could reach out with trembling fingers to learn a lesson best left to the unknown, a lesson learnt too late. Almost. To be burnt like a moth drawn irresistibly to a dancing flame. Appearances deceived, only the soul spoke of indefinite truths.

Betrayal.

He stared at the antagonist.

Death leaned over the chessboard.

[Checkmate.]

Feb.25,2005. when the dusty pens used for fairy tales were brought out again.

Maybe I never got over you.

"We dream of hope, we dream of change, of fire, of love, of death. And then it happens; the dream becomes real, and the answer to this quest, this need to solve life's mysteries finally shows itself like the glowing light of the new dawn. So much struggle for meaning, for purpose. And in the end, we find it only in each other. Our shared experience of the fantastic and the mundane. The simple human need to find a kindred. To connect. And to know in our hearts... that we are not alone."

[Heroes:Mohinder Suresh]