King

          “I am the king of all kings.” I heard the man say, ignorance is bliss; I told myself, “King… King of all kings.” He was shouting at himself, the man in the street, I was just walking in the neighborhood mentally drunk and sunk into my own thoughts trying to leave myself behind and runaway, hoping it would never last, hoping that being me would never last, but it wasn’t about me that day, I saw this man, less than a beggar, staring into nothingness, in other words of others “just somebody who’s not worth it.” Somebody I told myself, he’s still somebody, my eyes traveled to his direction for a moment and one more, all I could think about was that I’m not him, and there’s a difference between being him and being in his shoes, so much of a difference, destiny in its vast wisdom, written by the hands of God, gave me who I am, and gave him who he is, so at the end of the day, part from what we have, I’m always me, and he’s always him, it’s more complicated than it sounds, at least to me it is, when I was kid, sitting in the back seat of my father’s car, I used to look outside the widow, look at all those people out there, so many of them, yet none of them is me, and I’m not any of them, similarities making uniqueness at the same time, and when I see a man turning his car around, taking a different direction, I say to myself here’s a man I would never see again, even though I never knew him and never will, for that particular moment he was part of my life, just like everybody else, a human’s effect on a background of every moment of mine, ‘I’m not him’ it kept nagging on me, so much in such a standard fact, even though I see him now I can’t see his life, can’t remember or wait, and when I sleep at night he won’t be there anymore, I won’t still care, I won’t remember, when I was young I taught myself to care, because even though I’m always me and not anyone else it doesn’t mean they don’t exist, people are more than just shadows walking around, so I looked at the man, trying not to judge by his repulsive appearance, life have had its toll on him one time too many, I could see his lips moving as he talked to himself, a man who had lost his mind I realized, then it struck me, the words he said could never leave my mind, “I’m the king of all kings…” first thing I thought was to laugh, this man has obviously lost his mind to a point of no return, but the more I looked at him I could see he wasn’t even there, he wasn’t walking in the same street as I was, not even the same world, so distant, so true, reality is such a lie, we believe what we wish to believe and throw away the rest, this man is not the king of all kings I know, but in his own world he was a king, and what difference does that make now, each one of us is living in his own world, I’m not him and he is not me, and for a moment logic failed to apply, I was lost between reality and what it represents, and all I could think off, I just passed by a king in the street, a crazy man with no apparent life or purpose, but in some reality he was king, it’s more like a video game, for a couple of hours you play and become someone else, a prince, a thief, a hero, a serial killer or even a cook, wasn’t that reality, you can’t say it wasn’t, you just can’t say it was either, we only see what our eyes wants us to see, our minds comply and tells us it’s real as we follow in awe, oblivious to what is and what is not… too late now for us to see, cause there’s nothing to see, all went through my head within a moment and another, as the man passed me by, I kept going on carrying my dinner in a plastic bag smiling at myself thinking “Hell I don’t care about reality… I just hope this food remains real long enough for me eat it.” I looked right back at the man one last time, he never said it again but I could never forget it, his voice so loud, face so true, and hands waving… “I’m the king of all kings.”

LiFe

         My head is empty which is something I’m not quite used to, I mean there’s always something I’m thinking about, some quotes in my head, or lyrics making stories, now I’m feeling so weird like I’m being someone else whom I’m not used to, hell I really don’t even know why am I saying this, I might as well delete it all after finishing it and no one will get into this empty hole with me, yeah, that’s what it feels like, a hole, like I’m in there with myself, someone threw us deep into it waiting for us to get to know each other, as if that’s something that could ever happen, you know being me is like sitting at the back of a crowded bus, I’m there, with all the people, but it’s like people are talking to each other and fighting over so many things but I’m just over there at the back watching them, having no hand in the matter, shutting my mind from their troubles and looking out the window to the streets blurring right by me without a sense of any meaning, and this music playing in my head making it sound more and more like an old movie replaying itself onto a rusty screen, probably no one is even left here watching it by me, and I’m not even falling asleep, the harder I look at it, the more unrealistic it becomes. Have you ever had this feeling that life is just too realistic to be real, as if it’s just one big dream that soon you and I will be waking up from, released from the collars of this mirage, sometimes I wonder how is it that I’m only me, just me, nobody else, it’s not that I ever wanted to be someone else, but it’s like this; I go somewhere, I meet some people for the first time and at the end of the day I leave and never see them again, a year later I’m only wondering what could’ve ever happened to them, we no longer live in the same world anymore, it’s like… I don’t know… being caged inside my mind, shut of from others, what would it have been like being them not me, then I’ll only be wondering what it would be like to be me, the old me, there’s no way out of it, is there? the question that I can’t even find the right words to ask, all I know is that when I open up my eyes again, I’m still right there at the end of the bus waiting for my stop to come, wondering if I’ve missed it, but ironically the road is still too long, and I was the one thinking I would open my eyes to see the curtains falling to end this realistic dream, it’s like I’m trapped inside the world and the whole world is trapped inside my head, like a game of hide and seek, but after playing it for so long I don’t even know anymore who’s the catch and who’s the seeker, should I run and hide, or look for the answers beneath the stones of mystery, maybe I should just shut up and sit in silence and wait till the wheels of the bus stop for me to go, but where was I going anyway, I can’t remember, all I remember is that I miss those days when I used to take the bus early each morning to school, I miss standing up in lines every morning doing exercises, I miss lunch time and trips, I miss teacher fighting with me every single day asking me to wear some heavier cloths for the cold or at least roll down my sleeves, I miss every single fact of these old days, good ones and bad, I even miss our homework and heavy backpacks, and I miss her so much, more than anything else in this whole world, she’s the only thing in this world that I don’t wanna risk waking up from, but that’s exactly what she is for me; a dream, the most beautiful of all dreams, but the most unrealistic of all, I honestly don’t know where exactly did my words drift to her, it seems that every time I write something her life finds it’s way back into my words, I can’t promise myself anything, I can’t promise it’ll ever end, I don’t think I even want it to… just thinking about it makes me alive, makes me feel that inside this dream there’s a human heart beating.

You know… maybe I’m going to the beach, maybe this is where this bus is taking me, a quite empty beach right before sunset, maybe this good old driver knows exactly what I need, he’ll just drop me off at this beach where no one else goes, and I would sit over the sand watching the sun going down wondering where it went, laying on my back for hours watching closely as the pure sky gets filled with so many stars I can barely see anymore black in the night, it all reminds me when I was young I used to think that the night was a cover, shades spread over the face of the sun for us and her to sleep, I used to think that the stars were holes made by a pin in that cover to let us know; the sun is still there, and that tomorrow will come, the blindfold will be lifted from a sleepy head… A dream within a dream making me see we’re not going to the beach, the midnight sun is burning my arm keeping my head from tilting through the window, my thoughts are boiling inside my brain shifting my wishes further more and more from my true desires, I can see we’re going to no beach or tropic island, they’re not leaving me alone are they, if only I could remember where was I going in the first place, if only I could ask them where are they taking me, people leaving and others coming aboard yet it seems like the faces remain the same, and right before I fell into another memory a man calls onto me telling me I’ve nearly missed my stop, I hurry up out of my seat and move towards the door, and before I went down I remembered I forgot to pay the driver his fare, I reached my hand to give him his money, but instead of a ticket he gave me a key, and before I could ask the bus was gone, eaten by the crowd, so many people walking around and I don’t know where I should go, I thought I’d know it when I get to my stop, but I’ve never been here before, can I be lost inside my own dream, this is just too realistic to be fair, but there’s nothing I can do about it, I just keep walking and hope my footsteps could take me in the right direction of this wrong place, but the heat is filling my thoughts with too many doubts, maybe this isn’t my stop, maybe this isn’t even my dream, maybe this is the answer to my question; being someone else, wondering what it’s like to be me, be the one I missed so much, just then I saw something, a light shining towards my face making me blind for a moment, and as my eyes adjusted to it, I looked again and saw what it was, a mirror, a huge mirror in the middle of nowhere, this is my stop, this is who I was looking for all this time, I felt sorry it took me so long to find my own self, but I felt happy for not being alone anymore, and for some reason I couldn’t help but notice what looked like a door knob on the side of the mirror, without hesitation I put my hands in my pocket and took out my ticket, my key, unlocking a door into myself as I held my hands and opened the mirror, my reflection into it did the same thing for me.

Here I’m standing at the other side of myself, I smile at what I see in front of me, another bus waiting for me, but this time I’m not wondering where I’m going, I know where I’m going; “Nowhere”, it doesn’t matter where my stop is, what matters is those memories in between, I was too afraid to live my days at school or speak my heart, I waited too long to take my cloth off and jump into the water of that beautiful beach, but now… I’m off to a new trip, a different road, it doesn’t matter where it takes me, all that matters is the dream; a dream within a dream within a dream… “LiFE”