Emo Scene Community

“I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell”

- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: LXVII.

Other Times

"A faraway prayer that carries the wind of the evening,

Moving the leaves in their languid dance,

It's the song of the old trees, surprised by you,

For the obscure woods are now asleep.

Without waiting for us, such that the seasons have passed,

The golden leaves go to die on the earth,

They will be reborn one day under a radiant sky,

But our eroded world will stay the same,

And tomorrow, you and me will have left,

Tomorrow, you and me will have left.

Without waiting for us,

Such that the seasons have passed."

 - Nèige d'Alcest

(translated by me)

“It’s been weeks since I
Saw the moon, so I tell it
I’ve missed it and wave.”

- Calvin Olsen, Haiku 3141 (Nov 2020)

"Be truly what thou wouldst be thought to be.

Their hearts may be fountains whose eyes are flints, and

May inwardly bleed who do not outwardly weep."

- Thomas Fuller.

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you,

Lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words

That sometimes do you good.

His life has much difficulty and sadness.

…Were it otherwise,

he would never have been able to find those words.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Discomfort, endlessly has pulled itself upon me
Distracting, reacting
Against my will I stand beside my own reflection
It's haunting
How I can't seem

To find myself again
My walls are closing in
(Without a sense of confidence, I'm convinced
That there's just too much pressure to take)
I've felt this way before
So insecure"

- Linkin Park

PENULTIMATE THOUGHTS

"The poet is locked away in his old tower.

Behold, the wind!

The poet slanders,

Without taking in air.

Suddenly he has the skin of a hen,

Why?

Behold, the devil!

No, it’s not him but the wind,

The genie’s wind which passes by.

The poet’s head is filled with air.

He smiles maliciously, whereas his heart cries,

Like a willow tree.

But the genie is there! He sees him with an evil eye,

An eye of glass,

And the poet becomes fully humble and red.

He can no longer think.

He has indigestion!

A terrible indigestion of the worst sort,

Toward white and bitter disillusionments."

- Erik Satie (1915)

(Translated by me).

“A mighty pain to love it is,
And tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain,
it is to love, but love in vain.”

- Abraham Cowley

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,

to front only the essential facts of life,

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,

and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I did not wish to live what was not life,

living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation,

unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,

to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life,

to cut a broad swath and shave close,

to drive life into a corner,

and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

- Henry David Thoreau

"Does anybody understand this mind?

Am I out of sequence or in the times,

the day I cried?

Does anybody understand these times?

Am I out of sequence or in my mind,

the day I cried?

Does anybody understand this mind?

Am I out of sequence or in the times,

the day I cried?"

- Deb Demure

"Would you answer a call,

When the hours are dark?

Knowing it was time to deliver a message?

I can't tell from the signs we're giving in our lines,

Whittling our time,

A symphony of vacancy,

The wasted day is aging me,

With nothing really to say."

- Deb Demure

“And this is all, for this we’re born

To weep a little and to die!”

So sings the shallow bard whose life

Still labours at the letter, “I.”

- Hâjî Âbdû El-Yezdî

‘But I have lived, and have not lived in vain:
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire,
And my frame perish even in conquering pain,
But there is that within me which shall tire
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire.’

- Lord Byron.

Slow-paced internet usage,

Listening to music,

On headphones

Without wires,

(these days, that is).

Lo! This feeling so reminiscent,

Of a memory pertaining

To a lost time.

Have returned to visit me,

Or is it I

that summoned them?

Vivid pastimes,

Are those which are resurrected,

Momentarily...

Fleeting... Then,

Dissipated,

Like mist under the sun.

Behold!

The sunset.

Behold!

Dragons,

Flying across the skies.

Behold!

A castle,

In my distant kingdom.

- Auéssant

Languid radiance

“It is vanity to wish for long life,

and to care little about a well-spent life.

It is vanity to be concerned with the present only,

and not to make provision for things to come.

It is vanity to love what passes quickly,

and not to look ahead where eternal joy abides.”

- Thomas À Kempis

"I wanted to disappear,

So I opened the door to a stranger’s car.

He was divorced. He was still alive.

He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust).

The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition.

Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?

I was still here once."

- Ocean Vuong.

"I used to think it strange,

the way the woods did whisper,

the gentle signs that rose and fell,

with every passing breath of wind,

singing out from the treetops.

"Neither plenitude nor vacancy.

Only a flicker,
Over the strained time-ridden faces.

Distracted from distraction by distraction,
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.

Tumid apathy with no concentration,
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind.

That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs,
Time before time and after."