Category: Personal

Siren

Wrecks behind the curtain
Can play the crowd
Make ‘em hang
On their every word

Out there in the glittering lights
Hide dreams you might never see

Pensive and broken
On the edge.
Always scared
They’ll see the lies inside.

You’re not the one
Just a siren,
Worried your silences
Will cause further investigation.

You make your noises
To drown out the voices
In your mind.

Hoping somewhere you can find
The silences you crave.

Bound by your dreams
How can what you love
Be splitting you at the seams?

Go on and play the crowd
Make ’em hang
On your every word

Don’t give them the chance
To find who you are
In your silences.

-AJ Sandhu 2015
0

Weight of Guilt

I’m dreaming of a life
A life that might not exist
But maybe if I dream it enough
I can come close…I can come close..

Is ambition alone enough?
How many countless words discarded
Before settling close enough?

Always a whim away
We tell ourselves
Like a memory gate to yesterday
Regaled by the lies around me.

The illusion that time passes around us
That we’ll be fine when the morning comes
A false heartache of the mind
Justified sickness we can ignore.

What is this weight
I can’t seem to shake?
Should it have been me
For the ignorance to take?

I’m drowning in days,
Days that never seem to pass.
Treading on in hope
For the moment I look back.

Maybe I can do this?
Seems like I can live this?
With just a memory on my mind.

-AJ Sandhu 2015
0

Peddler of Dreams

She’s peddling, peddling dreams
By the seashore
She’s showing you, showing you things
You’d always suspected
But never known for sure
Saying the words you’d only heard in your mind.
She’s a wanderer,
Simple dreamer,
A soul led on a whim
She’ll be gone before the day breaks
Leaving only your dreams in her wake.
But she’s infected you to the core,
From just a look your way,
You don’t remember anything from before.
Because she’s peddling, peddling dreams
By the seashore
She’s showing you, showing you things
You’d always suspected
But never known for sure.
Saying the words you’d only heard in your mind.
She’s a wanderer
Simple dreamer
A soul led on a whim
She’ll never tell you what it takes
To keep her
But she’s a whim away

When you need her.

-AJ Sandhu
0

Disconnect

There is refuge in unwritten words still draped in the golden glow of magical possibility. A story in the mind is perfection, untainted by the imperfect words needed to craft reality.
How many wonderful worlds become contaminated by the disconnect between mind and hand? I can regale you with a dozen or more imaginings perfect and pure, until tested by the litmus of reality.
I’ve written before of ideas that ravage through like aches; stories that so thoroughly disconnected me from reality, I awoke weeping over the banal mundanities of a world without magic.
I create so I can escape from what I cannot control.
Finding release in my mind from what I cannot yet be free of in reality.
So consumed by the worlds over which I reign, I forget to paint them with the brush of truth. Falling to traps of perfect heroes without consequence. Heroes always in the right place at the right time with the right words. Never a moment, or even days, too late. Never human.
Doing so would acknowledge the faults I see in reality.
Sometimes words aren’t enough. No apologies or validation strong enough to ease the hurt. Sometimes you can be and are too late. If I refuse to show such human error in what I write, how can I expect to change reality?
It complicates the narrative, but I’ve been running from complication all of my life. If my escapes don’t teach me to cope, nothing will.
My characters, like myself and the people I’ve chosen to surround myself with, cannot put out all of the fires; cannot contain all of the damage. But we can learn to repair that which is in our power.

So can the people in my mind, if I would just give them the chance. 


Stay good and keep transmitting.
0

Rumination 13

Constrained and managed lives are difficult to lead. Entire industries are built around the projection and public cultivation of image. The higher you go, the greater the spin. Eventually your individuality, your humanity is stripped away and only a caricature of a person remains. You find yourself defending the idea of what you should be.
You don’t know why you don’t want to give it up.
The faster the ascent; the more basic the idea.
It doesn’t have time to form. No chance to cultivate in heartbreaking anonymity. Its black and white; no range to be a vice you can live with. Anything that flies in the way, any small indiscretion is an attack on the image itself. It starts to suffocate.
So, how do you escape? How do you stop hiding in front of the world?
You don’t.
If you want out, you have to burn it to the ground. Even if it is everything you have ever built over the course of your consciousness. Your whole life.
Even if it burns you in the process.
Start a fire and raze the foundation.
Then on the blackened ground where your life used to shine, build it again. Slower this time. Of your own volition. Take the old lessons. The immature missteps, learn from them.
Move forward.
Sometimes the life you should save is your own.

-Stay good and keep transmitting. 
0

This Game

I’ve got this little black dress
A dollar to my name
Some hope in my pocket
And I’m here to play this game
Won’t be bound by
Ghosts of our memories
Won’t be held back by
Things we used to be
(we used to be)
I’ve got this tattered black dress
A few pennies to my name.
A drop of hope in my pocket
When’d you change the rules to this game?
You can wake up
In a different bed every morning
You can tell me
It’s the play of the rich
(But shame for the poor)
Now I’ve got this torn black dress
Not a penny to my name
Spent the hope in my pocket
But at least I’ve won your game.
I’m done now
Cause I can see
People like me
Shouldn’t speak!
(I was never one of you)
I’ve got this new black dress
Don’t need the dollars that you gave
Gathering some hope in my pockets
So no one else will have to play this game.
-A.J. Sandhu 14-June-2015
0

Rumination 12

WHY. Why do I have so much stuff? I used to be able to fit my life into 2 pink totes and a suitcase. Now I have a whole house worth of things without a whole house to put them in.
I have TWO cupcake makers. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND NEEDS TWO CUPCAKE MAKERS? Like 10 different candy molds, a cake pop maker, (have I ever even used it? WHAT?) FIVE CUSTOM CAKE MOLDS. The one that is shaped like a book fits into a tote and it will be mine forever. I will be buried with it.
I have 3 sets of GOBLETS? THREE? Buffet patters (I HAVE LITERALLY NEVER THROWN A PARTY. EVER.) AN EIGHT PERSON CUTLERY SET. WHAT? (Edit: I just looked at the box, it’s from Macy’s; it was $80) When am I going to use these? A SPICE RACK?!?!
The note cards and journals. I love them, I really do, but they only add to the clutter around me. Journals, I intend on slowly giving away to people I find fascinating. I’m going to miss them, but I know I would much rather they find use and not storage. There are journals that are nearly 15 years old.
The note cards will always find use. I have so many people to thank, and there will only be so many more.
I just can’t find it in me to throw anything out. Even when it’s obvious I don’t need it. I’m holding on to things better left in the past. Sure, I might get my own place again one day. But today isn’t that day. I can sit here letting the toxicity of this place ruin me, or I can venture out and find that forever I’ve always dreamt of.
I won’t let depression keep me. I won’t let my mistakes define me. There are symbols in this hoard of the person I was expected to be. Someone I never was, no matter how hard I tried.
I can’t sit still. I need the quiet comfort of lonely wandering. It’s maddening to think I can’t just be a wander. I can’t just pack up and hop a plane to nowhere. I don’t want the things everyone around me wants. I don’t want to get married, I’ve been on this Earth a while now and I’ve yet to find someone I could even fantasize a family with. I don’t want a place to which I am bound.
It’s lonely I know. But I crave the silence of a long drive. I yearn for the books read on wordless flights. I ache for places I’ve never seen.
I’m not naive enough to think two lives can run parallel eternal, but for the times some will run next to mine, I will offer the one eternity I can give; a space in my heart.
I am selfish, there is no defending that. I will wear it proudly. I am selfish. I think of my own happiness before progeny. I am selfish, because I want that which is most difficult to give. I want a space in your memories. I don’t want any more to be a passing glance on a sidewalk or a subway. Sad eye contact until the next bus stop.

I want to arrive at my death with open arms. Welcome embrace from a friend foiled twice. There will never be enough time; I just want to do enough in my time.
0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑