A Fighting Chance for the Self in Chaos

An attempt at slam poetry, navigating through growing up in different continents throughout my life.

My personal brought up was convoluted; between Australian primary schools filled with memories of bicycle rides across Canberra’s un-disturbed paved roads, to bumpy scooter rides in Nepal maneuvering between people invisible behind dusty bus exhaust fogs, to American high schools that offer the perfect template for a premature existential pojjey trying to fit in between popular Nike shoes and the ability to pull them off.

In between foreign countries going back for families distant and close, connections that must’ve been lost in the distance, lost in between constant ashirwads of goodwill, lost in the point of nostalgic conversations, in chyang glasses half empty, of school memories that eventually drinks itself dry, subsiding to a deafening silence, eroding erosion of esoteric laden canvases of splattered dripping wet paint that slowly drips off its meaning into the sewage lost in between the setting and self, eventually struggling to find comfort in where it belongs, comfort at home.

When the foreign thin summer air provided the perfect excitement for situationally close uncles and aunties to bum around grills, we kicked the same sand castles we built so well in boredom induced happiness of carefree freedom to build relationships, where little did we know would be a fading compass that shows the way towards each other only in distant Facebook profile picture likes and Instagram hearts.

In locker layered corridors carrying pom poms peering down from their imaginary idealistic idioms, whom we in probable jealousy ridiculed in now abandoned parks, smoke induced highs, blocked lungs, cough coughing weaving blunts rolled in laughter filled adolescent passion, knowing here now but cannot stay.

To dhakatopi layered corridors in between open alley ways, two seater scooters led to three seater rides, paving through headlight flooded candles burning, struggling, to show streets of colourful fruits and cradles of vegetables, calling out to strangers shouting prices adding a familiar noise in the bustling chaos, where above the same cradled pavement sat in cafes cigarette smoking passion seeking minds, busy in an elaborate caffeine high, running but idle, in pursuit of infinite jest and diplomas, to finally depart, black and white goodbyes masked in rainbow connections between us and the never ending sky in the fearless uncertainty, we choose to fly.

Here, now, in reflection of chaos an unrequited lonely satisfaction, in sunsets beaming deep in thought, in rays of nostalgia of what it was, leaving always eroding canvases, burying deep the fading compass, still in an adolescent high, in three seated comfortable train rides, as the Sydney sunsets over saturate, our thoughts can be a hyperbole of what it was: fantasies in moments of time. Yet that fantasy can evoke the layers of truth in the present of what we have found, a fantastical pursuit of satisfaction within ourselves.