Kash Baloch — Poetry on Identity, Love, and Survival

Like water, you slipped through my fingers as I remained transfixed, knowing that I was changed forevermore. The sand in our hourglass had run out and thus, so had our time, as I still anxiously await the day that closure finally washes ashore. Some days, I cannot put into words how much I miss your breath against my neck or the way that you would save me, whenever I found myself shipwrecked. On other days, the electricity between us would leave me shell shocked, and feeling less lost than found, as I plead for my own salvation, hoping I would find the strength to abandon our battleground. Our holy lovers' war had left us both bereft, as we tried to catch our breath and circumvent our inevitable deaths. Stop loss syndrome as we both returned to our respective lives alone, attempted to survive, with the hopes of making it on our own. You took the road less traveled by and diverged creating your own path, as I started to repeat patterns that I should have buried i...

It is time to wake up and accept responsibility for your life, high time that you stopped pointing the finger and picked up a knife. Cut away all the vines that delude your judgment, and clear out the fog that conceals the truth from your eyes. Self-righteousness has always been the cause of your detriment, confess to your sins, or drown further in your endless lies. You are the difference between a boy and a man, as you manipulate reality to benefit your conspiratorial plans. You are always prepared to offer unsolicited advice, although you react with ire when others resort to the same device. Avoidance, your greatest clause, should have been listed on your contract when I signed up, instead I was forced to tolerate the passive aggressiveness that would fill, and thus overflow within my cup. Your ignorance once redeemed you, as it seemed like innocence instead, until I realized it was all a game, and that you were playing the fool, as if your brain was dead. You a...

Ice cold isolated inferences ignored by both me and you, resulted in the resignation of our hearts, as they split, and cut in two. Separated now, we are forced to accept our own unique worlds. Yours is filled with wonder, while mine keeps failing to deliver pearls. My lonely kick start heart keeps waiting for someone to come and take it by the hand, to pull it through the darkness, and to lay with it in the sand. With my future still unplanned, I continuously seek out others to turn it around, as I lose my footing, nearly tumble, slip, and falter, hoping that another will bring me back to solid ground. Anchoring my ship to prevent me from sailing out into the middle of the sea, I incorrectly assume that happy is a state of mind that does not exist independently inside of me. Without you, my heart is colder than the Arctic where it may as well have been conceived, but with you, it refuses to thaw, remains as cold, and is still ill-received. Bereaved, I prostrate to ...

The black torrents wash within me and I watch my light darken, I have used up so much energy in the fight that I have no resistance. I can see waves of black cascading through me in streams. I can see pools of darkness forming as my thoughts circle inside my head, my worries they are storming and desire to fill me with the utmost dread. The ebony's essence streamlines my dreams, sending me flying further into the deepest depths of the dark. My charcoal childhood was always less than chaste, as I searched high and low for a cure that would prevent my life from turning into toxic waste. No lights or sounds surround me, as I face my innermost demons and search for a friendly face, or nuance that will help ground me, and bring me closer back into myself. I can no longer live a life of knowing that I am merely settling for second best, so I cover my paintbrush in the whitest paint, ivory dances and sings as it tries to wash away the darkness that I have faced. My canv...

At times when I feel most lonesome, and bereft, I yearn to feel the touch, and the softness of my lover's sweet caress. Kind and considerate, never maligned by hostility or hate, the quality of love that brings to mind questions of destiny and fate. The purity of it which will cleanse every fibre, each pore, like holy water rains from Heaven that fall from the skies, and soothe my rocky shores. Passion so bright, it lights up my heart, and then my soul; just the thought of you on the dreariest days is often enough to make me feel whole. At whose feet shall I prostrate towards for bestowing me with such a love so true? Shall it be God, my eternal beloved in his entirety, or a combination of him and you? Love in its most idyllic form that conquers the world until it becomes the norm, the rarest variety that is enough to wash way the tears of children in countries that are ravaged and war torn. With petulant poignancy, my pen dances on paper to the beat of this lo...

Consciously creating chaos, you spread controversy every way you turn, as you twist the words of others, to manipulate the truth which you brutally burn. Self-righteously slaughtered, a martyr until the bitter end; not unlike Abraham, you sacrificed your honesty, in order to maintain your sycophantic, and fair weather friends. Hardly innocent, you were never a lamb, but better yet a wolf in sheep's attire, as you wickedly conspired against integrity in order to tread dangerous, darker waters, surrounded by raging rings of fire. You were the apple that led Eve astray, with your tempting tales so treacherous, although you ultimately led to her decay. Burning bush that betrayed others by behaving blessed in your first days, then claimed the lives of many innocents by parting the Red Sea, and burying them in watery graves. You flooded the world with your fickle fuckery, made it rain for forty days, and nights, until all the land was covered in acidic rain that you sp...

Crimson red bloodshed crimes against the love you claimed that you would feel until the day that you were dead. Body bag black as I have suffered my final heart attack at the lack of courtesy you showed as you twisted the knife that you had already driven into my burned back. Coffee stained teeth from hours of counseling, actively seeking the support of friends in the hopes that my bleeding heart would one day mend. Clear as the tide on a bright and crisp shiny morning, I see now what I refused to accept, the red flags, lipstick stains, and the ice cold warnings that caused our love to degenerate and then deflect. Insidiously injected you directly into my veins, when I should have instead rejected you, taken control of my life again and retrieved it by the reins. My melody unchained, my song echos throughout these empty halls, as I sit and berate myself gratuitously, this is your curtain call. Take a bow, you played at faithful so well, until your flesh began to fal...