As shoppers push carts through busy aisles and Christmas songs fill stores, many forget that over-stimulation can be an impediment for shoppers with autism.
But establishments like Safeway and Save-on-Foods have introduced measures to alleviate this discomfort.
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Fear of they catching us red-handed.
Their eyes speaking sore harangues.
Ripping apart our heart band aid.
The retrieving conforming gangs.
Fear of letting go us free.
Soaring in our supreme senses.
Our own chivalrous mischiefs, sinful sprees.
Let them raise strong fences.
Our hands twined, eyes locked,
Blind to all around us.
Prohibited they stand wedlocked.
Societies spin scratching fuss.
Us flying high,
Their arrows going untouched.
Brains wobbling to lie.
Minds dry and hearts parched.
The day we go free in air,
Their structures dismantle in fear.
.
Cliffing constantly, cracking the core,
crushing the crackling cups.
Caressing curves, cupid cries loud!
Creating canny clots.
Clad in crimson clothes,
clay cements the continual clefts.
Cautiously I crouch, ceasing corners,
cloning my clandestine covets.
The creaking closet,
constitutes, covers, conforms.
Concaving the sea within,
changing colors of clouds.
Crowd tickling crazily,
Can you control?
Causality of certain cases, going circumstantially scott free, chasing culprits.
Care carefully,
Coy conceiving,
Covers containing,
Centuries cremate,
Commanding columns.
Still concerned?
The sparkle of the star above,
pours into depths of your iris.
A teardrop falling,
rippling waves to the closed edges.
Distant lights glimmer.
Lyre sings alien melody.
The end to kiss,
shadow receding against pale horizon.
Pearl gleaming, this beautiful night.
Diamonds shinning smoothly,
Unconstrained in the magnanimity.
Swallow me.
Suck me right into that space.
Floating endlessly, ashore.
The chord striking again,
spreading legs wide,
Rocketing chair, hair absorbing distant cosmos.
Suspended, you remain, stuck?
Pan out your palms,
feel the breeze against your wrinkles,
like valley leaning into thin air.
Shattered glasses around, rising to the sky.
Crystals of untouched fabric.
Inhale the flow, breathe in as much as you can,
Let drums beat in insane frenzy,
Summon space lords,
Vacuum in you, blankness outside you.
What can you hold on to?
Flower blossoms, petals encircling the universe within,
Transfusion, transmission, terrestrial tactility to touch.
It lurks around,
past the heavy balls.
Stand in between their collision,
Deafening silence strikes serenely separating soul sourly.
Taste it!
Manna dew, indeed.
Rip off your exteriors,
Face new order, of uncertainty, chaos, unpredictability,
No where to step on,
No where to touch,
No one to see.
Even your shadow away from you,
Hang in there.
Revolving, rotating endlessly,
in circles, spinning ahead, a trajectory to infinity.
The drop rises above,
Leaving hues of your eyes,
Needling out of you,
It soars to meet stars above,
Close your eyes.
And feel it again,
lyre still striking endless waves,
moon sinking into the ocean,
The sea bed illuminating mysterious to your bare eye.
Can you see it?
Close your eyes,
Sleep in peace.
Wake up with no memory.
Life intact, no worries.
The teardrop in the stardust smiles at the lost heartbeat.
Come in around and go through the all,
the maze will be your dream catcher in dawn.
It is a pale black night upon the garden where the two sit by the trees, shrugging each other in canopy. Spacer shows the photograph of his beloved and says, “He visits me every time here, we have spent time together in bliss”.
Patuna cries aloud, “But he visits me every time and we taste the universes beyond”.
The air grows tense, fractioning with spark and they march to the nearby bus stop where Rikad will get down to smoke some to the air. The two march up on the gravy road, with mist of the moonlight and red soil. Trees confluence daunting above them. Patuna’s eyes are drawn wide, seaming with hot tear and a crack goes down by the hammer as the nail goes through his heart. At the edge of the road, at a small shop, smoking a cigarette Rikad stands confident arching against the hustle bustle of the city.
Spacer whispers, “Let’s get him round from either sides and he dismiss into the crowd in the left there”.
Patuna jumps at Rikad, holding him by his collar, he blares open the bottle of ancient bugs upon him, “How could you throw such ruins at me?”
Patuna holds Rikad in and drags and throws him at his bed.
Rikad remains silent, his dark hollow eyes staring at his foot, the cold sweat drops against his eye. He murmurs in swoon, “Only if you could trust me Patu, it isn’t about you, the whole world knows that I will never fall for Spacer”.
“Did you meet Spacer every time you came to meet me?”
Rikad sits down upon the warm cushioned bench. He says, “Yes, but it wasn’t anything, I came to meet you”.
There is a sudden tap at the door. Patuna’s mom and her friend Chauter enter in parallel joy. Patuna excuses himself with Rikad to another room.
The angst of separating fires, splitting souls,
casting shadows of tomorrow’s dusk roads.
Patuna confides in his father. The wise man advises him to talk it out with Rikad. His father drives him to the square, where a bunch of artists perform in jailed monotony, moving limbs in a previous vengeance and discordant distress doles out.
Patuna gets out of the car and moves past the group of school students, with ties unmuzzled, nostrils inflating chalk powder and bloodshot eyes hanging in despair.
There in the spectators at the street, Rakid sits by the stair motionless as the puppets dance in mechanical symphony. Their eyes unblinking and parched lips tired of constant, 1, 2, 3, turn and 4,5, 6, movements.
Patuna approaches, “I wanted to talk to you”.
Rakid gets up and moves down to the foot of staircase, jolts up in torpor in front of now blushing Patuna. He smiles at him and before could say anything, Rakid whirls left to the street. The sturdy one, apparent like a bodyguard, follows Rikad and, Patuna and dad follow them too.
Hearts twist and turn, eyes swirling in thousand floods
Draughts surround you in the flush of every cloud.
The sturdy one opens a door in the street and Rikad enters saying, “Welcome to my palace!”
They enter and the sturdy man shuts the door behind them. The tunnel turns black.
His dad touches the tunnel wall, “It is silky soft like meshes of butterfly wings”.
“Indeed, mother only loves the best”, and he claps. The first room brightens up on the three. It is a big empty hall room, no windows, just dark green walls like moss covered tapestries.
The first room contains, broken chairs, walls like the inner lining of a dragon’s gut and a big painting of an old man on his chair, his pointed shoes piercing the eyes of a native, as he stands gallant over the dead man’s body.
Rikad heaves, “That’s my grandpapa!”
The walls wave, the metallic gleam shines in the room. Rakid leads the way. The door coyly shuts behind.
Whisper, whisper, wind sings in peace,
the sweet murmurs of the suitor’s sleeve.
Leaking sewer flushes your feet, you’re swamped in that feast. ‘Hurry, hurry’, Rikad screams. Patuna follows the man’s lead.
They crumble the marble pieces of the lavatory, treading past the broken pipes. The urinals hang as ornaments on the wall, the one-piece-marble sits in the casket of the floor. Finely polished floor of the room. No windows to be seen, yet the shine flickers the room. They cautiously tip-toe against the mess. Shattered toilet booths in corner, washroom debris, cement, broken tiles, acrid stench, suffocating space.
Patuna holds to his dad. Rikad guides to another door, as they step on the fine mess.
‘Quick, quick, the water will overflow, the house is under repair, you see’, urges Rikad.
He turns the knob and blinding light seeps in.
Glimmer, glitter, gleam and guise,
The time trickles with the aging lies.
Patuna asks, “What is this room?”
Rakid replies, “The finest ball dancing room to be made. Gossamer walls, grandeur of the moving chandelier and you, my dear”.
The crystals sparkle against the mirror walls. Chandelier swirls in mesmerizing mood. Slow, very slow music of the deflating dolls echo in a fumble hue.
Dad pushes Patuna to dance and the duo in each other’s arms, move round and round the central piece. Revolving around the sun of the room, the mirrors become an endless kaleidoscope of ecstasy.
‘Look’, Patuna shouts, ‘There is someone in there’.
‘No silly, that’s your shadow in the mirror reflecting in thousand directions’
Dad laughs over his jolly.
The chandelier stops rotating and with a spiral squeak, moves oscillating.
Patuna in the warm hands of Rakid sees the chandelier still swirling in his iris.
Mirrors around, mirrors with Rakid, mirrors with Patuna, Mirrors with dad, mirrors with the chandelier oscillating.
‘You can chase time away in here, my father says’, chuckles Rakid.
The pendulum finally cracks a new door open.
The mirror falls in pieces, disappearing in magical sparkles of thousand fireflies from the smithereens. The flaming fireflies whirl and wheel in strands of two as the new door opens to the new room.
Silk slouches on the old couch in grandeur,
Majesty rests upon the fall of the endear’.
The door like a skeleton hangs transparent. The scratches all over the floor and wall.
“Interesting’, dad says.
“You see, we painted the room with flesh of only the best afresh”.
The walls crimson red, maroon in the corners, like fresh blood in gallons spilled over the panels. Sharp chiselled nails etching patterns in that wall. Trenches of blood being formed.
A sofa sits in corner.
Patuna smells the glistening wall.
“Like the perfumes of civet, ain’t it Patu?”, asks Rakid, tying the metal laces of his shoes.
“Indeed, honey, very sublime”.
Walls oozing fresh blood fountains, smearing the etched marks in patterns. No windows, no way of contaminating the veins of the room. In the corner, sits a small spider weaving a cob web.
Patuna points to it.
Rakid replies, “Don’t worry, it is a pet. Come to this new room”.
Channeling through countless doors of palace,
Winds of reversing woes, bring ahead the final place.
“This is our last room of the house, the 140th room in making”, Rakid said in glee.
Patuna sighed at the large hall. No ends, no beginnings. Just a big empty hall.
“How big is it? Seems endless!”, Patuna cried in awe.
“We are still limiting its ends”.
Dad turns to a feeble sound, “What’s that? Sound like someone is coming.”
The door opens with thrust, and there a man and his woman stand in alike pose, undifferentiable from attire, twinned together like halves of the same kernel.
Rakid holds Patuna’s hand and says, “Father, Mother, meet Patuna and his dad”.
“How lovely to see you here!”, they say together, “What’s happening here?”
The clock ticks sharp shrill somewhere and the roof above starts to crumble.
“We must leave immediately”, says Rakid.
They run towards the door, the glass knob falls to the ground as the door is flung open.
Rikad with his parents ahead, Patuna behind them with his father. They run together out through the rooms, past the paintings, the bloody walls, the leafing walls, wind chimes, silk tapestries, crushed toilet seats, broken clocks, spirals, floating knives.
Patuna trips and falls, his dad long gone behind him, Rikad gives a hand and drags him ahead. His parents fall too, dropping into the chasms of the bloody room, falling safe on the web of the spider, that waits them to move.
Rikad pushes Patuna ahead, as floor begins to crumble, doors flashing open and close, like the maze cells in doom.
Rakid falls to the chiselled marble floor, gliding to a corner, smashing within himself, a pool of blood being consumed.
Patuna reaches to the final door, when his leg pulls in, his hand turns the knob quick.
At the street, in the bare chest of the sturdy man by the door, a little fleshy man like a small doll attached in the skin of the man, turns his head to the left and the door knob shuts forever.
With the closed eyes and his red skin, the small man hisses,
“The maze runs in parallels, collateral in every tangent,
No space, no days, no ways, the maze runs forever in a pageant”.
You lie awake, clean, glass transparent, clicking keys on your keyboard, thinking what is there to be? Memory, nightmares, anguishing air around rises, the tone of your voice shrills within.
You think… what is there to be?
A day with night infused in, beautifully shadowing the streets. The coldness in your ankles, cloths tying you to the ground. You want to let it go, trying to slip away, but it jerks you down, shivering the soul to reality. The forlorn bubble glistens, shines enveloping your universe within. Does it take drowning waves to make you feel the shore again?
Past midnight, as the black sky thickens, winds quiver, leaves whisper, and the naughty moon fickle gazes, you await redemption.
Cut loose that anchor, fly up into the thin air, ’cause there might not be any more to have upon. Bare soles slide against tickling clouds, gasping streaks between your toes. The city under you, quiet, asleep, lost in their own swoons.
And as you soar higher, you feel the eternal space above. Paint a lie or scream a truth, the canvas of your symphony stays uncorrupted in front of you. You raise your finger to the blank space, roofs beneath mooning at you, to reassure.
Staying suspended there, do you feel free? Want to go higher? If you could breathe through the vacuum, would you have gone farther?
You say, ‘I write sad verses, dripped in a lyric of woe-begone trajectory’.
It feels happy in that state, melody of sheer solitude. The hands going around in space, unbridled by your arms. Pace with this heart if you can. The soul that visits thousand lands of unimaginable feelings. Happiness resides in little ways.
Embrace a new way of the same old. You may say it is a state of perennial ‘sadness’, but it isn’t sad here, it is just a calm peace untouched by any.
Pages rush as I sit to define my agony.
A dry desert, but ocean sky above.
Sit on the edge of the dried dam of the cracked canopy.
Its cement walls infused with stones in love,
the desert rocks, so uncanny.
Cool dry air, shivers and shows thousand feels,
millions stars of your own skin.
Blue sky, mountain rocks, everything conceals,
as you sit on the edge of that dried dam basking,
the cracked floor of intersectionality of unclarity enseals.
Your bare legs hang down,
all around you, the two colors are mixing:
sky blue and stone brown,
with the floor in white washing.
You sit at a structure, so feeble, to drown
in your transience of the universal unending.
There is no morning, no evening here,
just a long bright afternoon,
sky is lit up, afternoon hazes in care.
The concrete walls of mountains swoon
you with its boundless afternoon air.
You feel nothing, so powerless your vox,
but so free and confident,
A divine paradox
by forces beyond you to tend.
And you sit there with the clicking clocks,
your cool palms engulfing you in the eternal scent.
The government shutdown continues with 800,000 federal workers without a paycheck, giving rise to the probability of a national emergency in US.
Read all about it: https://youthforjournalism.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/make-america-grate-again/
Youth For Journalism is my blog where I pen down my journalistic rigor while trying to be the force for the fourth wall of democracy.
If it burns, let it burn,
The wind will heave the wrath further,
The leaves burn crumbling to core,
And, you breathe universes beyond & farther.
Step out to the edge of tunnel,
Bright white light blinding,
Drop a pin into the lake, as it ripples, the pin disintegrates, kissing the bed.
Rain clatters at my window, mist in the skin and soul of the warmth…
You push open the doors, the air rushes out.
Drop by drop, rain falls to your fingertips, sliding down, dripping from your cliff.
And you stay put, hearing the symphony,
Discordant denominators going in sync with grand melody.
My soul swirls in me,
Breath evanescing from the leaves, crushed comics sparkle.
The symphony of infinite harmonies, thousand winds subsuming in each other
You sit by the wall, turning a page, shaking your bind,
You lie crippled on the edge of fire.
Eyes turn dry red with your flames.
Enchanted universe breaking into smithereens.
Walk, walk that leg, zlap, click, tick, tack, you go,
You can move into your new home,
When you burnt my nest.
Agony rushes with rainbows.
Clap, clap, clap, clurp, hands together
You moved to another land,
water between us of endless depth,
Dive home, will you?
Rain is pouring, still in its grandeur,
Face out your smile at the clouds,
Let the lightening gaze at your skin
Blood enters the empty vessel,
Heat steams, the water keys receding in,
Raindrops flowing into me,
My hands smell of memories.
Chop? Chop them off, chop, chop, you move.
Hope that sun stays burning, cosmos evolving and our days falling off.
Close? Hang my brain down from your sincere hook.
Let blood drop down,
Juices flow out, humors leaking,
Inspect, click, enter, saved, document what you think you see
Done? Breathe my smoke,
Feel my rain
Kiss the new universe.
Why do we paint such beautiful pictures of us? When our societies are corrupted, why are we trying to color them good?
A good place of pious morality, untouched with any wrong. Does it even exist? When you look from distance, it appears all bright colors, stretched smiles, glittering eyes and glassy happiness, but it’s when you delve deeper that the true colors actually reveal. Then why are we so obsessed with drawing the divides between right and wrong, establishing a socially dictating binary? You grow up listening to stories of triumphant victories over vices, lullabies of good ‘natural’ things and many school lessons of moral science. The entire scheme to instill a morally upright individual in you, ‘morally upright’ as per the norms and standards of the society, all culturally aligned.
Then Kaboom, Kaboom.
You see the actual sides of the much told stories. People you look up to as walking embodiment of ‘goodness’ turn out to have malicious content and unfathomable flaws. You begin to question the existence of such didactic norms. What indeed construes ‘wrong’? Falsehood? Adultery? Theft? Murder? The revelation of such question hits a realization.
The world thrives on ‘Hope’.
We hope that things will be good and if even though times turn ripe, there will be an eventual sunshine to make things good again. What if everyone has some bad in them, they also have good too? And as Rousseau espoused the belief that man by nature is good, the humanity dwells upon the hope that everything will gradually be good. Even though we have our shortcomings, drawbacks, baggage, past, mistakes, we still have a today to rectify them and strive to better ourselves. Hope maybe a myth for some, however, it does have the potential to be the driving force for many.
There is a very popular proverb in Hindi that goes like ‘Umeed pe hi duniya kayam hain’ which translates into ‘the world thrives on hope’. So even when moralities are debatable, goodness subjective, hope does pave our belief in future. So, the stories will continue to be told, children will be given instructions and hope will persevere.
So even in dark times when I feel humanity is losing its goodness, I tell myself, that we are capable of change and with that hope, continue to believe in goodness of all around me.
So keep hoping that things will get better, people will change and the final picture will be brighter. 🙂
Englishphilia 