Tag Archives: Depression

Between Worlds

SLEEP BY RENAT RAMAZANOV

‘Sleep’ by Renat Ramazanov

Do you know what it means,
do you know how it feels,
to be one of the living
at a time when you are dead?

To not be of that world,
the one you left behind,
or be fully in that one,
the one that is ahead.

You are able to move
but you can barely walk.
You are able to say words
but you can barely talk.
You are very sensitive
but you can barely sense.
You remember how to remember
but you can barely think.

You are able to hear
but you very barely know.
It’s hard for you to understand,
and so painfully so.
You are able to look
but you can barely see.
You’re hanging in midair;
you don’t have any wings.

To not be able to rewind
and start all over again,
or be able to move on,
and fly far far away.

Do you know what it means
when everything means nothing?
Do you know how it feels
when you cannot feel?

Venus in “Deadtrograde”

A plate of pain keeps
the potential heartbreaker away.
Two glasses of my old tears daily
will help me not go astray.
I am strong and I need no one’s attention,
but I want to be desired,
and I want affection,
but I was hurt,
I don’t want a repetition,
but I want love,
and I can feel the tension.

I don’t cry.
I don’t cry anymore because
there’s a pool of my tears
in my heart,
and I like to swim in it,
or go down, down, down,
and drown,
when a potential One
comes too close
to my feelings’ flat.
If anyone is to decide when I drown,
it has to be me, myself and I.
Would you give another potential
pretentious,
manipulative
dingbat
a chance to decide when you die?

Six planets are in retrograde
in my natal chart,
and venus used to be one of them,
but she’s not anymore.
My venus is dead;
a man has stabbed my sickly venus to death.

Hope

Naturally, you hope less
when there is less hope.
You could even become hopeless,
but an hopeless end would mean nothing
to you if you have endless hope.

So, I hope that your hope will know no end
as you journey through life,
and that you will doubt less.

A Damn Mess

I was licking my wounds
but you stopped me.
You wanted to do it
so I let you.
You licked and sucked till
my wounds became scars.
Then, you cut me again
at the exact same spots.

So, here I am, a damn mess,
studying our synastry chart
for the 50th time,
fiddling with tarot cards,
tiredlessly hoping you’d come back.
I want your tongue and yours alone,
and I know that even if you return,
you would lick me up
so you can cut me again.

Broken

Laughing in pain,
slowly going insane.
Hiding the stain,
praying for rain.
Ignoring the knife,
pleading for a new life.
I’m breathing in death,
desperate for rebirth.

Kintusgi

Kintsugi-Bowl

In Japan, ceramics are not thrown away when they are broken/shattered. Instead, they are repaired through an ancient practice called kintsugi (金継ぎ), or kintsukuroi (金繕い), and it literally means golden (“kin”) repair (“tsugi”). The broken pieces are attached together with precious metal– liquid gold, liquid silver or lacquer dusted with powdered gold, and the bowl, cup or whatever the ceramic is, is beautifully enhanced after the process.

The Japanese art of kintsugi teaches that broken objects are not to be hidden. Instead, they are to be displayed with pride.

What we can all learn from this is that we can heal beautifully if we allow ourselves to go through the process. It’s up to us to decide whether we want to dispose ourselves- our desires for love, happiness, success and good change- or choose to heal our wounds with liquid gold, irrespective of how much it hurts.

Scars from our healing are not to be hidden. The saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” definitely applies here.

Don’t Forget My Children

Little children who can’t pronounce war yet;
children who shouldn’t know what it is.
Running, their bodies plagued with beads of sweat,
with kwashiorkor and tuberculosis.

“Uncle, where is mama? Where is papa?”
Parents’ bodies are lifeless on the farms.
“Mama, why did you leave me here with master?”
Babies are starving, dying in their own arms.

Don’t try to make me shut my mouth
when I get possessed by pain and cry.
  
But if we return to the past, we’re going south.
Can brothers forgive other brothers if they try?

Take flowers to the sea for my children,
who could’ve been all they wanted to be.
At least, admit it was not okay for grown men
to snatch my children away from me.

hunger

Biafran War (6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970)

You are the One

Her hair is laid,
her nails, made,
she wants to go out
to find love today.
She’s pacing, she’s running,
but she’s sitting in front of her mirror.
She’s going to look for ‘the one’,
anywhere and anyhow necessary,
but she won’t find him.

She has been running from herself;
she has been looking for herself.
She’s the one;
she’s the only one,
and the love she so desperately
seeks must come from her heart.
No man’s love will satisfy her for long;
it will only last for a while,
but she won’t admit that.

She wants someone else to breathe for her;
she doesn’t know how to breathe on her own.
She wants someone else to live with her;
she doesn’t know how to live on her own.
She is alive in appearance,
and that body could bring a
dead man back to life,
but she is dying.
Her heart is very weak,
and her soul has been crying.
If you don’t love yourself,
why would you expect someone else to?

 

Pain for Pleasure

Let the pain come,
pleasure it properly,
cry if you need to,
but let it go.
Let the pain go.

 

We experience pain for our own pleasure;
we experience the past for
the sake of our future.
We get too scared of death,
but we shouldn’t.
We do need to die;
we need to die to live eternally.
No one gets the second without the first;
accept change and transformation.

 

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

The moon won’t shine bright without darkness;
it won’t appear to say “hello”.
If you are filled with so much sadness,
if your light of joy is really low,
your heart is plagued with heavy emptiness,
and happiness’ middle name is currently “Slow”,
stay strong in this moment of darkness,
the moon’ll be right there to make it glow.