The eye of the hurricane

Love and hate with all your guts.

Lose and gain. Part and fuse.

(Pain and tears and gnashing of teeth and relief)

Love again. Love it all, till the last single drop of arsenic, to the last single flake of tamarind on the tongue.

Everything that is not given is lost. But do NOT forget to love.

Bitter pangs of irony spurring the sides like a marauder the flanks of a mad horse. Some need no reminder to hate.

(Long, sought-out hours of loneliness and solitude, for the better and the worse)

Expectations are being thrown out the window.

Being demanding leads to being on one's own.

Being demanding ensures quality of conversation.

Then should have come an age of patience, understanding and sensitivity – and humbleness.

But our age is one of love and hate, of total abnegation and selfishness, of hearthardedness and unforgiveness, for we have made it thus.

Unlove uncharting man's most intimate wisdom.

Hours unwound fire-gazing,

lancetting every single one of the thoughts.

Unhate uncorroding man's most innate sentiments.

Impeccable mud on the tux – noone cares but the most desperate fool.

Innumerable rants against fate and the annus miserabilis.

The heart tendered as a gift to be treasured, rendered or

ruthlessly crushed with a spin of the heel.

Love and hate are as inescapable as curiosity and indifference

No bulwark, no vaccine, no defence.

Whence I come they are synonymous with sounds and fury, respectively.

Whence I go, they are so loud they hush sky-high typhoons,

but I'd rather die than hold back,

choosing death with a knife between my teeth, spurning soul and body,

rather than dull life and the quiet of a new dawn each day.

Every hurricane has its undisturbed eye – this we must seek, and make no other concession to either love or hate.