anomalous-revelations
American
What cruel humor in the fact that you will find the love you have been searching for your entire life posthumously. We will all experience our fifteen minutes of fame after we have answered our own existentialistic questions, for society is plagued with a thanatological obsession. Death paints the most inhumane person angelic. / / I have an obsession with the unknown and question why people do not confront their innermost fears. I long to feel the thrill of being alive. / / This is the first time I have posted any of my poetry publicly. I am usually quite self conscious about my writing and have given only a minute number of people the opportunity to read any. Most commonly, I write a subjective mix of poetry, prose, and random thought/stream of consciousness. Many times, my mind is working so frantically that the pen cannot keep pace. I experience release through simply transcribing my thoughts on paper.
There are nights
I can feel him pacing beneath my ribs,
dragging chains across the floorboards of my chest
like he’s tired of being buried alive.
You look at me
with those soft hands,
those merciful eyes,
and somehow you remind me
of the monster I am.
Not because you fear me.
God, that would be easier.
But because you don’t.
You stand in the doorway of my ruin
like light leaking into an abandoned church,
and all I can think is
how long before you see the teeth behind the prayer.
I have spent years
teaching my demons table manners,
buttoning rage into clean collars,
washing blood from my thoughts
until they almost looked holy.
Almost.
But you touch me
and suddenly every locked room inside me
starts kicking at the walls.
The thing I buried deep enough to survive
begins clawing dirt from its mouth.
You remind me of the fists
I swore I’d never become.
The wildfire in my veins.
The black water in my bloodline.
The ugly inheritance
I carry like a loaded gun behind my smile.
You make me remember
that monsters do not disappear.
They learn how to speak gently.
How to laugh at dinner tables.
How to hold flowers
with hands built for war.
And maybe that’s the cruelest part.
You make me want to be good.
Not admired.
Not forgiven.
Good.
But wanting redemption
doesn’t erase the graves inside a man.
So I keep him hidden.
That starving thing within my face.
That animal scratching scripture into my bones.
I keep him sedated behind humor,
behind silence,
behind “I’m fine.”
Yet every time you love me,
he wakes a little more.
Because love is cruel like that.
It shines light into places
darkness was keeping alive.
And one day
you may finally see him standing there.
The monster I’ve hidden beneath stitched skin and tired eyes.
And I wonder if you’ll still reach for my hand
when you realize
he has been reaching back all along.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 1:18 PM UTC
I am most afraid of a quiet revelation.
Not thunder, not betrayal, not some grand collapse,
but the soft, merciless clarity
of you seeing me
the way I see myself
when the world goes still enough
for the truth to speak.
Not the man who builds,
who carries,
who bleeds himself into structure and safety,
but the fracture beneath it.
The misaligned beams.
The rot I swear I’ve sealed
with calloused hands and practiced smiles.
I fear the moment my reflection
escapes the mirror
and finds its way into your eyes.
That you’ll notice the cracks
aren’t character.
They’re failures!
That the weight I wear like armor
is just proof
I was never strong enough
to set it down.
Because I know what lives in me
when no one is watching.
The quiet arithmetic of not enough.
The tally of every almost,
every should-have-been,
every love I’ve measured
and found myself unworthy of holding.
And if you see that.
Really see it.
How could you possibly
want to stay?
How could you choose a man
who is always bracing for impact?
Who loves like a confession,
like he’s asking forgiveness
for existing inside your life?
I would not blame you
for walking away from the truth of me.
That is the cruelest part.
I understand the leaving
better than I understand the staying.
So I will keep building,
keep bracing,
keep pretending the foundation doesn’t tremble
when I stand too still.
Because losing you
to honesty
would prove what I’ve always known.
That love cannot live
in a place I’ve already condemned.
Mar 23
Mar 23, 2026 at 9:49 AM UTC
I once believed
suffering could be sanctified.
That patience was a cathedral
and mercy the quiet candle
that outlived the storm.
I knelt in the rubble of your chaos
and called it devotion.
I carried your sins like relics,
polished your excuses into scripture,
and swallowed the nails
you mistook for kindness.
I was gentle then.
A man who mistook endurance for virtue,
who believed love meant
letting wolves gnaw the bone
until nothing remained but prayer.
You knew that man.
You knew the saint in me.
How he forgave before the knife was drawn,
how he built altars from apologies
and lit them with the last dry wood
of his own ribs.
And you fed on him.
Slowly.
Patiently.
The way rot studies a cathedral
before it decides which beam
to hollow first.
You called it misunderstanding.
You called it love.
You called it my duty
to bleed quietly.
So I bled.
Years of it.
A quiet martyrdom
no heaven ever bothered to witness.
But saints are only holy
until the crowd learns
how easy it is to crucify them.
The night the last mercy left my bones
I heard something break.
Not loudly,
not like thunder.
more like the soft snap
of a halo
falling to the floor.
And suddenly I understood:
You did not want my forgiveness.
You wanted my silence.
You did not love the man I was.
Only the wounds you could reopen.
So here we are.
The prayers are gone.
The altars are ash.
The man who turned the other cheek
has buried his hands
deep in the dirt of the world
and learned how to make stone.
Do not mourn him.
You killed the saint in me
with a thousand careful betrayals,
each one small enough
to pretend it wasn’t ******
But understand this:
The saint is dead, yes.
And the man who stands here now
no longer believes
suffering makes you holy.
Only strong.
Mar 16
Mar 16, 2026 at 4:22 PM UTC
Living just isn’t hard enough.
The bills arrive too gently.
The ghosts knock too politely.
The past doesn’t press its thumb
quite deep enough into the wound.
So you help.
You bring your chaos like a casserole
no one asked for,
set it steaming on my table,
call it love.
You mistake my endurance
for appetite.
I am the man who swallows storms
so the children can sleep.
The one who boards up windows
with splinters already in his hands.
The cornerstone, they call me,
as if stone does not crack
under cathedral weight.
Living just isn’t hard enough.
So you add your sharp opinions,
your sideways blame,
your crises born of boredom.
You lace my quiet with accusation
and call it honesty.
You hand me your wreckage
and ask why I look tired.
I have crawled through worse.
Through childhoods that left teeth marks,
Through nights that smelled like liquor,
And through mornings where the mirror
was an adversary.
I built a spine from that rubble.
Mortared it with restraint.
Taught my heart to beat
like a disciplined drum,
Steady.
Even when the war won’t end.
But steady is not the same as unbreakable.
Living just isn’t hard enough,
so you test the theory.
You poke the scar
to see if it still answers.
You confuse silence with surrender.
Understand this.
I am kind because I choose to be,
not because I am soft.
I carry you because I can,
not because I am meant to.
One day
I will set down what is not mine.
Your bitterness.
Your manufactured emergencies.
Your need to see me strained
just to prove I can endure it.
And when I do,
you will call it cold.
But it will be the first warm thing
I have done for myself.
Living has always been hard enough.
I just made it look survivable.
Mar 4
Mar 4, 2026 at 3:44 PM UTC
I could not fit in my father’s armor.
Not because I was too small,
but because I outgrew it
before I ever wore it.
His steel was hammered thin
by wars he never named,
dent-marked by silence,
buckled with pride that cut more than it covered.
It hung in the hallway of my childhood
like a warning.
I tried it on once.
The shoulders bit into me,
not from weight,
but from shape.
It was built for a man
who mistook hardness for strength,
volume for authority,
fear for respect.
I was a broader thing.
Not only in back and bone,
though I am wider in the doorway,
heavier in the earth,
but in mercy.
In patience.
In the quiet refusal
to become what hurt me.
His armor was forged to deflect.
Mine was forged to endure.
He wore iron to keep the world out.
I learned to carry weight
without closing my hands.
I am a larger man,
yes, in frame,
in stride,
in the shadow I cast at dusk,
but greater still in worth,
because I broke the blade
instead of passing it down.
I did not inherit his metal.
I melted it.
And from it
I built something he never could.
A shield that shelters,
a chest unafraid of softness,
a spine that bends
only to lift.
I could not fit in my father’s armor.
It was too small for the man
I chose to become.
Feb 27
Feb 27, 2026 at 9:50 AM UTC
I was baptized in violence
before I ever knew God.
Not water, but hands.
Not prayer, but threats
dressed up as discipline.
I was taught pain
before I learned language.
Hands came first.
Words came sharper.
My name was spoken like a warning.
My body learned the alphabet of fear.
Flinch, fold, survive.
Love arrived wearing boots
and taught me how to bleed quietly.
I learned early
that pain lasts longer
when you make noise,
so I swallowed my screams
until they grew teeth
and started chewing me from the inside.
“Children should be seen
and not heard.”
I learned early
how to disappear
without leaving.
Childhood wasn’t stolen.
It was hunted.
Tracked through hallways,
cornered in small rooms,
taught that mercy was accidental
and safety was a rumor.
My childhood lives in my shoulders.
That permanent lift,
like I’m bracing for a blow.
Every silence sounds loaded.
I grew up fast
because survival doesn’t wait
for permission
or for softness.
It demands it!
By the time I was grown
my bones were already tired.
My nervous system lived like a war zone.
Sirens in the blood,
shrapnel in the breath.
Even joy felt dangerous,
like standing too close to fire
after you’ve learned what burns do.
I found relief
where I could.
In bottles that promised forgetting,
in habits that slowed the noise.
Vibrations that hummed
just loud enough
to drown out the echo.
I didn’t want oblivion.
I wanted mercy.
I wanted the screaming
to lie down.
But mercy is expensive,
and I always paid in myself.
Now I am the cornerstone
of a house built on unspoken damage.
I don’t get to crack.
I don’t get to kneel.
If I collapse,
everyone else falls through me.
I carry generations
that never healed,
so they handed their hurt to me
like inheritance.
Generational grief
wrapped in familiar faces,
asking me not to drop it.
Some nights
I can feel the pressure
compressing my organs,
turning breath into work,
turning love into obligation.
Some days
I feel like a dam
plugged with my own ribs
so no one sees
the looming flood.
I wake up already exhausted
from holding tomorrow together.
Bone-deep exhaustion.
I am praised for my strength
by people who don’t hear
the sound it makes
when it fractures.
I am called reliable
because I never break in public.
Because I learned long ago
that breaking is a luxury
reserved for people
who were protected.
Still,
I remain!
Scarred, yes.
Shaking, often.
But here.
Every day I choose not to disappear,
which might be the most violent act
of defiance I know.
Every day I stay alive
despite the part of me
that learned survival
by imagining escape.
I am proof
that brutality failed
to finish the job.
That addiction didn’t win.
That the child who endured
grew into a man
who refuses to abandon himself
the way others did.
I am not gentle
because life wasn’t.
But I am tender
in ways that matter.
I protect because no one did.
I endure because someone had to.
And if this world ever asks
how much one person can hold
before they shatter,
let my body be the answer.
Let my survival be loud.
Let my pain be believed.
Let the child who was hurt
know this:
You did not deserve it.
You never did.
And you are still here,
bleeding light
through every crack.
Feb 6
Feb 6, 2026 at 11:53 AM UTC
I opened my door the way sons are taught,
With faith in my hands and a lesson unbought.
I called it love, you called it “what’s mine,”
And crossed every boundary, one rule at a time.
The rules were just noise, respect was a chore,
Order offended you, so you made more.
Rooms filled with clutter, with things you “might need,”
While I paid in patience you never would heed.
Receipts piled high like debts left unpaid,
Money disappeared, but the habits all stayed.
You lived there for free while I covered the cost,
Not just with my wallet, but with what I had lost.
I swallowed my anger, I steadied my breath,
Let peace die slowly to avoid a small death.
I bent until breaking so you’d never feel pressed,
While chaos lay heavy in my home, in my chest.
And when I closed doors, not in anger or spite,
Just firm in the day and calm in the night.
You didn’t look inward, didn’t pause or reflect,
You searched for an audience, hungry for effect.
Now you play the victim, rehearsed and refined,
Selling your story while smearing my name.
You trade in half-truths and convenient disguise,
Wearing your wounds like a crown made of lies.
But here’s what you don’t get to twist or erase.
I know what I gave. I know what I faced.
Your mess was your making, your choices your own,
Your failure to change is not mine to atone.
I didn’t abandon you, I learned how to swim,
Stopped drowning in guilt just to keep you within.
If truth makes me cruel in the tale that you spin,
Then I’ll wear that crown and call it a win.
I’d rather be honest and lose your applause
Than live as your silence, complicit in cause.
Feb 6
Feb 6, 2026 at 11:12 AM UTC
There is a silence that swallows even the stars,
a hush that gnaws at the marrow,
where prayers turn to dust in the mouth
before they ever touch God’s ear.
I have lived there.
In the dim, stale air
where the clock ticks not to mark time,
but to carve it away from you,
piece by bleeding piece.
The faces I loved became shadows
and the shadows became heavier than the bodies
that once held them.
I have carried them all
until my hands ached with ghosts.
And still,
the world dares to bloom in spring,
mocking my frostbitten chest,
while my heart beats like a caged bird
too tired to sing,
too stubborn to die.
I am not afraid of the end.
Only of the moments before it,
when my soul will have to look at itself
and wonder why it still chose to stay
after everything it lost.
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 8:22 PM UTC
They say the strong will carry on,
but they don’t feel the weight I don at dawn.
A daughter’s smile, my daily breath,
but joy’s taxed hourly, and life starves to death.
Two clocks, two jobs, no time to grieve,
I stitch the seams each time they leave.
My mother’s eyes forget the years,
my brother’s mind is chained by fears.
No village came, just silence loud,
no hand to help, just ghostly crowds.
I patch the roof with blistered palms,
while whispering prayers like weathered psalms.
The fridge half-stocked, the bills full-grown,
yet somehow hope won’t leave me alone.
I’m father, son, and brother too,
a one-man choir aching through.
Who checks on Atlas? Who mends his spine?
When the world he bears is no longer fine?
But still I lift, because love won’t yield,
though no one joins me on this field.
I cry in motion, break in bends.
Then stand because the story lends,
no chapter for surrender’s name,
just battle scars and quiet flame.
So judge me not by what I show,
but by the fires I daily tow.
And if I fall, let none condemn,
for I was never just a man to them.
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 8:16 PM UTC
They chase the straight and narrow path,
A line from birth to tomb.
Blindfolded by the myth of math,
That life’s a goal, not room.
They measure steps and chart the skies,
As if the stars align.
For those who fear what truth belies,
That chaos is divine.
I’d rather dance through winding walls,
Where every twist reveals,
A deeper voice that softly calls,
Beneath the turning wheels.
Let others chase the final frame,
The scoreboard or the prize.
I court the dark, I kiss the flame,
Where every answer dies.
The maze is home, the dead ends sing,
Of things not meant to know.
And joy’s not in the conquering,
But getting lost below.
Each circle I mistake for square,
Each shadow I befriend,
Is sweeter than a perfect prayer,
That’s hurried to the end.
So mock my path, go walk your line,
Your purpose plain and proud.
While I explore the undefined,
With questions speaking loud.
For freedom isn’t reaching there,
It’s never being done.
It’s building temples out of air,
And running just for fun.
Jul 8, 2025
Jul 8, 2025 at 8:44 PM UTC