Like Rilke, Plath, and Angelou,
Who carved their pain in something true—
Like Ginsberg’s howl, like Frost’s still road,
Like Keats who sang though death forebode—

I want to stand among those names,
Not draped in wealth, not lit in flames,
But whispered low in quiet rooms
Where hearts still bloom and silence looms.

Let Dickinson’s hush guide my tone,
And Neruda's fire fuel my own.
Let Audre’s rage and Hughes’ grace
Be echoes laced in what I face.

No gilded frame, no grand parade—
Just poems that don't slip or fade.
A line that someone can’t erase,
A verse that finds its proper place.

Not viral clicks or printed fame—
But lovers mouthing out my name
Beside a lamp, a sleepless bed,
A single line still in their head.

Like Lowell’s ache, like Bishop’s gaze,
Like Whitman’s vast, embracing phrase—
I want to write the kind of truth
That outlives time and shatters youth.

So mark me not with gold or stone,
But let my stanzas walk alone—
Alive in those who chance to see
The soul I left in poetry.

To play for so long
the world was wide and new,
with shoelace swords and capes from sheets,
and skies that shifted blue.

To play with pockets full of stones,
and dreams that didn’t end,
where every stick could be a sword,
and every foe a friend.

To play for so long
that bedtime felt unfair,
but whispered tales beneath the sheets
made magic fill the air.

I miss the dirt beneath my nails,
the suns that never set—
the years ran off without a sound,
and I’m not done just yet.

Tired is the hush that falls on the bones,
a slow collapse behind the eyes—
like dusk unrolling through the halls
of thought, where once bright echoes rise.

Tired in the mind is static hum,
pages blurred and drifting slow,
words that once leapt sharp and sure
now stumble, slurred, and cease to flow.

Tired in the flesh is heavy steps,
shoulders pulled by unseen hands,
the climb of stairs a mountain now,
the bed a far and foreign land.

Tired in the heart is quiet sighs,
smiles held up like broken glass,
the weight of joy too much to lift,
the days too wide, the nights too vast.

Each kind of tired speaks its own,
in ache, in fog, in silence deep—
a different shape of letting go,
a different way of falling sleep.

I peel my skin to find the verse—
each line a nerve, each word a curse.
My fingers crack, the ink runs red—
I bind the poem, stitch the dead.

The page is meat. I carve it clean.
The stanzas pulse. The gaps still scream.
I press my voice through shattered teeth,
then choke it back in paper sheaths.

The world wants sugar, quick and bland—
a feeding trough, not sleight of hand.
It gorges on what’s soft and safe,
then spits me out, still torn and chafed.

They scroll past entrails shaped like truth,
preferring memes to bleeding youth.
I gut myself for depth and grace,
but all they see’s a blank, bruised face.

I nailed my heart to every page—
they laughed and said, “You’re just a phase.”
The words rot slow beneath the glass,
while bots applaud what cannot last.

They drained the soul from every shelf,
left only echoes of the self.
And still I write, while maggots hum
inside the mouth my lines come from.

I cough up metaphors and bile,
They call it “grim” and click “unstyle.”
Yet here I stand, spine sharp with spite,
my hands flayed raw, refusing flight.

This isn’t art that begs to please—
I write in wounds, not symphonies.
Let trend and comfort feed the swine,
my blood is real. These guts are mine.

The cot lies flat beneath my spine,
the air is dry, the color pale.
A red pipe runs a crooked line—
it hisses softly without fail.

My skull is tight, a failing drum.
A piston coughs, not quite in tune.
The light above begins to hum—
the ceiling bows like stretched-out dune.

The walls breathe slow beneath their grime.
My teeth are ticking in my head.
A drip repeats what someone said—
in words that almost taste like time.

A shadow climbs the angled steel.
The pipe above begins to shake.
Its breath is hot enough to feel—
or maybe that’s my own mistake.

I try to count my breaths aloud.
The numbers don’t return to me.
There’s humming in my inner ear—
a song I can’t unsee.

The cot is gone. I float in chrome.
My thoughts are welded to the wall.
A whisper speaks without a mouth.
I’m weightless in the sprawl.

My love for you is vast and wild,
A roaring star in endless deep.
Through cosmic tides, so free, beguiled,
Your gravity—my soul to keep.

A roaring star in endless deep,
You burn within my boundless sky.
Your gravity—my soul to keep,
No force can break, no time deny.

You burn within my boundless sky,
A nebula of light untamed.
No force can break, no time deny,
Nor name the fire that we have claimed.

A nebula of light untamed,
Through cosmic tides, so free, beguiled.
Nor name the fire that we have claimed,
My love for you is vast and wild.

When half the world turns cold and fades to grey,
The flowers weep, their colors torn apart,
And light surrenders, lost without its ray.

The skies once blazed with gold at break of day,
Now hollow specters whisper in the dark—
When half the world turns cold and fades to grey.

The rivers, once alive in bright array,
Flow silent now, as if they’ve lost their heart,
And light surrenders, lost without its ray.

The echoes of a sun too weak to stay
Stretch long across the fields that fall apart—
When half the world turns cold and fades to grey.

No songbird dares to lift a tune in play,
Their voices muted, broken from the start,
And light surrenders, lost without its ray.

Yet still, I hope the hues will find their way,
That color will return where shadows start,
When half the world turns cold and fades to grey,
And light surrenders, lost without its ray.