I shouted up with trembling fists,
"Tell me, stars, why do I exist!
How do I shine? How do I last?
How do I burn into the past?"

I’m small—too small to make a mark,
a flick of dust beneath your dark.
But still I scream: “How do I rise?
How do I echo through your skies?”

The universe blinked, slow and wide,
and let the silence stretch and slide.
Then clouds rolled in and whispered low,
"Ask the rain what it longs to know."

The rain replied through windowpane,
“I fall, I vanish, then rise again.
Not all are built to carve in stone
some change the world by being unknown.”

I yelled, “But I want crowds and cheers!
I want my name in future years!
I want to matter—more than breath!
I want a voice that fights off death!”

The stars looked down with silver sighs,
"Ask the sky what fills her eyes.
Ask the dusk, the sea, the pine
they’re old, and wiser still than all time."

The wind blew past with tangled grace,
“You’re not remembered for your face.
Not for your name, or shine, or shout
but what you gave when no one found out.”

I slumped beneath a restless moon,
demanding, “Tell me something soon!
How do I matter, small and loud,
beneath your stars, beneath your cloud?”

The universe did not explain.
It wept in dew. It breathed in rain.
And through the hush, the silence spoke:
"To be the fire, you feed the smoke.

To be the name, you live the vow.
To matter then—you matter now.
Not for applause, but what you give
in how you love, and how you live."

So here I stand, still small, still bright,
still yelling questions into night.
And if no answer ever comes
I'll burn like stars whose names are none.

Until the day of mine has come .

I tore silence apart in my mind.
The universe spoke softly, whispering secrets of the unknown.
Unspoken truths fractured my thoughts apart
into tiny shards.
I watched it all crumble.
Meaning slipped quickly through the cracks of my hands,
where all logic folds.
Every drawn map of my mind dissolved
How would I find north
when my compass lies?

My dreams echoed lands unseen.
Waking to think of it made my skin hum.
A wolf moved in and out of my visions,
eyes of glowing green.
It was as if the mirrors warped.
Every door was a new question.
How could it be,
while madness smiles?

The wind blew intuition restlessly.
Everything I once knew trembled.
The trees whispered, Instinct knows.
I wanted to run, but instead
I followed the unknown path.
All fear behind me,
each step as unknown as the path.

My thoughts danced through each moment.
There was no knowledge to watch.
Facts pile.
Truth slips.
Hands empty.
Cathedrals fall.
Mosaic of every colour.

Wisdom now waits
not still, but circling above.
Its eyes are moons that do not blink.
It speaks in ruins,
and I follow where the path cracks wider.

The ground becomes dream—then memory—then nothing.
I walk barefoot across my forgotten years.
Cities built from questions rise and fall.
Rain falls sideways.
Time bends into golden loops.
A crow leads me down a hallway of mirrors.
I speak, and my voice echoes in languages
I never learned, but always knew.

The sky peels back into velvet stars.
Each one pulses like a heartbeat.
I remember the name I had
before language was born.

A stairway made of books ascends the sea.
I climb.
Clouds whisper philosophies too ancient to hold.
Mountains lean in, eavesdropping.
The wind tastes like fire and ink.
I drink water that teaches forgetting.

I meet a version of myself
with eyes made of clocks.
We trade silence.
We argue with no words.
We weep into the same river.

Forests hum with dreams still sleeping.
There are doors inside trees.
Oceans where light has never been.
Stars that teach me how to kneel.
Every creature speaks in riddles.
And all of them are me.

The road vanishes again.
I walk anyway.

Not gone—but woven through shadow.
No answers wait on peaks of glass.
Stillness rings inside the void.
Release doesn’t shout.
It softens everything.

Deeper than thought, beneath sleep,
we breathe the same breath.
We dream from the same source.
Thoughts ripple through unseen waters.
Echoes remain.

I hold nothing.
Fingers trace the edge of myth.
Questions spin.
Meaning slips.
Madness nods.
Silence stays.
Quietly looking into the abyss.

All is question and echo,
a dance between shadow and light.
Wisdom is the stillness beneath noise,
and silence—the place where knowing begins.
We are fragments seeking the whole,
walking maps made only as we move,

held gently by a vast, patient void.
of this great unknown.

Palette yellow of yolk,
silver guns—many—hung high on the wall.
A man sips whiskey in a short glass,
thinking three, maybe four.
Black coat pressed to brick,
he wonders:
What is it all for?

People pass—tall ones, short—
their eyes scan the street
like art for sale.
Men in white jackets,
women in skirts
with long legs
that could outrun yesterday.

And what if the guns
on that yolk-yellow wall
were melted into sculpture,
and the sky turned
from grey to night?

Sculptors and sculptures,
artists with red-stained brushes,
writers dropping clichés
like skyscrapers collapsing into verse.
Letters stretch like towers,
spaces bustle like streets.

Salesmen and people preach—
pitching concepts
to crowds like prophets in tailored suits.
The sound spills into the square.

Horns hoot,
cars hiss past,
exhaust coils in the air
like city incense.
People march left, right
ants with nowhere real to go.

A man taps a bucket drum
metal echoes in rhythm.
The cling-clang of falling change
fills his heart with warmth
but not the scarf
that guards him at night.

Coffee steam and scattered chatter
ghost through his thoughts.
Green light: go.
Amber: maybe go faster.
Red: stop, or forget to look back.

A man in a pressed white shirt,
Italian shoes,
watches it all.
Importance—just a trick of the mind.

Windows sparkle in every direction—
selling what we crave,
but never need.
Cliché,
but honest.

And in the center,
beneath neon breath,
a statue—bronze and copper—
shines.

A buffalo.
Mighty.
Fighting off a leopard
as it leaps upon his rear.
What did the artist feel
when tool met form?
What soul spilled
into metal?

Around me
reds, blues, greens, yellows.
Purple sweaters
draped like royalty.
Name-brand blazers,
black shoes polished
like ambition.
A black-and-white scarf
like city stripes.

This place hums
with sound, with scent,
with people and pulse.
Billboards beam
scenes that feel
like a worm becoming butterfly.

This is the city I live.
Alive. With potential.

Yet so many
walk head down,
clutching yesterday’s newspaper
like it still breathes truth.

And then—
I met the flower seller.
A basket of blooms at her hip,
bunches of color
and single red roses
like soft weapons of the heart.

“Buy these for someone special,”
she said with a smile.
And I thought, who could that be?

I paid.
Clutched the roses
as their thorns pricked my hand
love is just like this,
a sharp poke
wrapped in beauty.

She smiled,
a kindness in her eyes
as I walked away
holding six red roses
with no one to give them to.

It’s strange
how women smile
when a man carries flowers
like a banner of romance.
They think: some lucky woman.
But the truth?
I bought them out of pity.
They had no home.

So I gave them away.

To strangers
not for beauty,
but for need.
Left one on a park bench.
Another at the feet of a sleeping person.
One placed gently
on a café table
where a woman sat alone,
a waiter laying down the bill.

She declined.
I left it anyway.
And walked off.

Looking back,
she held it.
Smiling.

The final rose I held close for a moment,
stopping a couple walking hand in hand.
“Excuse me,” I said, “this is for you.”
The gesture caught them off guard.

This is what the world needs more of.
More cling-clang of change
in a busker’s bucket.
More roses
for those who need a reason to smile.
More quiet kindnesses
that ripple outward.

And then I moved
toward the subway,
where people crowd the cars
everyone going somewhere.
Who knows where?

A pregnant woman stepped on,
her hand resting on the small of her back.
Someone stood,
offering their seat
without a word.

I caught their eye,
nodded,
and smiled
a silent thank you
carried in the crowd.

Everyone
going
somewhere.

My thoughts are terracotta armies
not for war,
but for remembering.
Buried beneath the sleep-skin of time,
fragile, intentional,
but already forgetting
what they were meant to protect.

Each soldier a hypothesis.
Each silence, a map.
Each crack—a failed attempt
to understand why people leave
even when they say they won’t.

Dreams flow like soldered platinum,
beautiful in the way
only toxic metals shimmer
they promise softness,
but dry into armor
you didn’t ask to wear.

I don’t mind the impact,
the crash,
the unpredictable tide of another’s undoing
because even oceans
must exhale.
Even the storm eventually
forgets your name.

But I remember falling.

Not once.
Not dramatically.
Just…
incrementally.

Falling into love that wasn’t ready.
Falling through logic
patched with performance.
Falling for eyes
that said everything
and meant none of it.

They say time flows
but I saw it bleeding,
dripping sideways
through the spine of a clock
that refused to chime.

We walked beaches
stitched together
from half-spoken apologies.
Moments, beautiful
but so easily rewound
by a sudden lack of reason.

And if I had a crystal ball…
would I use it
to avoid the pain,
or just to better frame it?

Would I steer my ship
to safer harbors,
or miss the waves
that taught me
how to drown gracefully?

My rainbow didn’t arc across joy.
It stained my palette
with residue.
Not color—echo.
Not hope—just remnants
of what was almost true.

Crows gather where clarity fails.
Gulls fight over the leftovers
of intention.
They don’t care what was meant—
only what was left behind.

Tomorrow came dressed
as an accident.
Today,
I misplaced again.
And yesterday
it whispered something
I wasn’t ready to hear.

Perhaps we should’ve arrived
with a manual for contradiction.
A diagram of desire.
An index of ambiguity,
where every should-have
had a page number,
but no resolution.

People say they love the rain.

They don’t.
They love the idea
that rain is forgiveness,
that wetness means freedom.

But step outside
and watch how they flinch.

They talk of dancing in storms
but build roofs out of denial.
They dream of thunder
but fear the lightning
that asks them
to be honest.

I drove through the last storm
and saw no dancers.
Just faces lit by phone screens,
cars speeding toward comfort,
no one tasting the grief
that falls for free.

And maybe,
maybe that’s the point

We’re all trying
to understand each other
through metaphors
no one agrees on.

We speak in rainbows,
but listen in grayscale.
We promise always,
then vanish between yesterdays.

And maybe that’s human.
Or maybe that’s just
what we became
when the gods
forgot to write us
an instruction manual.

Does it really matter in the end when the Rainbow Spilled Sideways

She walks where night forgets itself
beneath flickering signs,
past alleyways that hold their breath.
Not quite seen,
but the traffic hushes
when her heel touches the curb.

Streetlights spill down her spine
like a chapel of small suns,
and puddles ripple with memory
not rain.

She doesn’t look at you,
but you are already unraveling
Her name no longer fits your mouth,
your past left leaking behind her steps.

Shopfront mannequins turn to watch.
Buskers miss a beat.
Dogs whimper low like sinners in pews.
Something shifts.
Paint peels. Neon falters.

No perfume, no sound
just the scent of once-loved letters,
and a warmth like someone you mourned
standing just behind you,
never speaking.

She walks on.

Her dress, midnight silk
stitched with the hush of every goodbye.
Her face
you remember it wrong
every time you try.
Like smoke, or poetry,
or the space between subway doors.

Coins clatter.
Lights change.
You blink
and she is
gone.

Still,
you swear the sky
tastes different
since she passed.

I climbed out from under my own noise,
the static of too many selves
all speaking at once.
I just wanted silence,
or at least
a glimpse of something real
beyond this glassy, shifting mask I wear.

For a moment,
I thought I found it
I felt light,
untethered,
soaring past the reach of what they made me.
But I flew too far,
and forgot my own wings were stitched with lies.

My eyes
yes, they opened.
But they looked inward and saw only fog.
My mind
it turned, it turned,
but always into walls.

I still hear them
when the night softens
and sleep forgets to close the door.
The voices,
not cruel—just certain.
And that certainty cuts.

I pretended to know why I keep breathing.
Told people there’s a plan,
that I’ve got it sorted.
That’s the performance.
That’s the whole show.

And when I say I’m wise,
what I mean is
I’m tired of being wrong
so I’ve learned to speak
in riddles.

I’m not anchored.
I’m not grounded.
I’m a feeling in search of a name,
a boat without a harbor,
tossed in the ache of old waves.

I once thought the wind would save me.
But even that
whispers like them now:
"Where do you think you're going?"

They told me the climb would make me whole,
but I lost pieces with every pull.
Each truth I reached turned into smoke,
and every promise
just a joke.

I once believed the sky would catch me
a soul too cracked to feel the scratch,
but falling taught what is flight disguised
the stars don’t speak
they only shine.

My silence grew its own sharp teeth,
it gnawed my sleep, it bit beneath.
I smiled in rooms,
I couldn’t stay,
then vanished softly,
day by day.

There’s a hush where my name should be,
a space between the ‘you’ and ‘me.’
I’ve become a ghost with lungs and skin,
forever locked in where I’ve been.

And still they call,
those quiet screams,
the ones that echo through my dreams.
Not demons, no–
just echoes made,
from every truth
I’ve thrown away!

I walked so far to not be me,
but found myself in every fleeting minute,
in shadows cast,
in windows cracked,
no matter where, I still come back.

Words come from the distant deep,
where silence hums and secrets sleep.
Thoughts that flicker, wild or meek,
drip like rain from the soul's dark beak.

They rise from marrow, not from air,
from bloodied dreams or whispered prayer.
Sometimes steep, a summit scream,
sometimes soft as a lullaby dream.

They ride on crows with razored wings,
or butterflies with silver strings.
Some arrive like axe-blade sighs,
some as tears in a child’s wide eyes.

They are born beneath the skin,
in quiet wars we hold within.
Lines crawl out through open scars,
stanzas shaped like fallen stars.

Married in unison — pulse and page,
they outlive time, they outgrow age.
A poem doesn’t end — it loops, it plays,
it’s sung through moonlight and firelit days.

Words don’t rot, they bloom and bite,
etched in ink or screamed at night.
They are rivers of chocolate, or ******-red,
they live when we are long past dead.

So write — with truth, with flame, with breath,
for poems cheat both time and death.
They touch the places no one sees,
they plant forever in the breeze.

Noon burns bright.
Orange sunsets.
Earth breathes.
Candles flicker
light slips away.
Gone is day.

Storms roar loud,
then quiet fast.
Chaos folds in waves;
silence breathes last.

Night moves slow
for those who wait,
a velvet hue
deep and late.
Fallen leaves rest,
new-found fate.

No clocks here,
no time, no tense.
Just dark and light,
turning night
in heaven’s hush
along earth’s fence.

A poem is built from thoughts so deep, truth so obvious
laced through knuckle-script
and molar brass.

It leaks when no one’s watching
from ankle-chords,
from the valve behind the eye.

You don’t find it.
It outgrows you,
It lives when
you don't .

It’s the eighth toe
you never knew you had,
curling in a sockless shoe,
itching
during weddings.

It is not about trees,
or time,
or the myth of birds.

It’s the scent that doesn’t belong
crushed battery in rosewater,
ozone in your mother’s drawer,
that unforgiving scent.

A poem bites the slowest nerve.
It knows which tendon you dream through.
It blinks in ternary.
You forget its face
until it replaces yours.

Don’t look for it.
Check your palm
That spinal shiver
next time you speak.

Shaded shadows cometh to carry my weary soul,
burdens lifted not in part but whole.
Life, it changes from now to then
does it end, or start again?

A breath unclaimed in silent air,
a final blink, a distant stare.
Time folds in on whispered skin,
and all I was drifts deep within.

I don’t fear death
we all go.

What haunts me
is return
no memory,
no map

just ******* it all up
again
like it’s
new.

Death is coming
fast in the bones,
slow in the breath.

Each day, the fight grows heavier,
but will grows thin
a thread unraveling
in falling wind.

Still, I wait.
Not for mercy
but for the hush
that follows pain.

The sound of the siren curls like a question,
spinning through concrete veins.
Mist settles like smoke from a lie,
wrapping rooftops in guilt,
truth leaking out,
no doubt.

Ey *****, what you say now?

The quick brown fox jumped over a fence
dropkicked a lazy red faced little cow.
Ooh—million attempts at what,
a vow?
You think that pretty little grin,
that “look at me!” skin,
a smile like a tooty fruit troll-face is your win?
Was that enough to stall the fall,
to silence the cracks
in the mirror where you crawl?
get your sad little point through a crooked corridor door,
what a bore.

Fake shouts—“Oh me!”—
****, the picture hangs skew,
naming different artist oh no
what we going to do?
Raise one wait maybe raise two!

Don't you all see,
come quick have look
I think it's the cover of a old stolen book,
but you?
Still posing like it's new, true
like you bought it, distorted
taught the paint colour in a shade,
oh my architecture
Come put on a parade.

Sirens scream,
ambulance or wambulance, who knows?
I called it for you ! 911 what's your emergency?
A thief stealing stained glass and borrowed hymns / from cello kids in cathedral whims,
sky dims.

We hear you loud and clear.
we were already on our way !
It's me ma –it's me ma – it's me ma !
the sound of the siren in the distance while mist settles truth in a darken hue of blue red blue
just definitions oh so clear
words they disappear,
just like you.

Do you think putting a wall between changes my life,
Oh dear me how can this be?
your poetry sounds like Bert and Ernie,
Wambulance pulled out a gurney.

Lights—camera—play your part,
the damsel routine,
the broken-heart art.
Sending smoke signals
into the void,
hoping someone out there
feels annoyed enough to care,
while you hang onto a distant stare,
When you think your poems are:
Rare as dime in a bubblegum machine.

Look everyone—flatter her
while she’s battering,
Chattering
but truth?
Just uncouth.

Yeah, satire packs it in
like a left hook to your chin.

You think you’re special, huh?
Generic tone with a borrowed soul,
dancing all night in knockoff roles,
trading moans for coin in bathroom stall.
under gallery lights you’ll never know,
painting tears you moan, groan "nut"
never own, "moaning Lisa on loan".

Living in a glitch of an AI scheme,
is that where your writing dreams?
Minimal with a lisp, stale not crisp,
just a blur in a comment stream,
boohoo he just being mean!

You shout so loud
for your petty crowd,
like this song must be you
Bet you think this song is about you too
Dupe do dube doo
Maybe it is.
Maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s just a monkey
at a five-card standoff
Raised the stakes
flinging ****
at signs it forgot.

Either way,
I couldn’t give two *****.
Not three, not four.
**** girl,
you inspired even more.

Chum-chum, here he ****
crusty knight in silicone armor,
itchy little *******,
twitchin’ for trauma,
chasin' **** like karma.
Old ******* always show up to rescue
anything with cleavage and a crisis menu

Then he sends out a drive-by "flex" / like he’s living in the ******* Ritz
quick on the text
running for any pair of ****,
click n' follow!
dam don't wanna sound ******
that’s twenty "likes" right there,
ain’t that the bitz?

Ah just so silly
Not even a real brit
But he give you a "like"  for a ***,
excuse the wit..

The next day,
your words decay.
Lovers brawl,
no one’s wrong
but I’m still right,
because I don’t belong
to your broken juries
or boo hoo storybook flurries.
They didn’t hang me
they found you wanting.
So fix your shoes.
Get braces.
Chase your high
at the soapbox races.

Boop-boop-de-doo,
cry me a meme.
I don’t fit your box
I reshape the dream.
Turn corners to clouds,
make square roots bloom
in the garden of my mind,
where there's no room
Kazoom.

You thought the judge
would swing your way
as you wagged your finger,
tried to slay.
Hey hey hey, lies! Barney rubble
But turns out fate had a line or two,
No trouble double double
and now the curtain’s drawn
on you,
maybe you should get a clue?

I’m no status, do I look like facebook
looking for likes,
looking for fights
stars and fake blends
No hashtag trend.
I don’t bend
for clickbait or dead-end friends.
I write for the real,
for those who feel
not ******* in trash bags
with wait - oh fake flags
and empty mags,
not turds in windsocks

Stamp your feet, scream your shame,
twirl like a TikTok user caught in flame.
“What you trying to ******* do?”
Here’s a suggestion:
*******.
Kiss a frog.
Post it on your blog
choke on a log,
“****-sing your lies like a sad lil cartoon”
Bet thats your kinda thing too.

Here’s my *******,
signed in Sharpie
Big, loud, and bright:

****. YOU. FULL STOP
While we all have a laughie.

There is an island where night wears perfume
of crushed orchids, rain-soaked roots,
and the shadows of drums echoing through
wild fig, mahogany, and sandalwood.
It is shaped like her
hips in the curve of the bay,
lips in the rise of each tropical thunderstorm.

Dark waterfalls pour from her crown,
cascading curls of black fleece,
chaotic rivers that snap the teeth of combs
and drown the day’s discipline.
In each cove, a secret hums
a memory, a map,
a honey-thick promise.

She shakes herself loose and I follow
a rag in the wind of her motion,
spun silver threads, stripped, surrendered.
My thoughts tangle in her forest of scent
spice, sweat, incense,
a melody too wild for music.

This is no place found on any map
but I’ve been here in dream and fever.
Oarsmen chant in rhythm with my breath,
bright sails crack like kisses overhead,
and vessels glide over gold-threaded waves
toward the core of her heat.

Her island is a hearth for the starved,
where no thirst remains unquenched,
no ache unacknowledged.
I come hollow, dry
I leave fulfilled, wet
she fills me with color,
with rhythm,
with her storm-fed pulse.

And when I rest,
head cradled in the dark tide of her,
she rocks me gently
as the night sings low
under moonlight sky
and eyes staring down
a connoisseur of ecstasies,
nursing the nerves of every storm-tossed soul
that dares arrive
and stay.

From heaven’s grace or hell’s unholy flame?
You move like wine—both remedy and sting.
Both love and ruin follow in your name,
And eyes like suns make trembling senses sing.

Your kiss undoes the pride of wiser men,
Transforms the meek to kings, or kings to dust.
No law can tame your steps, again and again
You rule with neither mercy, care, nor trust.

I’ve seen you dance where tombstones split the earth,
Your jewels like blood, your laughter like a knife.
You dress in death and sell it under mirth,
And fools call that destruction love, or life.

What matters source—divine or demon’s art?
You light the dark, and that undoes my heart.

The sun stood still,
and Earth began to move
not in sky,
but in mind.

A lens,
tilted toward the heavens,
revealed that silence
was not stillness.

A knife cut through belief
not to wound,
but to ask,
again and again.

An apple fell,
and with it,
the veil between the stars
and the street.

I wandered through the vaults of thought and flame,
Where peristyles in basalt bore no name,
And columns stretched like hymns across the seas,
Painted in twilight’s thousand reverent degrees.
The sky, it kissed the ocean’s mirrored gaze
A temple drowned in ever-shifting haze.
And there I lived in lush, immortal ease,
Where fans of palm blew slow, obedient breeze.

Their silence served to cool my burning brow,
As naked slaves moved time without a vow.
Yet in that land of dream and dusky gold,
A deeper, stranger symmetry took hold:

Why is it all I see returns in three
Like some divine and ancient guarantee?

The Father, Son, and Spirit veil the soul,
The Id, the Ego, Superego’s role.
The Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu guard the gate,
While Maiden, Mother, Crone unravel fate.
Three Fates who spin, three Graces clothed in charm,
Three curses, three desires, threefold harm.

The world itself obeys a triple voice:
Solid, Liquid, Gas in fluid choice.
Evaporation, Condensation’s dance,
And Precipitation’s downward trance.
The atom sings in Proton, Neutron, Charge,
Its silence split across a spectrum large.
Red, Green, and Blue compose the prism’s song,
Three notes of light that carry life along.

The Past, the Present, Future never sleep
They guard the hours we borrow but can't keep.
Producer, Consumer, Decomposer rise,
And write the food chain’s truth beneath the skies.

Our minds are threes: Conscious where we tread,
Subconscious murmurs, Unconscious sleeps like dead.
A triune brain of Reptile, Feeling, Mind,
A holy tangle evolution twined.
Our needs arise as Survive, Belong, Transcend,
The Maslow path we chase until the end.
And still we speak with Logic, Heart, and Trust
Logos, Pathos, Ethos born from dust.

A First name, Middle, Last we often bear,
To walk our Youth, Adult, and Elder stare.
Mind, Body, Spirit are the roles we keep,
We Work, we Play, and then we fall to Sleep.
The Hero, Guide, Antagonist all meet,
On stages where three Acts make life complete.
The Setup, Clash, Resolve in story’s shell,
A dance of Thesis, Anti, Synthesis fell.

The Trident stands with Power, Balance, Will,
And fairy tales grant Wishes by the thrill
Of threes: three trials, three locks, three golden keys
Three riddles echoing in whispered trees.

Why so much threeness clings to every breath?
Why three to shape a life, a fate, a death?
What secret lies in this repeated spell
This triad truth the world has learned so well?

I lay beneath those caverns carved in lore,
Drunk on the wine of metaphors and more.
Is this the code, the song, the god’s decree?
The structure of the soul? The cosmic plea?

Or is the third not curse, nor gift, but test
The balance point between the east and west?
Where chaos meets control in perfect bind,
The echo of a Universal Mind?

Three stars above me blinked in calm delight.
Three steps I took into the endless night.
Three questions burned like brands inside of me:

"What are you? Where from? What will you be?"

They say a painting hangs in silence,
but listen closer.
There’s breath in the pigment,
ache in the line.
Each stroke: a fingertip pressed to time
a plea,
a promise,
a person,
or a price.

Da Vinci’s Mona wasn’t for you.
Klimt’s lovers weren’t thinking of your ache.
Picasso broke forms, not hearts,
and yet we all see ourselves in his fractures.
Van Gogh painted stars
not to claim the sky,
but to survive it.

Caravaggio lit his sinners with holy fire,
while Vermeer captured silence
as if it were a form of prayer.
Frida poured pain like molasses onto linen.
Turner wept storms into colour.
O'Keeffe painted the body
without apology.
Chagall made lovers float
because gravity was too dull for love.

What madness, then,
to say a moment
is yours
because the pose feels familiar?
Because you too saw two figures beneath a tree?
As if love and death
are trademarks,
as if a cherub in the clouds
belongs to one man’s hand.

No two said, “you stole my sun,”
though they all painted it.
No master shouted theft
when another touched sorrow
with the same red.

The artist owns not the subject,
but the sweat.
The trembling hand.
The night stared down with doubt.
The day it was finally finished.
And more sacred still
every moment
they toiled,
half-blind with longing,
to make something
that might be
beautiful.

And here’s the irony:
today’s loudest mouths
the self-appointed guards of “originality”
pen their spare lines with surgical caution,
write in whispers
to avoid the radar of truth.
Minimal not by craft,
but by fear
fear of artificial detection,
the same that bleeds through
minimal lines.

Yet the quiet hypocrisy shows
in the empty space between their words,
the absence of soul where colour should be.
For the difference is this:

One form dares the test.
The other
hides from it,
until they meet.

Stone columns stretch,
sun melts into sea.
Sky leans low,
its breath a plea.
Brushed in fading flame,

Orange bleeds
across sky blue
a canvas rare,
a moment true.

I lived there once:
cool air, slow hands,
the hush of palm leaves
and quiet pain.

Beneath the beauty,
what could not be said
remained.

Often I stand on life’s sidelines,
thinking – real calm, real clear:
I couldn’t give two *****,
’cause without a doubt,
you’d just want more…
and I ain’t about to give three or four.

When I was green, the heavens oft did frown,
With tempests dark, yet sometimes pierced by gold.
My garden, scarr’d by rain that beat it down,
Bore naught of fruit its gentle womb might hold.

Lo, autumn cometh with her solemn tread,
And I must seek my grove, now left forlorn.
The yield I ought have gatherèd lies dead
By briny tides to grave and shadow borne.

In soil thus sick, by salt and sorrow marred,
What hidden balm could nurse a seedling’s breath?
May blossoms dreamt in sleep the frost discard?
Or must all bloom be choked by time and death?

An inward fiend grows glutted on my pain,
It drinks my heart and sings in tones profane.

Thy hollow eyes like haunted lanterns blaze.
In silence dost thou bear thy soul's unrest,
While madness cloaks thee in a shadowed haze.

Did sirens draw thee with their viper’s breath,
To drown thee in a brine of love and fear?
Or didst thou dream too close the verge of death,
And wake to find no guiding angels near?

I knew thee once all fire, fierce and fair,
Thy voice a flame that sang in measured grace.
Now wand’ring winds do toss thy golden hair,
And chaos paints strange sorrow on thy face.

Yet rise, O Muse, from ash and bitter rain
Let verse restore thy light, and break thy chain.

Quick thoughts crack your calm
should I call someone for you?
Wambulance inbound..

I do not walk alone
I drift,
something watches in the still,
a breath caught in curtains,
a pulse misplaced
in plaster and dust.

The dark is not a void.
It watches.
And waits.

Sometimes,
when I reach for the light,
I swear it leans closer
It touches me
breath on my neck,
skin prickling like wire.

Do you ever hesitate?
That single moment,
when you glance
toward the corner of your room
and your chest locks,
because something
might be
watching?

Not there.
But close.

Not seen.
But still
seeing.

I do not believe in ghosts
demons maybe a different story
but something knows my name
in a voice made of cold.
I hear it sometimes,
when I move too fast
or breathe too loud.

The shadows aren’t still.
They twitch.
They blink.
They wait for me
to turn my back.

There’s a weight behind me
when I’m alone.
A tension
like eyes trained
on the center of my spine,
waiting for me to crack
like an old floorboard.

You can laugh.
You can say it’s all in the mind.
But my mind has rooms
I don’t walk through anymore.
Not in the dark.

And fear
isn't a child’s story.
It's a hand.
Pressed softly
on the back of your head
when no one else is home.

In my quiet mind,
no secrets, no need to lie
only time stares back.

Lonely clock unwinds,
each thought echoes with silence
no one waits inside.

I run in your mind,
looping like a whispered name
you can’t let me go.

But where do we meet
between your dreaming of me
and my fading self?

Just because
I speak of marble
doesn’t mean
Michelangelo whispers in my wrist.

Just because
I name fire
doesn’t mean I stole it
from Prometheus’ ashtray.

I said David
but not yours.
I said God
but not the one
in your tidy chapel of restraint.

Excuse me
if I seem offended
but our poetry
is nothing alike.

You bask in the religion of restraint,
while I
build cathedrals
from collapse.

You drink from Zen porcelain,
cool and pale.
I sip lava
and call it communion.

Your gods are lowercase and quiet.
Mine arrive
wild-haired,
bleeding bronze
and speaking in tongues.

Just because I breathe
where you’ve once stood
doesn’t mean I’m standing for you.
Art is not a deed,
and thought has no landlord.

Yes, I say Nietzsche
but I carry him differently.
Where you saw a hammer,
I saw the shattered sky
and wrote the thunder.

Yes, I echo Rilke
but where you chased the angel,
I let it break my body
and sleep inside.

Do you claim Rodin
every time a figure bends?
Does Giacometti live
in every stretched grief?

Let’s not confuse
the use of a word
with the theft of a soul.

I am not imitating.
I am incarnating.

Let me build my riot
while you tend your minimalist view
then call it everything else,
Let me drench the stanza
while you count your syllables.

Form is not crime.
Expression is not excess.

I wasn’t made for clean glass galleries.
I am basement smoke
and bombed-out breath.
I am oil and gold leaf
on wood that won’t stop splintering.

So keep your calm.
Your precision.
Your borders and white space.

I will keep my howl.
My dripping paint.
My blood-wet diction
and firelit silhouettes.

We are not alike.
We never were.

And if I ever wear
the same word as you
know this:
I embroidered it
in the dark,
with my teeth,
while you were busy
measuring margins
looking for similarities
in mild abstraction.

And now you arrive
not with fanfare,
but as thunder held in the finest silk,
a hush so loud the clouds kneel.

You walk,
and the world answers
the earth flowering in your delicate shadow,
as if even dirt remembers
the scent of goddesses.

The wild rose holds no beauty,
no scent that can be compared.

You are the sun rising through cathedral glass,
stained with wildflower tones:
blue forget me nots,
turmeric yellows,
wine-dark crimsons,
lavender bruises that hold the hush of evening.

Your skin
oh, your skin
a canvas Van Gogh might have dreamed in fever
trembling with each stroke,
sun-drunk wheat gold,
laced with dusk-heat rose,
lit from within
like a lantern floating on an endless lake.

Your eyes
each a Monet morning,
mist-swaddled and shimmering,
like rare symphonies soaked in rainlight,
flickering like cello strings
plucked beneath gleaming starlight.

I hear you
in the hush between wind gusts,
the low hum of honeybees blessing a bloom,
in the breath of river reeds
bending to your passing
like sacred monks in prayer.

You are a madrigal sung in falling water,
the harp hidden in riverbeds
a sound no recording could capture.
Only ripples
know your frequency.

Your presence is an orchestra of moments:
the aria of mountain dawns,
the lullaby of petals torn by breeze
falling softly to the earth,
the rhythm of a thousand painted suns
in the belly of a Kandinsky dream.

I close my eyes
your laugh,
the clatter of silver in a velvet room,
a storm behind stained-glass windows,
a jazz note improvised mid-heaven.

I try to describe you,
but language buckles.
What metaphor for skin that smells like memory?
For eyes that hold entire equinoxes?

Shall I create words
only I understand
syllables that tremble,
tones that shake the earth
just to explain your undescribable beauty?

You are not one flower.
You are every bloom in disobedience
the fire-throated hibiscus,
the shy hellebore,
the rogue jasmine
that climbs past every boundary
just to find the moon,
reaching for the stars.

Each time of day becomes you.
You are dawn’s breath on a violin’s neck,
noon’s blaze caught in gold-threaded fabric,
twilight poured into a wineglass of silence,
while midnight kneels
in hush, praying
in indigos and magentas.

You step into my world,
and the scenery forgets itself.
Even the mountains lean closer,
hoping to be repainted
in your palette.

None can compare.

Even the stars
fall back
to make room for you.

I worship you not in silence,
but in explosion
a thousand golden strings breaking open,
a field of irises trembling in sudden light,
the last note of a requiem
held longer than breath itself.

You are not a destination.
You are the arrival.
The divine storm at the edge of longing.
The shape of the answer
before the question can form.

And I,
glowing like fire beneath snowfall,
sunrise beneath the cathedral of my chest,
waited
just to fall into your name
when you finally call to me

You will come–
to the edge of this world
where the sea inhales the sky,
where silver droplets drip from the hanging moon’s open mouth,
and the pulling tides keep time with my waiting.

You will come–
not as roaring thunder,
but as warmth on tanned salt skin,
a fresh breath stirring the indigo silk of night
in a hidden place beyond naming.

I wait for you
in the distance
with arms open wide,
with hands that have never forgotten
the weight of your presence.
Starfall clings to your hair,
and I let it–
each flicker a gentle kiss you haven’t given yet.

Pull me deeper,
not away–
through distant constellations collapsing in sublime delight,
across golden fields of glowing dust
and cities made only of memory.

There is no disgust here–
only the hunger to be seen,
and the softness of becoming.

My desire is a spoken prayer now,
not an open wound.
You inhabit it
with reverence.

I am not broken.
I am paused–
a held note
in an unwritten song the cestial choirs and stars are still composing.

Call me forward–
with your voice,
not with sorrow,
but with the rhythm of your fingertips
softly brushing the air between us.
Even absence wears your unforgotten scent.

I have not fallen.
I’ve been laid down–
gently–
by the invisible hands of light.

Waiting.
You do not mock.
You shimmer.
This world aches with your outline,
and I praise it
because it holds your splendor and shape.

I draw the curtain of night wide open.
Clouds part like breath beneath your gaze.
The wind does not move without purpose–
it moves with the memory of your fingers,
your presence pressing the sky into form.

I no longer pace.
I rest–
peacefully,
between skin and longing,
between the heat of my pulse
and the ghost of your mouth.

I did not give myself away.
I gave myself to you.
Willfully.
Wanting.
Woven in your majestic gravity.

This is no disgrace.
This is worship.
This is rising
again and again
toward the sun
you left burning in me.

The soft morning rain wore gloves
when it came this time of day –
soft-footed, deliberate,
pressing its palms
against the sun-bleached windowbones,
as if asking permission to enter.

Something peeled the stuttering silence
like bark from a young oak.
I turned the lamp away,
flame flickering,
and let the dust breathe in peace.

The house has no corners anymore.
They’ve rounded themselves
in sleep-surrender,
folded inward
like past regret
stuffed in an old, dusty coat pocket.

They arrived separately –
on different lonely days.
Love came first, trailing thread-lace
and golden strands,
with the smell of stormfruit.
Then Death, later,
with his cold winterglass eyes
and unpunctuated, grasping hands
playing life's final melody on
this old worn out piano.

Funny—neither knocked.
They let the creaking floorboards answer,
split wood speaking
in broken syllables.
Now the worn walls echo backwards.

In the poorly painted hallway –
once rich –
a chandelier sings in lowercase.
Its light barely lifts the carpet,
but moths still come,
dressed for a funeral
that keeps changing addresses.

Love moved the furniture
without touching it.
Chairs gathered in whisper-circles.
The grandfather clock ticks,
its pendulum sways to time’s hand.
Books opened their pulse-spines
and breathed ink-dust into the air.

Death lit a match –
that sulphur-laminate scent
thickening the air –
and braided it into the sugar.
I found the flame burning softly,
hiding in the kettle –
like a secret no one dared stir.

The old ash-jar on the mantle cracked.
A mint-threaded hush rose from it,
hovered a moment,
then settled again,
as if remembering who it belonged to,
before quickly forgetting.

The staircase sighed
like an old tenant remembering rent.
The clouded sky leaned west.
My books slid north toward the windows,
as if pulled by history’s mouth.

Outside, the root-chair is still there –
grown into the fig tree’s spine.
Every morning,
I place a love’s breath on its seat.
It never moves.
Still waiting
for the right weight of a memory.

I keep the forgotten clocks in the drawer.
Their ticklanguage doesn’t match
the breath of the house.
Now I mark hours
by how long it takes
the fly on wallpaper
to hum itself quiet.

The blackened mirrors have forgotten their task.
No light.
No faces.
No questions.
They reflect only the ghostshadow
of who almost stayed.

And still, each night,
the attic exhales fabric-murmurs.
Not footsteps.
Not whispers.
Just the sound of someone
remembering how to stay.

Love wrote something in the evening fog
left on the windowpanes.
Death leaned in
and breathed it away
before it spelled a name.

Now the silence has a shape –
a name.
Now the door locks
from both sides.

And this house?
It doesn’t sleep.
It waits.
It swells with each absence,
ripens with every glance
that doesn’t land.

Love and Death live here.
Not as enemies,
not as lovers –
but as roommates,
who share a silence
too sacred to name.
Still holy.

Write like there is no tomorrow.
Let the ink spill faster than your regrets,
faster than the tide that swallows names from stone.
Let the page burn with your blood
before your mouth remembers silence.

No man controls time.
Not the priest, the poet, the king,
not the one who waits,
not the one who runs.

Life is not given.
It is borrowed breath,
a fragile flicker
on a clock that ticks whether you move or rot.
The hours do not wait.
They do not care.
They do not remember you.

Write because tomorrow may not come.
And if it does,
it may not arrive as you hoped,
or with your name still in your throat.
We are not in control.
We never were.

Moments are sand –
they vanish even as we hold them.
Memories bend and blur,
warped by sorrow, softened by longing.
Tombstones do not speak;
they only mark the aching fact:
we were here.

Pictures fade.
And if no one looks,
the light inside them dies.
Words on a wall mean nothing
if no one knows the tongue.

But thought,
written in ink,
can outlive even the silence –
if it’s read,
if it’s felt,
if it strikes the living like thunder behind the ribs.

Hills rise and crumble.
Trees reach and fall.
All things shift.
All things pass.

So write like there is no tomorrow.
Because sometimes it does not come.
And when it does,
we may already be dust –
scattered down some cobbled road,
whispering stories
only the wind still remembers.

And in the end,
when the ink is dry,
the voices quiet,
and the page begins to yellow –
ask yourself,
would it all matter?
And know the answer lies
in whether you dared to write
at all.

The room is still there, though the house forgets its name.
The walls have begun to breathe again
soft exhalations of rosewater and ash.
No one remembers who first laid down the sheets,
only that they remain unwrinkled,
smelling faintly of fever and honey.

The lovers do not age.
They do not speak.
Their language is older than sound,
older than breath.
Their bodies are relics in motion,
moving as roots do in soil,
slow and entwined,
eternal
never needing to surface.

Outside the windowless house,
new roads have eaten the gardens,
cities have risen and collapsed,
wars fought for less than the silence they share.
Still, no one knocks.

A girl once ran her fingers along the lock
and forgot her own name.
A priest walked past with salt on his tongue
and swallowed it without prayer.
Only the wind returns,
curious and uninvited.

Inside,
the bed has grown antlers.
The ceiling drips colorless rain.
A vine pulses through the mattress like a second heartbeat.
The lovers, blind as moonless sky,
continue–slow, sacred, certain.

No hunger. No ******.
Only the eternity of touch.

Some say the house is a mouth now,
that when you stand too near,
it whispers your deepest ache
and waits to be fed.

And somewhere, beyond time,
a third body shifts beneath the covers.
It was not invited.
It was always meant to arrive.
You.

Not every fire burns the flesh.
Some arrive with breathless stillness,
draped in dusk-colored light,
a gaze too wide for one face to hold.
blinded still –
I called to you.

I did not know
what love could become
when it puts down its veil
and steps forward,
not as comfort,
but as divinity.

You were not gentle.

You stood where the air bent around you–
more presence than person,
a voice like thunder wrapped in silk,
fingertips trailing the edges of my ruin
like a priest naming what can’t be saved.

And still, I stayed.

Where are the days
when love was a glance from across the room,
a laugh shared over fruit and rain?
Now it is an archangel
descending through my ribs,
setting fire to my lungs
my soul catching flame
with every beat that dares endure you.

You asked for nothing–
only that I remain still
as you unfolded
in the space between heartbeats.

Who are you?

You are not lover, not ghost,
but the god hiding in desire.
You are the pollen of all beginnings,
the storm-light before any world was shaped,
the echo that built the sky
just to have somewhere to fall.

You are the mirror held to my face
after I have vanished.
And yet–
I call to you still.
Not because I will survive the blaze,
nor revive a soul,
but because I would rather burn in your nearness
than live untouched.

I loved you in the silence,
the forgotten, aching still,
that throbbed beneath the rain–
in clocks too slow to ****.

You were not lost or vanished,
not ghost, nor fleeting flame–
but time rewrote your nearness,
and absence learned my name.

I loved you when the dishes
lay waiting in the sink,
when dusk fell down too early
and left no space to think.

You were not made for statues,
for saints or poet’s pen–
you were the crack in breathing
that let the sorrow in.

I do not write you letters,
for words fall through the sieve;
I loved you past the promise
of anything I’d give.

Not for your tender smiling
or how your hands once pressed–
but for the way you linger
inside my failing chest.

So stay, not as a memory,
not shadow, smoke, or sound–
but as the ache I carry
when no one is around.

You wake with petals in your hair
and sleep still clinging to your lashes
not the sleep of peace,
but the hush that follows weeping,
when the heart forgets its own weight.

I don’t ask what ghosts kept you
tossing through the hours.
I don’t name the pain
stitched in the arch of your back.
You’ve built your grace from ruin–
I’ve learned to admire the architecture.

Tonight, I won’t touch your wounds.
I’ll touch the skin around them,
where the light still gathers
when you breathe without defense.

Tell me–
is it love
if I hold you
like I’m not afraid of breaking,
like your shaking
is just music I haven’t learned yet?

You speak like someone
who’s forgotten how to be held
without preparing for departure.

That’s alright.
I don’t need your trust in full bloom.
Just the seed.
Just the breath you give me
before the sentence ends.

Your fingers curl
as if expecting to be pried away–
but I stay.
No bargains. No salvation.
Just warmth,
and the promise not to name this rescue.

I smile.
I’ve seen braver women
fall apart for lesser reasons.

So when your mask slips,
when the tiredness wins
and the strong part of you
asks to rest–

remember this:

Not the way I touched you
but the way I listened,
how I stayed quiet enough
for your silence to speak.

Not for mercy,
not to save,
but because I wanted
to be the first place
you didn’t have to fight.

You whisper like it’s truth–
My body isn’t beautiful.
And then I want the rivers to rise,
want the trees to lean in,
want the stars to unpin themselves
and spell your shape across the dark.
Let the sky spill its archive of light,
let it fall open and weep
the exact shape of your name.

I want my hands to become mirrors,
quiet pools catching your laughter,
so you can see what I see–
how your skin bends light
like a secret the world wasn’t ready for.

And still, you say I look at you
like someone who’s come to take–
but I was only holding still
because your nearness
made the world hold its breath.
Your lashes moved
like small wild things
learning not to flinch.

Your body breathes softly
like a small bird, sparrow caught between sky and storm,
your chest rising beneath my palms–
every sensation felt with a finger tip
not a signal for danger,
but a song in the making.
And every time you shift,
I hear the hush
of wings folding,
not in fear–
but in arrival.

Mind’s wide open — body twitchin’, glitchin’, this pain is *******.
Thoughts crash like ******' panes in a kitchen, glass on floor
Glass in my grin shame diggin’ in, full pain.
Guilt pokin’ ribs like needles in skin.
Fire in my nerves, yeah this pain ain’t pretend,
Legal highs got me beggin’ for the end.
Eyes sunken, sleep duckin’, truth runnin’,
Mind ******’ me harder than life ever done it.
Dreams don’t visit, they drive-by in silence, alliance, defiance
While trauma backs up like a ***** with a license.
Heart skips like a junk beat glitched,
Shadow follows me like a snitch I ditched.
High legit — but the fit don’t click,
Cracked like a token tossed in the pit.
Broken on rocks while I fake that grit,
Every ******’ breath like a punch I split.
Gotta detox, get clean, get straight, give me rocks, big blocks
But mind’s on fire, sittin’ there, laced with hate.
It’s crawlin’ my skull, through the ceiling it leaks,
Whisperin’ sins in the hospital sheets.
IV drippin’ like a priest in heat,
Tryna baptize my veins with defeat.
Maybe I’m vain, maybe I’m ******' insane,
But this brain got rooms that scream *******, pain pain pain.
Temptation ain’t knockin’, it kicks the door in,
Talkin’ bends, ends, old sins, fake friends.
Promisin’ peace from a pill with a grin,
But I know that thrill ends under my skin.
Open door — I step right through, roof lit floor
Ain’t scared of hell, I’ve been see-through.
Shoulda died — yeah, death ******’ lied,
Left me half-man, half suicide, final ride what's inside see the blind.
Drugs in the drawer hum lullabies low,
Beggin’ me sweet to just let go.
Living’s a joke, the punchline’s stale,
Body in a bed with a soul on bail.
Paranoia sharp like a blade of mice, grain of rice, pipes that are spliced, in and out,
Gnawin’ my spine with feral vice.
Creepin’ up bones, crawlin’ through wires,
Slime in my mind that never tires, never lies.
Smiles from the past? *****, they charge, no they charge
Fake hugs, fake love — just emotional barge, living off drugs
Body sold, mind hijacked and bruised,
Truth tastes rotten when your teeth are loose, bones once whole broken forgotten
Tongue spits prayers in a ****-you voice, without choice,
While Morph and Feni dull the noise.
Stack of Beni like a hitman’s fee, trami and whites.
Every pill a silent plea.
War still young, but my soul’s unravelled, minds travelled,
Heart don’t beat, it ******’ gravelled.
I claw through the dirt just to breathe again, woke up to the pain,
Fightin’ shadows with a rusted pen an broken Zen.
I danced with edges, glad I'm not vedges, still ****** in the hedges, kissed death’s mouth,
Woke up in pain with the wires pulled out, ribs sticking out, blood all about,
This ain’t redemption, this ain’t a hope song,
It’s grit in the lungs and the will to prolong.
Me vs. demons, streaming, screaming, bare-knuckled, no bluff, No luck, no God, just drugs and rough.
And if I make it out, still half-alive,
It’s ‘cause I crawled through ******’ knives to survive, and if I don't well guess I died.

She moves like a rumor through the stone-breath streets,
not loud, not swift, but with a hush that bends the flame from a free standing street light.
Shoes unlaced, hands full of rainwater and nettles,
her silence does the talking.

The dogs stop barking when she passes.
A window closes in a house that forgot it had fear.
Even the birds-those clattering liars
draw their wings in like secrets.

She doesn’t look back.
She doesn’t need to.

In her wake:
a coat on a fencepost still warm,
a garden blooming red where no seed was sown,
and a man on a rooftop, forgetting why he climbed.

burn ledgers,
sink crowns,
Lies kneel,
cities drown.

no gods,
no wires,
just fists
and fires.

Ain't a cry
It's a **** the man
Statement

I'm always racing, chasing—then swaying and spacing,
Barely bracing, then I’m slipping, dipping, misplacing.

The world keeps pressing, the pressure's unceasing,
Voices all blending, no pause, no releasing.

But when night pulls the curtain and time starts *******,
I pour something smooth—let go of the stressing.

In the hush of the dark, where the touch feels true
That’s when my heart, it skips for you.

You were a kiss in a blender,
A chandelier of weeping strings.
I drank your name through static,
Swallowed lullaby shards
Wrapped in candy grief.

We made love beneath wormlight
You wore thunder like silk.
I gave you stars;
You brought a fork to my funeral
And laughed as I bled jam.

I begged through balloon fangs,
My ribs tuned to backward echoes.
But you rode a fishbone bicycle
Into another soft apocalypse.

Your love bit only in shivers.
You adored me as glitter and salt
But fled when my tears grew limbs
And asked for names.

You left with ducks in lab coats,
Prescribing your smile in pills.
I sleep in your ghost’s teacup,
Paint storms on toast,
And scream into jellyfish.

I kissed your silence’s socket,
Wore your absence like velvet plague.
Mannequins fed me your Sanskrit lies
On glitter IVs.

I built microwave shrines
To your maybe.
My therapist asked who you were
I said: expired milk with blood on the back.

Your ghost plays hopscotch in my skull.
Mirrors wear your grin like gospel.
I search aquariums for your stare
Only castles remain, and even they refuse me.

Tell me—was I your scrapbook of ruin,
Your empathy vacation,
Your control carnival?

The spiral laughs.
It spins in your perfume.
And I clap
For my own collapse.

Thou walkedst in with words so honey-dipped,
Yet venom laced thy smile, so wide, so white.
A silken voice, but every virtue slipped,
For thou wert most in love with thy own light.

Thy praise, at first, did shine like summer gold,
Then turned to scorn when I began to bleed.
What grand illusions in thy lies I sold,
A peasant’s soul made feast for royal greed.

Thou craved a mirror, not a beating heart,
A shrine to self, not love in sacred skin.
I played the ghost in thy self-fashioned art,
While thou adored the mask thou wore within.

Yet truth, like dawn, did tear thy veil in twain
I found myself where I was bound by chain.

The willow drank my name from silver rain,
yet left my thirst to bloom in salted mist;
Love hummed through wormholes stitched with shadowed pain,
and kissed me once, then marked me as a list.

I chased her echo through a coral field,
where seabirds wrote in cursive on the wind;
My ribs unzipped, a galaxy revealed
a void where all my wanting had been pinned.

She danced like Saturn's ring across my sleep,
then vanished in the hush of Neptune's yawn;
I held her in the roots of stars too deep
to bloom before the hour love is gone.

So still I orbit songs I never knew
and dream of being real inside her blue.

The mosaicing smiles of colour
each a fracture dressed in light,
a kaleidoscope lie,
grinning with the ache of having once been whole.

Each piece of broken glass
a different view,
a different time,
a different feeling
splintered in the sun, bleeding memory in hues.

Red rages like a throat mid-scream,
blue sobs with the patience of oceans,
green lies like envy draped in silk,
gold forgives but never forgets.
Each colour,
a passion,
a pulse,
a past dressed as presence.

They say:
“Stand back. Admire it. See the masterpiece.”
But I know better.
I know what slices under the shine.

No matter how intriguing,
how intricate,
how heartbreakingly beautiful it seems

It's still just broken glass.
Edges smoothed by delusion.
Truth glued with trembling hands.
Not a miracle.
Not healing.
Not whole.

And no matter how it looks
it's still just broken glass.
And
It's sometimes better to just sweep it up
Else
Cut your fingers putting it together

Because of you, the springtime scents oppress,
I ache in gardens bloomed with floral breath.
Your face is lost in veils of nothingness,
Your lips forgotten in cold death’s caress.

Thinking of you, I love the statues white,
That drowse in parks, in silence held and blind.
I’ve lost your voice, your laughter, and your light,
Your eyes erased like footprints swept by wind.

Like flowers bound unto their perfumed shade,
I cling to vague remembrance, frail and torn.
This pain’s a wound too deep to be allayed
Your touch would leave me more than bruised and worn.

Though I’ve forgotten love, I see you still
In falling stars, through windows dim and still.

Silent threads of light,
Galaxies spin woven webs,
Stars hum cosmic songs.
Planets weave their paths,
Moon and sun in orbit’s loom,
Milky Way’s bright thread.
Before time unspun,
Darkness stretched a fabric vast,
Nameless space unfolds.

And yet here we sit
two minds beneath all of this,
wondering what’s true.

It has no shape, no voice that we can hear,
Yet raised the oceans, pressed the mountains high.
It holds no grief, no joy, no hope, no fear,
Yet sends the planets circling through the sky.

It has no name, no words to mark its will,
Yet trees grow tall, and rivers run their course.
It breathes in root and storm and meadow still
A quiet law, a motion without force.

Before the peaks were raised, the skies were spun,
It was — complete, untouched by change or need.
Still as the dusk, and older than the sun,
It moves through stone and sky and wind and seed.

I do not know its name, though I have tried
I call it Great, where all things still abide.

Before Thy throne, the Gods in awe incline,
Exalting souls that spring from hidden fire;
From Thee, Unconscious Source of the Divine,
Emerge the Fathers whom the Gods admire.

Two twins arose, one base, the other bright,
Their union shaped the world of form and name;
One bore the truth, the other forged the blight
Yet both returned unto the secret Name.

Then she, with mind both good and true,
Did craft the earth in wisdom’s silent grace;
All perfect things she to the spirit drew,
And housed them in the Mind’s eternal place.

Though man be last, his soul the stars contain
For gods and men are of a single chain.

Golden thread pulls tight,
soft whisper dressed in longing
the soul forgets home.
Flame that feeds itself,
burning joy into sorrow
let it die to live.
Cravings rise like mist,
vanishing with morning light
truth waits in the still.

I was once the wind that taught the wheat to bow,
a hymn rustling through the hollow of old branches,
and before that, a river that carried lost dreams and lullabies
to the mouths of waiting roots.

No bell marked the crossing.
No lantern swung above the gate.
I passed as smoke does
into the open mouths of new shapes,
Reborn.

They say the soul is a thread pulled through a hundred needles,
each time tearing into a different fabric:
feather, bone, brass, thirst, song.
Not to become, but to remember
what becoming cannot hold,
only held for a short moment in time.

I was hunger shaped like a wolf,
and later, grief that wore a girl's eyes.
Each body an orchard I neither planted nor owned,
but was asked to tend with quiet hands.

Reincarnation is not a ladder
it is a storm that forgets its last thunder.
It chooses neither upward nor wise,
but necessary.
To be what the story requires
in the moment the page turns.

One life, a seed beneath the floorboards.
The next, the axe.
Another, the breath of the one who grieves the falling.
And still, no beginning.
And still, no final version of flame,
Can it be.

The maker—if there is one
does not speak.
But leaves signs in frost
and patterns in the flight of startled birds.

So I do not ask what I will be.
I ask only:
What silence must I carry next?
What wound will I wear
to become the light pouring through it?
Upon this world.