silent suffering, voices in this room
ai-generated. please, algorithm,
feed me tears to cure this suffering.
silence stuck in my throat— i can’t
scream long enough, to become
the silent man in the silent crowd.
wiping my face feels like nosebleeds
but dismissed as nothing. an empty box
stuffed with matter, atoms and pieces
building me up only to crush me down.
what really matters in this silent suffering?

Is it worth walking the tightline of life
as a drunken trapeze artist— feeding on grass
from the greener side? We are gentle, grazing creatures,
trading paint against the rail fence, peering through
cracks at a better life, always just out of reach.
I meet the ceiling of my limits, hanging from the rafters
of myself. I face the wall as if it could talk back, as if
my skeletons could speak through the plaster of the
closet that hides them.

Beneath the roar in my chest, a lion would still cry—
but never in front of their pride, perhaps because
of pride. A new man, mane brushed clean, yet what
is new when the old still haunts, when it’s harder
to forget regret than to accept what must be accepted?
So I obliterate the past, declare death to the old self—
all the undone things, all the debts unpaid.

On the cards I’ve been dealt, I keep a poker face
for enemies. But I never play a hand just to impress;
I clean up my own mess, one move at a time.
Watch every step you take. This is life’s tightrope.

I saw a madman
walking in the middle of the road. At first, I thought
he was a stranger— a figure broken loose from the world.
But then I realized: it was only me, the reflection
of myself wandering in the middle of my thoughts.

Perhaps...

I was lost in the endless expanse of my nonbeing,
caught between the idea of living and the weight
of simply being. A human being, maybe only as a
reflection in the mirror, the real self— a madman
trying to repair his mind, patching every pothole
in the road with trembling hands, covering cracks
no one else can see.

And I wonder, which is worse:
the madness of walking alone in the street, or the
silence of pretending there was never a fracture
beneath my skin.

This is war!

Not with guns, not with flags, but with myself. Every scar,
every voice in my head is an enemy line I’ve crossed. I fight
with silence, I fight with scars, I fight with the version of me
that swore I’d never get this far.

From being a punching bag to punching back. But it’s hard
not to fall back—into old habits; retreating from myself,
and telling my reflection to fall back...

Headlights slice the black, brief flashes through the dark.
Shut my eyes over myself, let their auras pass like thanks.
To all who hurt me: I’ve grown from you all, see my thanks
and my exhaustion. I’m too tired of you all, to carry your
remarks, too deaf to listen to people who say you owe them all.

Between myself and a tertiary exterior: a third self waits—
the superior version of me, complete, unbroken.
Body, mind, and soul to show off to the outside world...
still searching. Thankfully, I’m on the right road.

Tending fruit of what we leave behind,
roots break walls we build.
Hope grows heavy,
then it falls—
like Jericho.

Once there was glory,
then the world swallowed it whole.
I am not cursed,
but every apple I’ve bitten
tastes of the core.

Where there is money,
there is love—
and the root of all evil,
sweet poison.

I watch the lives of others,
dreams they wear like fine garments.
We chase illusions,
so gladly,
so foolishly—
to end up full on nothing.

Trust me, and know me whole:
I’ve floated on white lines,
pretending innocence
with powdered breath.

Say goodbye too many times,
and I won’t answer the last one.
This is my sonnet—
the count of the fallen man.
All men have fallen.

And when the call reaches your heart,
what cost does love demand?
It speaks in voices tender, cruel—
the sound of devotion
from a wicked heart.

All men have fallen.
All men have fallen.

Much worse than me are all the prior versions of myself,
all of them still stumbling through the riddle of identity.
Fate, destiny— both play me like a long lonely chord,
strumming my heartstring, a song both bitter & sweet;
truly the taste of a man’s casual defeat.

See if survival is a means to meet an end, then I’ve met
enough ends to know, each greeting feels like a farewell,
as each rise a false high that drags me lower still. And in
this place where I stand, this ground I call my own, are
the days life slowly feels like hell.

Much worse than me are the questions I can’t outrun:
do I hate myself, or do I hate the eyes that all watch me
through everyone else? “Oh, he sits on his ***, or he’s
someone just to chase ***,” they say— but truth is, I am
more of an *** to myself. Kicking myself for not doing
enough, and beating myself down for doing too much.

Much worse than me is the interference that shapes
me, this half-formed man that I keep trying to correct.
Incomplete, unfinished, still searching— as if figuring
it all out is not my burden alone, but it's the long road
of every man, he must walk.

I am no-one. Yet I feel everything.
I do everything. I am rewarded by no-one.
Tragedy? Nothing. I am owed nothing
but a fitting death.

To fish for dreams on the scales of my life,
weighing all options—faults already exposed,
a past made of glass: reflective. Fragile. And so
unforgiving.

To be credited as a modern writer, despite
my financial pressures. Swiping left on bait
too absurd to bite. My ID card? A license
to exist— plastic proof I belong to a world
that never asked for me.

Fate. Destiny. Whatever it is— tilts the odds.
I tilt back. Desperately balancing: one side,
my bank account. The other, my place. Truly
my full worth. Every moment I must make count.
And if the world won’t remember me, then let
my balance sheet of scars be the proof I existed.