Act I: The Universe Breathes, and I Am an Afterthought

I arrived late to existence,
billions of years after the stars had their golden age.
Missed the Big Bang,
missed the Renaissance,
missed the time when love letters were written on paper,
instead of reducing feelings to keystrokes.

They handed me a body,
a mind that questions too much,
and a world obsessed with carving meaning out of chaos—
as if Sisyphus hadn’t already proven
we’re all just rolling boulders uphill,
pretending not to notice the futility.

Act II: The Weight of Knowing, the Lightness of Forgetting

Socrates said, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”
I read that at 3 a.m. and felt personally attacked.
Descartes told me, “I think, therefore I am,”
but some days, I think too much and forget how to be.

History is a carousel of déjà vu,
spinning the same tragedies on repeat.
Empires fall, currencies crash,
trends resurrect themselves like poorly buried ghosts.
The Greeks feared hubris,
the Romans feared the barbarians,
I fear how meaning crumbles when no one is left to remember.

Act III: Beyond Meaning, Beyond Regret

Maybe Dante was right—
hell isn’t fire, it’s bureaucracy.
Maybe we’re just modern Stoics in overpriced hoodies,
romanticizing the art of being okay with things we can’t change.

Maybe meaning isn’t found in grand gestures,
but in the quiet absurdity of it all—
in watching the sun rise like it’s not exhausted,
in laughing at a joke older than Shakespeare,
in knowing that despite wars, collapses, heartbreaks, and lost civilizations—
someone, somewhere, still bakes bread from scratch,
still hums a song they don’t remember the name of,
still chooses to keep going.

Final Scene: To Exist Is to Hesitate, and Yet—

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
I’m still figuring out my why.
But in the meantime,
I’ll sip my coffee, watch the world spin,
and pretend I was always meant to be here.

beautiful flower

carried away in the storm
laid down in a thicket of thorns.

who will morn
the dancer and sinking sky?
the raven with a broken wing?
who will cry for you? O, flower
folded in the forgotten book of sorrow.
now, a shadow and a name and a tombstone.

my flower, my rose without thorns.

I'm gonna get my shotgun
climb the water tower,
shoot the stars full of lost tomorrows.

I swore myself a roving man,
A tempest, free of charted sand.
No port, no queen, no claim, no chain—
Yet still, she called, and still, I came.

Her hook was quick, her lure was keen,
A siren’s snare of silk unseen.
She whispered myths of wicked gold,
And so, I knelt—was bought, was sold.

A single patch to shade my sight,
To blind the wrongs, to frame the right.
Then two, then three—by my own hand,
Till all the world was black as land.

Her parrots perched upon my back,
Squawking truths I’d not attack.
“Loyal hands should grip the mast,
And take the keel both first and last.”

I took the brace, I took the blow,
I let her mark me down below.
A willing brace, a wooden stand,
A peg well fit to her command.

I’d tell myself I’d steal away,
Yet still, I’d bow, yet still, I’d stay.
For even now, I taste the brine—
And miss the rope that made me blind.

Death . . .
the great equalizer.

The surest cure
to brazen  ambition .

Kings , Queens , princes and Popes ,

Generals , dictators , and those with false hopes .

As evil does , so it will be .

Fall so fast and hard
toppled like a cedar tree .

The vine's been cut
the branches wither

All the fruit so vile and bitter

All will burn in the heat of fire ,

the briars and vines and wooden liars .

Since my cat died I've been feeding the birds
The small birds, the robins, wagtails, sparrows, blue ****
I've even been feeding the crows
But I kind of drew the line with the magpies
They always had a bad rep for stealing things
One day though it was very cold and frosty out
And there was this poor magpie in the garden
And he looked so sad and forlorn
I felt sorry for the poor divil so threw him out a piece of bread
Well the very next day he lands on my windowsill (now I assume it's the same bird)
And he has something shiny in his beak
And he drops it on the windowsill
It's a ring! A Fancy Ring!!!
It's like he's saying "Thank You" for the bread.

So now... now I'm training up a whole squadron of magpies.

grief was sharp when i lost her,
a knife that cut clean.
it hurt, but at least i knew why.
now the sadness has no name,
just a weight i can’t put down,
a dull ache that never leaves,
a quiet kind of drowning.
i don’t know what’s worse,
the pain that made me cry
or the emptiness that won’t let me feel.

The aspens quiver, brittle spines trembling,
a broken orchestra of gold and ache,
her feet carve the earth raw,
mud smears like confession,
the world swallows her,
skin slick with its wet approval.

Here, the sky does not accuse.
It hangs, mute and thick,
secrets buried beneath roots,
writhing like forgotten daughters.
Her smallness presses against the weight,
a quiet scream lodged in her ribs.

The ground hums its absolution,
a Eucharist of dust and decay.
She, unmothered, unfathered,
folds herself into the soil’s indifference,
her anger spilling like blood in the light.