I walked past blue mountains,
Beside the crystal stream —
I ambled deep into the forest,
In a mist of emerald green.
Beams of light pirouetted,
Sol’s fire of purity,
Birds preened their wings,
In a shade of serenity.
Whispers rustled in the air,
Earth, water gushed,
A hymn of wind in symphony,
In harmony though hushed.
Midst the song of the forest,
A murmur in the breeze,
My soul, engulfed in silence,
Yet singing . . . at peace.
I stood on firm earthen ground,
At one with trees and ferns,
Knowing it’s from here I come,
And here I will return.

Phantom,
In your ethereal realm,
Alone in your deepest thoughts,
Do you remember me?

Phantom,
Show me those pretty white claws,
Tear into my chest and write out the contracts
Spare the clause, I’ll applaud
Knowing I’ll serve love like a cause
A refugee amid war,
Where the roses cut with their thorns
I’d bleed out to chase you down,

My eyes search in the bleeding pallid rays
Cutting through canopies -
Dancing upon the umbral silhouettes
Hoping that magic can make you appear
Tell me you don’t feel anything anymore
That it’s all a fantastical dream wrapped in fiction

Reach out to me, please, with your diaphanous touch
Soothe my unattended storms
Make the space between you and me less impossible
Where I can taste the air where your lips tease
Please take me with you.

Could the see-through glass
Weep a little for me one last..
I’m trying to leave it all behind
But we are like vines -
Twist as we twine,
Why can’t we tangle endlessly?

Phantom,
Tell me when you wake,
Do you even remember me?

So many more blue eyes in the world
Scrolling through their rolodex
Consuming dopamine one thumb up at a time
The slang is commonplace, replacing native tongues
The hair is the same on every dumb limbering drone
Conversations sound like e-speak read aloud in an open mic
Except that the audience participates in every false interaction
As plastic as the shoreline after spring break.

Thoughts are collective in a hive mind
Crowdsourced down to their brow line
Manufactured obedience in obediently serving for that last drip
Dopamine drips in the form of a click.

Awkward silence on the subway,
If it’s not on TikTok, they can’t say
Words shift into a balloon animal display
Twisted in knots, unable to hear clarity
But can walk the dog like a yo-yo trick if it bottled sincerity
Because these blue eyes are strained and strange
Locked into a perpetual gaze into the bottomless aether
Searching for the next fix.
Dopamine drips in the form of a click.

Cliques of cliches
And Temu personaliites
A carbon copy of a copy copying copies of something copied.
And the beat goes on like an arrhythmic heart
No worry for when the pressure rises
They’d rather have a stroke than see the OH in Cheerios
Because it’s not sweet enough to find the ordinary
When you can dine on lucky charms and chase rainbow fairies
See they’re stuck, them, and they, ze or zur -
Needing that dopamine drip from the clicks

And as I watch devolution
These zombies are tethered to their thought pollution
Parasitic in their dissolution
Walking these streets with their strings tugged by the beat of filters
I know I could never be a screen ****** apparatchik.

I want to twist with you
Like a helix creating life
In every little death,
Sinking deeper down your depths
Until we pant and chase a breath.

I want to feel your heart
Syncopated with my own
Sweat lubricating the friction
As we collide like carnival bumper cars.

I want to hear you scream,
In lost tongues conjured from hoarse lungs
As you find god in the crash upon your eager shores
Praising to the lord like a good nun,
Better pet, when the leash is tugged.

We connect like candles to a flame
Pouring hot paraffin on milky white skin
Catching an exhaled sigh with a well placed kiss
Stealing breath and stealing your soul
While we tangle under a pallid dim moon,
Devils in our delights.

Another bottle down,
Hoping it can distort truth
Maybe if the mirror’s fogged, it can’t reflect
Can’t show him the middle-aged wreck.

Another chug of warm swill,
Hops molded, no bubbles, flat
Looking at baby pictures and a bag of teeth
Mummy left them, he feels the pain in his jaw
Maybe with another swig, he’ll be rid of it all.

Father watches from his sick bed,
Colostomy bag overflowing,
The excrement covers the scent of shame
As eyes barely raise to see his progeny

No he’s clicking the button to call the morphine
Drips entering to send him to a new dream,
Unable to stand the sight of his kindred,
As the boy that became a man, indigent.

Bryan takes another swig of clotted wine
A Merlot collecting dust upon his desk,
The keyboard is crusted over, white film, flaky
As he tends to his perversions, hoping a spark can awaken

On here he can be anyone,
But his lungs fail to inflate fully
And the liver shrivels to a freeze-dried remnant,
It’s only been minutes, but he shakes
Begging with forgiveness
Needing something to wash down the pittance
One more swig’ll do her!
Another drink to soothe.

As father watches on,
Glazed eyes and singing Aussie songs
He’s ******* post the catheter bag
Flowing yellow rivers down his bedside

Dreams fill his head,
Hoping Bryan dies,
So he could mend and heal,
Watching as he sips forever,
With jaundiced, glassed-over eyes.

If he could write it,
Or murmur sound
He’d say he was disappointed
But all he does is frown

While Bryan,
Consumed with trauma
Caught in his self-made prisons
Drowns in a sea of sick
And cheap bourbon.

Forever a child in a man’s husk
Daddy’s little burden.