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  2h badwords
Damocles
The tide relentlessly steals from the shoreline,
Leaving me here, sun-dried with Eden’s vines,
Yearning for a day when I’ll be called into the ether,
Deeper into the abyss of my own death,
A tombstone for my ego.

The tide repeats,
Tearing into the sands and erasing the tracks that led me back to this home,
Destined to collapse like a lung when truth punctured like a spear,
Deflating my dreams in a sigh that echoes across the horizons.
I drown in shallow waters,
Floating face down,
searching for my ego.

Deeper I fall into sacred waters,
Shrouded in darker blues that color me in nothingness,
Allowing me to start over.
Bioluminescent coral leads me to a corridor I’ll spiral into,
Bathing infinitely in my own shadows,
Halting eclipses while redefining my ego.

Love could have been a salve,
A life raft to lift me from this hell,
A distraction if only you knew me well.
But I can’t control myself,
Lost in a night loop,
Playing the same songs,
Caught on this **** raft,
Tied like a martyr until the tide comes and it takes what it wants.

Further down in the depths,
Sacred lullabies sing me off.
I only wanted to save you from yourself,
But as the sleep washes over,
I’ll search forever in my dreams.
Ever feel like you’re drowning?
I swim endless in despair
So that I do not drown in it.
I breathe only to breathe.

I am suspended in sunlight with no warmth.
I am surrounded by notes that make no melody.
I fumble, falter, fail.

Heavy as a raindrop whose cold
Penetrates deeply into loneliness
Is the air, the light, the lingering.

I forget too much.
I remember too much.
I am too much, and not enough.

A shallow pool is that in which we swim
A void wants only to be filled.
Misery takes us all.
Heavy handed, for certain. But not fresh.
They call the ship 'Burden,'
An indestructible vessel,
Rival to the monsters of the sea.
It's exactly what the people needed,
For you see,
In the depths lurked a beast.
Eighty tentacles, four trade ships tall and wide,
A hundred-thirty teeth when it's smile lied.
They called it, "Kraken."
It was nothing of the likes you've seen,
Emperor of the dark sea.

The Burden could hold fifteen hundred men,
Arming harpoons, cannons, muskets, wit.
The king ordered them to turn the seas red with gore,
Call forth the Kraken,
Strike it dead.
Then to the king,
They would drag back it's head.

So come high-noon,
The ship was in place,
Above the deepest of sea caves.
Letting forth crates of bait,
Staining the waters of the sea,
Until the sailors heard a rumble,
Shake the Burden's iron shell.

Up from the waters came long river's hell,
Tentacles like spires towering well beyond the sails.
But the crew held steady,
"Tighten the ropes, arm our cannons,"
Cried the captain,
"Then fire!"
The seas filled with blood,
The sky filled with gunpowder, fractured shells,
A shriek rang out from the deeps.
The cry of death,
From the Kraken itself.
Tentacles sinking away,
"The head!" Cried the captian,
So Lutenent Lucus dived after the creature.

Tied by a rope,
Pike in hand,
The creature's head,
He began to drag.
Though, glancing over his shoulder,
Through the murk he could see,
The form of a woman swimming away.
Some curse broken, he decided,
A soul freed from grim reality.

Peace.
I love a good sea fairing story!
You are reading this
Because you are programmed to
Turn your brain on now
The feeling
The peeling
A reeling
In a can

A place
That’s ‘safe’
A home
Unknown

Dust, kicked into the air
Particulates everywhere


Abrasion
I stare


A cyclone of dust
Your want and must
I offer my trust
Decay and rust

Is this bust?

Softly
You decree
My difficulty
To see in me
What you see

I am hungover
On the dream
We drank
Together

I am addicted
And afflicted
Conscripted
And submitted

To your law

I am nothing
I am no one
Until you
Look at me

I am a mirror
I am a mirror

I am nothing
Until you look at me
If you get it, you lost it.


I am here
(On this platform it is evident for your reading now)
I express myself
(Heads scratching, wondering what and how?)


I share pieces of me
(A defragmented glimpse of an experience deemed ‘worthwhile')
Callous, sensuality?
(Or a traitor in sheep cosplay?)


A dead-end hi-way?
Or this pawn from yesterday?
Here, your final say


This family we never asked
Amontillado without it's cask
Dry and cheery
Heart’s are bleary
We own this laborious task

My sins are scrollable, thumbed in haste,
Wrapped in ribbons of curated taste.
A gallery of masks, all timed just right,
My shadow dances in the ring light.
What of shame when shame gets likes?
What of thought when thought’s in spikes?
I weep in drafts, but post a grin—
The world won’t wait for the shape I’m in.
So brand the bruise, then sell the hue:
A wellness tip in sponsored blue.
This self I host in feedback’s cage—
A pet, a post, a digital page.
I bare my soul (or just its shell).
You’ll never know. I sell it well.

I logged on seeking something undefined,
A tether, maybe—some reciprocal ache.
But all I found were mirrors misaligned,
Each smile too wide, each word opaque.

The comments pile like leaves, not read.
Applause from ghosts, replies from ghosts.
I feed the feed, it feeds instead—
A hunger that consumes its hosts.

I draft a truth. I dress it twice.
Add polish. Then delete.
I write in blood, convert to nice,
Make trauma fit a beat.

No lesson left. No higher shelf.
Just one more version of myself.
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