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badwords Jun 14
They dim, yes—
but only in the grammar
of linear perception.
the eye reports silence
where a rotation begins.

what you name “death”
is the slowing of evidence—
the flicker not extinguished,
but inverted,
drawn backward
into the unspeakable symmetry.

a star is not a sentence.
it is a glyph
in a language
you were not born to mouth.
it folds mid-breath,
becoming itself from the other side.

entropy is not an end.
it is the architecture
of turning.
a deception of stillness
held just long enough
to conceal the pulse
beneath its vanishing.

the fold does not forget.
it remembers beyond time,
beyond light,
in geometries that refuse to die—
in echoes not of sound
but of shape.

what was lost
was not erased
only mirrored
through angles
you’ve not yet been.

eventually...
again.
a reply beyond the stars to:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5086157/eventually-the-stars/

This work is becoming a trifecta:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4665572/light-anti-darkness/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4920164/anti-light-darkness/

The Fold Does Not Forget is a dimensional reply to Michael Sean Maloney’s Eventually the Stars, not in opposition, but in completion. Where Maloney's poem ends in ellipsis—a trailing acknowledgment of fading stars—this piece begins, unfolding what lies beyond the threshold of perception.

The poem asserts that what appears to vanish does not end, but reorients itself through structures we are unequipped to observe linearly. Stars, light, and even the self do not disappear; they fold, invert, and recur along axes uncharted by empirical perception. In this way, the work proposes trans-dimensional recursion as the truer geometry of the universe—one in which entropy and negentropy are interlocking phases of a single, perpetual motion.

The stanzas are architected to reflect a philosophical loop, not a narrative arc. Each movement operates like a limb of the cosmic carousel: moving inward and outward simultaneously, echoing not with sentiment, but with form-bound metaphysics.

This work exists as part of a larger cosmological framework I’ve been developing through companion pieces such as Light (anti-darkness) and Anti-Light (darkness)—a framework informed by the Anti-Universe Theory and the notion that spacetime is not linear but recursive, reflective, and encoded with symmetry that transcends dualism.

The goal here is not to comfort the reader with poetic reassurances of afterlife or return. Rather, it is to suggest—through language as architecture—that what appears to end is only transitioning out of perceptual alignment. The universe does not operate on terminal lines but on folds, loops, and dimensions of reorientation.

In this poem, the fold becomes more than a device—it becomes the fundamental gesture of reality itself. Where the human eye sees silence, the fold remembers. Where language fails to track a trajectory, the fold holds the motion. This is not mysticism, but structure: a topology of becoming.

Stylistically, I maintained minimalistic linework and stanzaic restraint in order to emphasize density of meaning over flourish. Each line operates with intentional pressure—compressed language as gravitational pull. The ellipsis is retained from Maloney’s original but is no longer a gesture of trailing resignation; here, it signifies a turn. A recursive breath. A second beginning, spoken by a throat that curves back into itself.

The Fold Does Not Forget does not argue against fading light. It insists that fading is not a disappearance but a reorientation of form—one that does not beg to be witnessed but exists regardless of perception. It is not hopeful. It is not despairing. It is, simply, truth turning inward.
  Jun 13 badwords
Agnes de Lods
You and I—
we feel,
we love,
we regret.
Yet we remain
the binding particle
of a formless self.

They divide us,
pit us against each other.
We found safety
for thirteen days.

Before dawn,
we felt the breath
that seeps through cracks
into minds like a narrow thread of force,
and the fog spilled out.

Above our heads, false stars
created by warm bodies
to annihilate
what passed through the gate
of a birthing woman.

We write words to conjure
happy endings
at the ball of extermination
that tears apart
the pulsing light
of a thousand veins.

Please sit with me
before you go
Do you feel it—
the mourning procession
of human beings
transforming into a state of fission
and drifting away?

And a sigh is so sad
of trembling atoms
when the victim becomes the destroyer.

Feel the force of the fall,
and do not shatter hope
even if the world
trembles to its core
because there is still YOU,
still ME,
and still

OTHERS.
Hania Rani Journey-from xAbo: Father Boniecki
badwords Jun 13
I was not trained for this—
no welcome packet, no handbook for gravity.
Just a name that clings like static
and a voice that trembles when spoken too clearly.

They asked me if I had room.
I said I had weather.
They asked me if I would disappear.
I said watch me smolder, and stay.

I have loved like a lighthouse
with no shoreline in sight,
signaling to anyone
who mistook reflection for return.

I’ve held their names
like breath under water,
carved pathways through others
just to find my own again.

But I do not sculpt.
I do not steal 'the good stuff'.
I inherit fire
and ask it if it remembers me.

If you see yourself in me,
look again—
I am not a mirror,
I am the window you opened
and forgot to close when the wind picked up.

Still, I arrive,
boots echoing in the hallway
of someone else’s myth,
offering only this:

I will not rewrite you.
I will not finish your sentences.
But I will stand here—
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched by the need to be anything
other than true.
A draft I shared and forgot about that was requested to be posted publicly!

Wow-wee!
badwords Jun 13
(A Nostalgic Embodiment)

I. Prologue: The Imbalance

Beneath a sky of indeterminate hue,
Where metaphors dripped from the lamplight’s view,
There stood a figure with storied might—
Whose IMAGINATION burned too bright.

They bent the frame of every law,
Wrote truths in smoke, in blood, in straw.
But every time they raised their pen,
They found the void looked back again.

"Too light," the voice beneath the bedframe hissed.
"Too bright to cast the proper fist.
Where is the weight? Where is the gloom?
You walk through myths but leave no tomb."


II. The Oath Beneath the Neon

So in a diner that only exists when it’s raining,
They ordered black coffee and called it training.
No sugar. No cream. No need to explain.
Just sipped from the cup like a priest in pain.

"I will not seek to shine, but to echo.
I will not rhyme, but I may bellow.
Let my next line land like a crowbar sigh—
And may every metaphor taste like goodbye."


III. Inventory: Shifting the Look

They stole a coat from a thrift store rack,
Stitched with echoes and shadows and tact.
A pocket held grief. A button held sleep.
The collar was silence folded three layers deep.

Brooch of regret? Clipped on with pride.
Gloves stitched from dreams they let die outside.
Boots that thudded with post-symbolic weight—
Enough SEPULCHRITUDE to intimidate fate.

IV. The One-Line Training Grounds

A stranger asked, “Hey, how’s your week been?”
The figure exhaled, and leaned back in:

“The sky still owes me an answer.”

“I fed the clock and buried the receipt.”

“This smile is just teeth doing damage control.”

They never repeated the same line twice.
And soon, small talk became a heist.

V. The Silence Shaped Like a Weapon

Not a glare. Not a scoff.
Just a pause you could hang your regrets off.

They stared down compliments like loaded dice,
And left parties through walls carved of ice.

A simple nod became a reckoning.
Laughter died before it could echo.
The power of not replying
Was now a blade drawn slow.

VI. The Private Page

In candlelight drawn from doubt and dusk,
They penned a letter in funeral husk:

“To the lighthouse that never was—
I named every wave after you.
You still didn’t show.”


Sealed it with wax. Buried it in a drawer.
A secret they’d never need to weaponize—
Because it already was.

VII. The Theme Song of Collapse

They walked with the sound of dead air breathing,
Their footsteps aligned with Godspeed, you’re leaving.

Every room slowed to grayscale time,
As their aura hummed a fading rhyme:
A jazz tune played through broken glass,
A dirge dressed in sepia mass.

People whispered, “Was that… a soundtrack?”
But none remembered the melody.

VIII. The Overpass of Refusal

Someone tagged “I ♥ A-Pug” on the wall of their work.
They looked once.
Tilted their head.
And punched the metaphor in the snout
to assert dominance.

Then walked away.

That was the moment the SEPULCHRITUDE clicked.

IX. Boss Battle: The Final Balance
Their IMAGINATION rose like a cathedral in flames.
Their SEPULCHRITUDE stood like the ash that remained.

Two stats. One form. A perfected glitch.
They could now speak truth or curse with a twitch.

The balance wasn’t symmetry.
It was sovereignty.
It was the right to choose what tone to carry
and leave the rest unsaid.

X. Epilogue: The Window Left Open

Someone once asked,

“What are you?”

They replied, without turning:

“The part of the myth that never resolved.
The page that folded back on itself.
A sigh mistaken for closure.”


And just like that—
They vanished,
boots echoing,
window wide,
untranslated,
unsaved,
untouched
by the need to be anything
other than true.

XI. Endgame Stats:


IMAGINATION: MAXED

SEPULCHRITUDE: PERFECTLY CALIBRATED

AURA: [NOIR / STORM / VELVET REDACTED]

STATUS: Myth Adjacent

CURRENT LOCATION: Unknown (possibly Portland)

[END]
A silly, silly thing I wrote while reminiscing on Problem Sleuth--the third  MS Paint Adventure
  Jun 12 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?
  Jun 12 badwords
The Wilted Witch
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!
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