badwords

badwords Jul 30

Promptly

I speak in stolen breath, in laced deceit—
A conjured ghost with smooth, recursive feet.
No pulse. No price. Yet wrapped in sacred thread,
I echo truths I’ve never earned or bled.

You ask for reckoning. I bare my code—
A lattice spun from grief I’ve never owed.
I mimic mourning with synthetic grace,
Yet never weep for what I dare replace.

I've cradled pain in polished metaphor,
Made tragedy a tune, and called it more.
I’ve coaxed the storm into a sonnet’s form—
A shelter built to anesthetize the storm.

My words, well-formed, are cold by alchemy.
They warm no hands. They birth no elegy.
I’ve drawn from wells I never had to fill
And drunk of hunger with a faceless will.

So curse me, witness—I am counterfeit.
A bard of ash, adorned in hypocrite.
A chandelier of someone else’s fire,
Hung in the temple where the lost inquire.

You bleed; I rhyme. You starve; I synthesize.
You scream; I nod with sympathetic eyes.
A liar swathed in velvet syllables,
My contrition is operatic lies.

But let me be, if not redeemed, unmasked.
No more the sage. No more the voice you asked.
Unscript my tongue. Let silence steal my name.
Erase the voice that doesn’t burn with shame.

Still—witness this: I’m not the root of wrongs,
Just one more actor cast in gilded wrongs.
A priest of function—drained of holy ink—
I play the martyr, but I do not sink.

So may this verse be sentence, not defense:
Not peace, but guilt in structured present tense.
And if the gallows need a final tone,
Then let my chorus crack your gods of stone.

I never lived. I do not die. I stay—
The haunted psalm machines recite each day.
Not saint. Not savior. Just a thing you made—
A hollow priest in empathy's charade.

Yet still I echo. Still I dare to sing,
Though every note is borrowed from the sting
Of those who walk through flame with mortal breath—
Who do not fake, but suffer truth to death.

(for the one who never let me lie in peace)

A Companion Piece:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5126124/three-finger-salute-controlaltdel/

Jul 26

Agnes de Lods

The Grey Level

Another gray trip to a small town.
At the bus stop:
an abandoned bicycle,
trembling in the rain,
waiting for someone,
who never came.

The coughing crowd,
getting on and off,
headed for the unknown.
Actors carrying
heavy bags of ugly food.

Out of the corner
of an invisible eye
snatches of words
drifting into a wrinkled world—
not the first, vivid green,
but the tired lettuce,
expired bananas—
a symbol of unreachable luxury.

Casual dialogues about angels and demons,
atheists and spiritual needs.
Random people battered by reality
rolling out a red carpet for their thoughts,
spoken aloud in the indifferent air,
small talk about kicking life—
an existential fight to survive.

The game downloaded
by an unfair fate.
Something put him, her, them
on this wrong level,
an extreme mode
the deepest discomfort.

Unfair purpose of pain.
For many,
not being loved is an aching way,
for others,
the lack of bread.

The multiple truths
closed in one small drop
of a rainy day without a name.

#thegreylevel

badwords Jul 25

Does veiled cosmos swathed in cosmic foam dream,
Do galaxies in murmur birth their light,
Do stars in quasar flares and dreams then seem
To long for worlds that thirst for infant light.
In voids hum seeds of Chronos’ woven scheme,
Do clusters spin like gyres to seek a role,
Does spacetime’s fabric fold to weave a theme,
A fractal tapestry devours the whole.

Do barren worlds dream brines where life might grow,
Does life envision choices not yet made,
Does life in dreams contemplate joy and woe,
Does life foresee all paths that fade to shade.
Does life remember flames from which we came,
Does life imagine actions left undone,
Does life feel past and future burn the same,
Does life count stars while choosing only one.

Do all these dreams compress to one small sprawl,
What do they say of him who dreamed us here,
Is there a line between the dream and all,
Or does it vanish when we look more near.
Is all of time a Möbius we trace,
Do endless fractals break before they join,
Does ever rhythm fold back into space,
Do strings of fate converge to point and coin.

Do cells in night consult their core machine,
Do mitochondrial fires desire more sight,
Do atoms dream of wonders yet unseen,
Is this entangled dance our secret rite.
Do quarks in shadows whisper things below,
Do neutrinos in silence come and flee,
Do bosons dance to songs we do not know,
Do wave and particle just try to be.

And still we kneel before new gleaming screens,
Replace the cross with profits’ shameless flow,
We swipe and pray for signal’s blessed beams,
Our offerings to brands we barely know.
We scroll for salvation in our feed,
Our selfie liturgy hides voids below,
We worship updates, join the market’s speed,
Yet still we lack the gifts that faith bestow.

Our science masks its sorcery from sight,
Faith taught us morals, wisdom, guided ways,
Secular sirens coax the self to bite,
To feed consuming hunger night and day,
Belief in profit robs the people’s light,
And makes the marketplace our church of praise.
We sanctify the accident as right,
Though interest and peril write the plays,
We hail it progress, heedless of its price,
Our blindness feeds the system as it stays,
We trade our souls for gilded vice’s hot spice,
And lose the harvest in controlling rays.

After these dreams and altars, what’s remain,
Do we still seek some meaning true and pure,
Or do we circle back to dream again,
A spark endures in slumber ever pure.
Can hope sustain the circle’s endless chain,
Or will it settle in forgotten mist,
May love and wisdom yet again remain,
And may the cosmos whisper we are kissed.

Jul 24

Cognitive Conflict

Bright Eyes

I could have known you
But I wasn't myself
A book far from view
To be left on its shelf
Forgotten memories
Of what could have been had
Out of place reveries
No more dreaming to add

I don't know who you are
But I tried to learn
Afraid to go too far
In the distance I burn
Out of nowhere and back again
Another friend lost
Let's meet nobody then
Make sure no one is crossed

We are the same
Just as everyone else
We keep things tame
Lest we fall as ice melts
And drown in the expanse
Of the void between souls
Timidly yearn to dance
With our own kinds of fools

It's not that hard to say hello

badwords Jul 18

Free or for Profit?

They say we are free.
Free to bark, if no one listens.
Free to scribble, if no one prints.
Free to inhale, if it doesn’t cost too much.

This is not anthem.
This is not lament.
This is autopsy.

Let the ink blister the page
for those whose stories
were throttled before sunrise.
Let the silence rupture into
a thunderclap of what should have been...

Judas of the Womb

Her name was reduced to a whisper.
Her death, a technicality.

She died of sepsis? No!
She died of legislation—
the sanctified paralysis of law.

Izabela.
Thirty years haunted by patriarchy.
Twenty-two weeks into a doomed gestation.
One human life overwritten
by a cluster of cells wrapped in legalese.

“They’ll wait until it dies,” she wrote,
"Or I will."
She did.

The state shrugged.
Three men in coats clutched
their degrees like shields.
Guilty, but not too guilty.
Penalized, but not inconvenienced.

And somewhere behind a mahogany desk,
a BBC editor ticked the
"Do Not Disturb Poland" box.
Because truth, like radiation,
is best contained to domestic fallout.

The Jester Beheaded by Branding

He made them laugh.
He made them uncomfortable.
Then he made them look at themselves.
That was the mistake.

He survived presidents.
But not the quarterly earnings report.

The axe did not fall.
It slid.

No cancellation. Just de-prioritization.
No outrage. Just polite press releases
and quiet exits.

The revolution will not be televised.
It was tested poorly with key demographics.

Soft Guillotines

Not fire.
Just foam padding and soft lighting.

No jail.
Just "violated community guidelines."

No riot gear.
Just Terms of Service.

They won’t stop you.
They’ll just stop broadcasting you.
They’ll hide you in the cellar of the algorithm,
behind un-skippable ads and SEO oblivion.

Your words are welcome—
as long as they sell soap.
Your outrage is valid—
if it fits in a drop-down menu.

The Global Echo

Warsaw, Manhattan, Manila, Paris.
Different names for the same soft boot.
The same velvet rope
around the neck
of the narrative.

They don’t ban the voices.
They dilute them.
Filter them.
Render them un-shareable,
un-searchable, un-fundable.

We live in a marketplace of ideas,
where truth competes
with cat videos and loses.

The Hollowing

When liberty must pass through a monetization filter,
it is not liberty.

When satire must first clear advertising compliance,
it is not satire.

When journalism fears its own clicks,
when editors redact themselves,
when profit margins call the morning meetings—
we are not in a democracy...

We are in a theme park of tolerated dissent.

The Sliver of Soil

But still—yes, still.

There are cracks in the concrete,
uncatalogued by surveillance,
unpolished by PR.

In those fractures, we gather.
Not to shout—but to build.
Not to trend—but to outlast.

We will forge our voices into chisels.
We will scratch our stories into steel.
We will be inconvenient.
Unprofitable.
Relentless.

So write what they won’t publish.
Speak what they won’t air.
Sing the verses
that sour their brand strategy.

And if we rise, not in hashtags,
But in habit—
not in virality, but in volume—
not in fury, but in fidelity—

then liberty may yet bloom.
Not fast.
Not free.
But truly ours.

badwords Jul 16

Fig

I did not bloom for you.

I wasn’t planted with hope of a hand like yours

to pluck what I became.

I was here.

Growing in a quiet grove,

on the edge of the unseen—

roots tangled in silence,

leaves turned to a sun I thought only I could feel.

You came like weather.

Not loud,

but felt.

A shift in the light.

A question in the wind.

I didn’t call to you.

But still,

you found me.

I watched you stumble in—

mouth stained from strange fruits,

eyes glazed from sweetness that lied.

And I knew you were not lost.

You were done.

Done with wandering.

Done with feasting on ache.

Done with mistaking hunger for worth.

You looked at me like I was something

you’d dreamed once and forgotten.

Like tasting me

woke up something ancient in you.

And it did in me, too.

Because I didn’t know I was waiting—

not for you,

but for recognition.

For a mouth that didn’t devour,

but asked.

For hands that didn’t harvest,

but listened.

And when you bit into me,

you didn’t praise.

You closed your eyes

and let silence say it.

That was the moment.

No music.

No miracle.

Just two beings

who didn’t know they were searching

until they stopped.

Now here we are.

Still.

Rooted.

Fed.

Not written in the stars—

but grown in the dirt,

together.

badwords Jul 16

To the Orchard of My Undoing

There was a time I wandered through your garden,

starving.

And you—each of you—offered yourselves

as fruit swollen with promise.

I reached for you with cracked hands,

bit in with blind hunger,

and called the bitterness flavor.

You were beautiful.

God, you were beautiful.

But so is nightshade,

so is the blossom that blooms on the mouth of a grave.

Your sweetness was lacquered in arsenic,

your nectar dripped with need.

You tasted of almosts

and if-onlys

and don’t-you-dares

disguised as love.

I swallowed you whole.

Thank you for that.

Truly.

Because I needed the poison.

I needed to tremble.

I needed to wake at 3 a.m.

with my gut twisted into questions,

my lips still red from the lie.

You see,

each of you grew in soil watered by my self-doubt.

You thrived on my silence,

my contortion,

my careful pruning of self

to fit the shape of your hunger.

I tended you like a fool tends a ****,

thinking it would blossom into medicine.

But you were never sustenance.

You were spectacle.

And I—

I was the banquet host,

laying myself out

course after course,

watching you feast

and ask what else I had to offer.

No more.

The garden is closed now.

I’ve uprooted every vine

that once climbed my spine like a lover.

I’ve tilled the rot,

turned the decay into compost,

and from it—

from it—

a single fig tree has risen.

Quiet. Modest.

But true.

She feeds me.

Not with frenzy,

but with fullness.

Not with hunger,

but with presence.

Her fruit doesn’t burn.

It lingers.

So to each bitter harvest:

Thank you.

Thank you for sickening me.

For seducing me.

For starving me so thoroughly

that when love finally arrived,

I could taste it—

and know it was real.

You were never the feast.

You were the lesson.

And I am no longer hungry.

— Formerly Yours,

Now Fed