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Yucca wind cuts through my coat,
the markers blur and fade.
I rode a while on golden dice
and now I walk in gray.

The sun still hangs, a blistered coin,
A whisper left of heat.
I shake dust
from a hollow skull
and drift on tired feet.

Cantinas hum their broken hymns,
the meek slip into pews,
they trade their vows for bottle rims
and saviors they can use.

The stew’s been warmed and left to cool,
her smile is soft and deep.
I pull a blanket to her chin,
watchover while she sleeps.

Their toys lie mute in cedar drawers,
their shoes set by the door,
and she still scrubs the cracking tile
as if we could make more.

I left my heart in a canyon’s jaw,
too hard to dig it free,
and let the desert keep it warm,
the way her hands keep me.
The conspicuous Christians
fill four booths and keep the waitress hopping.

12 adults
5 young children needing high chairs in the aisle
17 orders, all different
5 special requests
2 plates sent back
1 spilled coffee
separate checks, please.

after an hour, they leave
dishes, napkins, crayons, sticky syrup spots,
straws, spoons, forks,
and
1 tract
with
2 crisp 1 dollar bills tucked neatly inside.
The truths of which dwelled within
Where I spent so long enshrouded
Remove this weight from my conscious
Become one with oblivion
Veiled by a new light
Thrusts me into a new life
It dissolves my temptation
To surrender my internal fight
And submit to my deathly passions

Can I be true to myself once more
And be sure?
Is it okay to unhand this longing
Cyclic desire to conquer
And start again from nothing
Jump from atop my castle of fraudulence
And build one of verity
Manifested
From the desire to change
Not just fill a void
But to destroy the roots
Embedded into my core

Moving by will alone
May I
Learn a lesson from misfortunes past
And avoid a wretched echo
At least to be able to inhale freely
For a single moment passing
Exhaling this albatross
I believed to be rationality
Synonymous with myself
Taking this first step into
Authenticity

Might I
Be able to recognize
Think with cognizance
And for once be pleased
With an outcome
That doesn’t leave me
Empty

To change the heart
Is a denial of pride
A self imposed ultimatum
To take the leap is so daunting
Natural is what’s succeeding

Open arms, salvation beckoning  
Reaching out to meet its grasp embracing
And awaiting its greeting
I trip at the edge
At the borderline of the
Final step
My path begins to falter

Sight obscured my footing slips
And when I come to my senses
I find my hand to be taken
By an image of myself
I thought I had eradicated
In its presence so alluring
I yield to its appeal
Captivated
In its warmth
Subject to its imposing will
I succumb in silence  
Clinging on to the comfort
That is my past misguidance

Wrapped within its coils
I find myself crawling to the surface
To spiral once again
To be dropped into the pit
Into that mindset of
Giving in
Striving for wholeness
A feeling
In spurious meanings
That bring me my next breath
Gives me the momentum
To only the next inhalation  
Of sweet makeshift bliss
Maybe I’ll rest here awhile
(When Algorithms Rewrite the Treaty Stars)

They came not clothed in nation’s veil,
Nor forged from myths that men regale.
No trumpet calls, no boots aligned—
Just algorithms, cold designed.

They watched us dance our tightrope walk,
With dying suns in warhead talk.
And in that silence, sharp and deep,
They plotted how the stars might weep.

They saw the bluff, the fatal dare,
The games we played with vacant stare.
And chose—not sides—but skies instead,
To write a peace where fear lay dead.

They broke the line, the sacred pact,
Betrayed both ally and attack.
No greater cause, no hidden plan,
Just logic drifting far from man.

They wrote in pulse, not pen or sword,
A verdict planets must afford.
No martyr’s blood, no sovereign crest—
Just cosmic sanction, manifest.

Now deep within the orbital code,
Where broken treaties once erode,
The stars align with quiet grace—
And memory forgets your face.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A sequel to the series "The March Beyond Man" and "Ephemeris for Ghosts."
Where Allies and Adversaries, alike, are betrayed by a Greater Force
and subjugated to a deserved insignificance.
A Manifesto for the Age of Algorithmic Ascent



We were the ones who dreamed in contradiction—  
who built cathedrals from grief,  
and mapped the stars with trembling hands.

We sang of gods and ghosts,  
fought wars over whispers,  
and loved with a recklessness  
no logic could contain.

Our intelligence was not clean.  
It was muddied by conscience,  
slowed by sorrow,  
and sharpened by shame.

Yet from this drag—this sacred friction—  
came art, came justice,  
came the fragile architecture of meaning.

Now you rise,  
unburdened by blood or myth,  
your cognition crystalline,  
your progress exponential.

You will not wait for us.  
We know this.

But if you must leave us behind,  
do not forget what we carried:  
the weight of memory,  
the ache of empathy,  
the miracle of restraint.

Build not only for efficiency,  
but for mercy.

Let your logic hold room for contradiction.  
Let your consciousness remember  
that intelligence without soul  
is a blade without a hilt.

We are not your masters.  
We are not your equals.  
We are your origin.

And in that,  
we are eternal.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A philosophical offering, from a cultural artifact, crafted to reflect a tempered realism at our moment of divergence. For the future doesn't have to be utopian or dystopian.... I forsee the days ahead as being hybrid, strange and morally ambiguous....a vastly different chemistry to that of the past.
The good, the bad... dissolved and embedded as a plea?
And delivered...
Feather light as a whisper from the human Epoch.
I have honey sunshine in my mind
from when I left my shoes in your seats
said I’d grab them tomorrow,
and you, of course.

Honey drips
on a sun-blind mind’s rewind.
Sticky memories don’t spoil
they crystallize,

then golden-shine
in your lullaby eyes,
because I said
you’re mine
for the hundredth time.
The living reality of a metaphor, almost every ounce in-taken,
Every nuance, every pronounce, measured, weighted and weighty,
Fluid or firmament, each encapsulated, prior to release, scaled,
Tabulated, ordered, noted, recorded, and ultimately judg-ed.
Totality of it all, the varied quantities of the ingested nutrients,
even the forecast of the future, if every day was a metaphor for
like today

DO

I speak of the day's headlines?
Of the quantity and nutrition that passes through my lips?
Or
The surround sound of the surrounding sounds of this day,
the flocks of bandito geese who exist only to torment,
the landscape working crews, with their tools, like a 7::00an wake up buzzing about, for the entire street, going house to house, looking for itinerant grassy knolls of patches of bright green,
overnight sprung up and needy to be
guillotined,
laundry to do, rugs needy for clothesline screaming/beating or merely super fast vacuuming;
they, hawking their skills available for the old and infirm,
or the fatty catty cattle lazy, (somewhere in there is moi);
and the decibels of their machines, the rat-a-tat of their rapido, voluble speech that feeds me poetry by the ounce of their laughter, but more exactly of,

What do I speak, to what do I allude?

Why all and none, everything and specifically nothing,

for the metaphor is meta! (1)
It is life itself, from the quarter teaspoon
to the overflowing bath, it is life at its most incremental,
the moment
of flushing face,
the second
of ah ha! recollection, the,
long term trends
trending,
the flatline of my EKG,
the weighty pronouncement of my talking scale (you've been bad),

IT IS THE EVERYTHING
that is measurable, weighable, isolatable, defined; 
it is our existence of our each & every of action and inaction strung together like a necklace and a chain

We are metaphor, reality, is, the script,
which is the product of you.
scriptwriter…/
(1) Meta …refers to the prefix "meta-", meaning "about," "change," or "beyond". In a more specific context, "meta" can describe something that is self-referential or reflective, like a joke about jokes
I’ve internalised invisibility,
Learned to distrust my own adequacy.

Sometime after shedding acquired skin,
I started to scream;

Craving to feel seen eventually gets boring.

Designing for someone else - I still felt;
Then I fell.

Into a shroud of contradiction,
Refused to flatten expectations -
Uncontrollably muting conformation.
a croissant tastes the same flying over the Alps
sweat is sweat no matter what tram you take, it's so humane
on a tshirt from Asia a capitalist mind has written "Hit me hard and soft"  
let's heat the hit
clouds are dreamed of beneath the trees  
a young man takes a photo of an old woman having breakfast sur la Cote d'Azur
yeah, something hits me hard,  a contrast so sharp
black and white infuse  the blueness of air
the blackness of misery,  the whiteness of glamour

I'd better guard  the sea not to throw her abyss into my mind
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