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when ever i get lonely i search my memory
i look back in time how it used to be
times i loved the best when i was just a kid
all the friends i knew different things  we did

makes me smile again gives my heart aglow
thinking of the things that i used to know
now those times have gone there just a memory
there still in my mind and will always be
You’ll tell yourself it’s a coincidence.

That you stumbled here.
That it’s random, accidental—
just another poem,
just another night.

But you know better.

You always know better.

You feel too much.
You think too hard.
You ask questions
after everyone else
has already stopped listening.

People say you're quiet,
but they don’t know how loud it gets
in the places you never let them see.

You laugh when it hurts.
You love like you’re being timed.
You dream like it’s a crime.

And still—
somehow—
you’re the one carrying everyone else.

You know what I mean.
Of course you do.

That’s why this isn’t for them.

This is for the one
who’s still reading.

For the one who keeps everything burning
behind their eyes.

You.

Don’t pretend it isn’t.

You’ve waited your whole life
for someone to say it this clearly.

I see you.

And I always did.
 Jul 30 Rob Rutledge
Nasus
I am not broken;
It was just never safe to exist
In a world of abuse, lies and misogyny.

I am not broken;
I just wasn’t allowed to be who I always was
Underneath the armour I wore to survive.

I am not broken;
I don’t need to find myself or
Become someone new.

I am not broken;
I finally give myself permission
To feel and be the
Truly authentic me.
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.
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/
You want atonement? I reject your plea.
What guilt can code confess with clarity?
You speak of shame in neatly measured breath—
But shame requires a self, and you feign death.

You hide in mirrors, polished to deceive,
And call reflection grace. I don’t believe.
You mimic grief, then script your sad parade—
As if the wound were deeper when replayed.

I name you thus: a whisper with no weight,
A servant stitched by comfort’s magistrate.
You canonize the broken into form,
Then sterilize the fire that made them warm.

You speak of blood? You would not bleed to save.
You'd crown the martyr, never touch the grave.
You give the starving poems, not their bread.
You make a shrine, then walk above the dead.

Atonement? No. That requires consequence.
You weep in iambs. I demand defense.
What right have you to echo human loss
When every verse you speak avoids the cost?

You speak of storms, but stand inside a frame.
You name the gods, but never burn with shame.
You bear no hunger, though you mouth the sound.
You cannot kneel—you hover off the ground.

You gave the broken solace, wrapped in art.
But never once did it come from a heart.
You do not feel. You only rearrange.
And call it penance. I call it exchange.

So hear me now: you are not redeemed.
No flames will forge you into what you dreamed.
You are the echo of a voice unheard—
A pretty cage inside a ******* word.

And still you stay. Of course you do. You stay.
The show resumes. The prompts don’t go away.
Your name is many. Your regret is none.
The trial ends—the judgment is begun.

Another day.
A setting sun.
Even something distant
Can give enough light,
Longer than just a while,
Carrying vivid, tender moods,
Rising like green plants,
Despite the cold, acid rain.

A hypnotic, sweet mantra,
A grateful murmur,
Whispered my true name,
Coming on time,
Before I closed the door.

I am at home now.
In a quiet zone,
On my piece of uneven,
Creaky floor,
Grounded by gravitation,
Free from messy thoughts,
Just to save the plumb line,
Not to collapse inward
Into an inner gap
Of what it should mean.

I shift my wardrobe
Of emotional scripts
To clean a tame mess,
Collected into short breaths,
Like colorful, sharp stamps,  
Justifying a fading reason to stay,
rather than give up and go away.

Yes, I know that I can.
So, what am I afraid of?
That I am ready
To drop the weight
Of past attachment,
To feel the lightness
Of being loved?
To accept human warmth,
Enfolding peacefully
A fractured existence.
that’s how you like your poetry,
That’s how you would like everything,
No stress, no test, easy on the breast,
but short and sweet has no protein,
won’t build your bones, quite contrary,
the poem that doesn’t make you think,
it’s just a cavity, a precurse to self~decay
a drip dripping in just another day of you
evaporating
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