Sincerity’s suspicious now.
Empathy’s a punchline somehow.
We meme what hurts too much to hold,
turn real-life grief into something scrolled.

A teenage star breaks down on screen —
we mock the pain we helped convene.
Abuse is a setup. Death gets a thread.
Even genocide’s shrugged at, half-read.

Aura points from strangers in some TikTok stream,
What are we chasing — redemption or esteem?
Or just a record of cruelty dressed up as a meme?

~
Prescience
of dawn:

a sunny place
for shady people.

Long shadows
on the lawn
of a thin pixelated
crowd,
in parade
of blood red
sorrows.

But your curtains
are always
drawn.

You hide
behind
smooth and sterile
surfaces.

Finish your
collapse
and stay for
breakfast.

Buildings aren't
haunted,
people are.
~

Called back after years away
a voyage once more to the fray
to live amongst forgotten days
to few and far between.

To anxious, nervous, brave that door
re-enter worlds ‘akin’ to yours
to take the plunge to reach the side
of friends you left behind.

To be greeted there by sleeping eyes
and busy hands and nothing “hi”s
but for the girlfriend of a friend
and a kid you never knew.

Bereft of meaning, course, or rhythm
floating lost in my little corner
struck by how great the divide
has grown through intervening years

I never knew I had my walls down until you made me put it back up again