You were born in the mist
Of a worldwide ****** war,
Shielded in the town of Oxford
No one would have known,

Who came to light
On a random winter’s day,
And would have studied darkness
To humanity’s bewilderment

And science dismay.

Who could have envisaged
A modest run-of-the-mill boy,
Having troubles reading would pass
From studying clocks and radios

To figure how they work,
To later toy with physics
Identify the laws,
Of a universe beginning

With a silent bang.

A singularity unfolding
Ever-expanding space,
Projecting multiverse odds
Stretching theories of strings,

To unfathomable infinity
Countless possibilities.

I fell upon you by hazard
Listening to your alas robotic voice,
Notions of evanescence and chaos
Information lost forevermore,

In deep mystifying black holes
Only to reach the end,
Of an article explaining
The genius you were recognised

Even when you were wrong.

Sustaining a verity
You humbly would recant,
Thirty years later tell the world
Indeed energy survives and is returned,

To cosmos under a radiation
They now call by your name,
For there are no “eternal prisons”
Not in space nor in your wheelchair.

Your alacrity showed humanity so
By flying in a zero gravity zone,
Defying the physics constraining your body
An endless fervent hope, I dare

Share with you. For one day
To travel space and understand
A theory encompassing all,
Started studying cosmology

All because of you.

The best figment of the imagination
Is the one where the dreams are actually real
The pessimists line up
Like it's Black Tuesday
To tell you otherwise
Because they've been followed by Pennywise
All their lives
And they can't seem to lose him for good

"Steve" is a diamond geezer
"Stevie" can do no wrong
"Stephen" is in real trouble
But they all just want to get along

So whatever you think of him
Whenever he comes into sight
He'll give you a hug and he'll buy you a drink
And you'll be in for a heck of a night

The nights have become the most difficult
(Never sleep again, never rest again)
To manage.
Deeper, dreadfully
I soar into what I do not believe,
Into a pain much too real
And much more haunting
Than I have ever experienced.
The ghosts are back, Stephen,
They have returned to become the captain
Of my being,
To lust and breed and **** again.
I feign interest
And parry their blows back
Though my defenses are falling
And the blanket on my bed
Is never,
(Never sleep, never lay)
Ever quite long enough to cover me.
My worries today
Are an overheating boiler,
(COME QUICK I NEED HELP
I'M DYING HERE)
Pumping steam and pressure
Out of my jagged edges.

It is getting harder and harder to breathe.
Do you believe in God, Stephen?
I know Kubrick called you and asked the same
Many years before my birth,
But today I need your answer more than ever,
In that my every move seems to propel me
Into many-a-numbered
Ceiling and wall traps
And I am being crushed,
(Never sleep, never rest)
Soiled and trampled at the hand of fate.
I once thought myself too intelligent to believe,
But now I need a higher faith
If only to know that darkness is never truly darkness
And the candles I have left burning in my body
Will never be blown out.

Did you really see that boy,
That childhood friend of yours
Struck down by a train
In your ever so tender youth?
Was his blood and brain matter
What came to you in your darkest hour
As you wrote about presidential suites
And Danny Torrance seeing reverse ******
Played out in front of him for eternity?
Is ****** played out for eternity in your mind,
Too?
(Do you Shine, Stephen?)

They taught us about you in school, Stephen.
They made you out to be a God in yourself,
A novel machine
Intent on overpowering the industry
For your own gain and prosperity.
But those who read you,
(Those who know, those who feel)
Know you as a human.
You spirit, you singer,
You light of my life,
(You twisted man, you monster, you seer of sights)
You have kept the world alive
With sparks and shines
Under eyelids
For decades.

Stephen, I have stuck my hand in the wasp nest again.
Bring me your salvation.
Bring me
(Your understanding, your writer-virtue.)

And so I write to you today,
A young girl of but 18
With her own Shine set to murderous visions
And Terrifying conundrums.
My ghosts follow swiftly in my foot trails
And your novels warm my lap as I try
(So hard, so)
Desperately
To hear your voice,
Bellowing with contempt,
Your tone so monotonous and
Matter of fact,
Even when speaking of such malicious things
I have to stop children from buying your movies at my job
Because I could get in trouble if they see
Jack Torrance kissing a decaying woman
Or Carrie being burned alive in her prayer closet.
(I could get in trouble with the law
If they see the truth you speak,
The tales of loss and preservation you weave.)

Because of you and the horror you have struck me with,
I leave the lights on.
I am fearful
(But so hopeful)
Within myself each day.

Because of you
I have seen men and women
Find peace
Within their own private Overlook Hotels
Housed deep and high
In the mountains of their own consciousness.
Because of you
I have found
(Breathe in, breathe out,
Nothing to see here)
Solace
In my self-contained
Madness.

This is the ladder---your first steps into the height. There are no apples. There are no angels. There is only broken shadow and socket; a rounded house of milk and voltage. Now, as you unscrew the bulb with fingertips, listen for the sand. It is sand from ancestral beaches were all families of glass have been blown. A beach where dinosaurs are continually struck by lightning. Continue swiveling until the blown-out bulb is free from the ceiling. Come down, but do not look down. Use the eye in each shoe to find the lower rungs. Place the old bulb in with the dish of pears. The new carton of bulbs are close by, sleeping. Unwrap a fresh bulb from its onionskin pajamas and ascend the same ladder previous. Using your musical hand, insert the threaded end up into the unthreaded beginning. Turn gently in the direction of sunrise until snug. Pull the chain, for the light of God's echoing equation will now sing. Squint and descend.