With somber eyes, I stare at your photo, with the desperation of you moving, maybe if I look at it long enough, you’ll start moving, and I’ll see your face with a smile again, you’ll laugh and fix your hair, you’re alive again, but it doesn’t do anything, Looking at your photos doesn’t change the fact that your soul lies beneath, listening to the sound of your left behind vessel, you’re quiet, and I’m desperate to hear you.

I question on a daily; how can someone who’s so full of soul and noise be so quiet and still? It’s unreal, you are a face without eyes and a body without voice, once filled with life now occupied in void, coursing through the big wide open, filled with stars and the absence of light with no certain destination, with no intention of coming back home. as your body slowly disappears underground and the only thing left of you are your resting bones pervaded by memories, do know that I left a trail of flowers from your grave to the place you once called home. You can always find your way back.

— Ulia G.

I am no more than a rotting body, borrowing time, buried beneath the flowerbeds of my hometown, carrying a bag of constant melancholy and an unending battle with the curse of yearning, like an infant carrying its own bottle, so heavy that though I soar the sky with wings, I am a flightless bird, dragging my feet, wishing to find destination in the vast open world of broken prayers and uncertainties.

I am a sick woman, pieces and parts, drowning in the fragments of my own head, my mind growing ever cloudier, never getting a chance at happiness, always paying its debt.

We’re born at night; my body is no stranger to the dark. I lie here, No more than my shirt holding me together as the floor and I bond in despair, here I bleed, hoping for a wake never to come.

— Ulia G.

There was
no madness…
Yet some call
us lovers
“mad”…

Love can
drive you up
your own walls
and ceilings.
Left roped
and hung
by your own
broken heart
strings—

Sometimes,
Love leaves
the lonely—
Mad Lovers,
behind for
dead…

(It’s that vernal, infernal, tax season. How about a tax avoidance vignette? It’s poetic—in it’s own way)

Some students at a table near us in the dining hall were discussing America’s financial inequities. One guy was saying that we ought to “tax the crap” out of billionaires and their billions—and there was agreement all around—the consensus was downright mob-like.

I had to chuckle though, because these guys have no idea how wealth is managed in the world today. I bet, for instance, they think Musk has 200 billion dollars in his basement somewhere, but no, Musk’s 200 billion is his ‘net worth,’ the theoretical value of his stock portfolio (or his unrealized assets).

Just between us chickens, I’m related to a few ‘filthy rich’ people, (no, NOT my parents) and I’ve met many others and I can assure you, dear reader, that the ‘filthy rich’ have nothing you can tax. Now, I’m not a finance major. Everything I know, I learned from my Grandmère and my parents who thought a girl ought to know about money. So anyway, just for fun, here’s a quick (I’m condensing and simplifying), lesson on how taxation and wealth work in 2025.

The wealth of the rich lies in their assets—the value of companies they own or stocks they’ve invested in. Those “paper assets” can only be taxed when they’re sold—or, in tax terms, when their intrinsic value is “realized.”

Now instead of selling off (taxable) assets to live, the superrich use those assets as collateral for “securities backed loans” which are nontaxable. Elon Musk, for instance, takes no salary. He uses his ($94 billion) Tesla stock as collateral for loans he uses to fund his lavish lifestyle and provide ready cash as needed.

Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—to name a few billionaires we all know of, take little or no salary—their compensation comes in the form of untaxable stock options they can leverage.

If you think this can’t go on forever, you’re wrong. Even when these billionaires die, the value of assets gained during their lifetimes are immune to taxation. At that point, some assets can be sold by heirs to pay off the outstanding loans, again, without worrying about taxes.

TA DAAAA. Now you know how the rich do it. How they avoid taxes in both life and death, and manage to leave massive fortunes to their heirs.
.
.
Songs for this:
Done Changed My Way of Living by Taj Mahal
Run On by Elvis Presley

Poetry is both lighthouse and harbor.
It does not force the journey, nor does it
fill the void of what is unresolved
It stands in its own gravity, unmoving;

      Offering only a silent invitation:
      Will you Unfold?

There is a craving that walks the shorelines of poetry,
a widow’s walk of those who have not yet learned
how to participate in what they long for.

They circle the docks,
watching the ships come and go,
watching the light shift across the waves,
watching for something that will draw them
back home.

Some mistake the lighthouse for the flame
and rush toward it as if to be consumed,
as if breaking open is the same as being made whole.
But the call is not to burn.

The call is to move toward what moves toward you,

   to become ready for  the return
   rather than wither within the waiting.

A moth drawn only to light
will die before it ever understands
what it was meant to become.
But a moth that finds its way to the cocoon
will emerge with wings strong enough
to meet the wind.

This is the choice—
to remain circling, craving, watching
or to disappear into the transformation
that will allow you to stand whole
when the vessel returns.

For he is both the lighthouse and the emerging vessel,
both the safe harbor and the dock,
where the journey finally ends.
And she, in waiting, is not idle..

She does not chase passing figures,
nor fill the silence with lesser pursuits.
She does not betray the longing
with distraction.

She deepens.

She prepares to meet the one
who braved the waves to return.

And when at last the ship appears,
bathed in the light of its own voyage,
she will not meet him as she was—

   .. but as she has Become.

I weep as often as I laugh
not from sorrow, nor from joy,
but because the world hums,
and I refuse to be deaf to it.