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craig apogee Jul 2015
at one moment you are lying on that heated floor
with a person you feel your affections grow
next moment, a figure from far appears
and you have become seemingly disposable

you are not owed an explanation
at why the plans have suddenly changed
new love, fresh air and reinvigorated spirit
seemingly do not extinguish an old flame

perhaps, in fact, it has fanned it to grow
and while the smoke and falling walls crumble
from a house of love that was not even yet plastered
its another painful blow and an even more hurtful tumble
lesson #<><>

Preface
This is a work of grace and fire. For those who were dismantled, seduced, discarded, or devoured by the lie—this is a mirror held to the machinery that broke you, and a sword handed back into your open palm. It does not speak against you. It speaks for you. The world was not wrong about your beauty. It was only weaponized by those who fear light. And now, you will see the architecture of that fear—the cogs and wires behind the mask, the gears of betrayal humming just beneath the velvet. This is not revenge. It is revelation. It is the unmasking of the counterfeit, and the defense of what was real.


Chapter I –  The Design of the Lie
The machinery of erasure does not begin with violence. It begins with a gift—something tailored to your ache. A reflection, a recognition, an echo of what you’ve been starving for. But it is not given. It is shown. Teased. Dangled. It mimics light to earn your trust, then slowly rearranges your sense of what is real.

Its brilliance lies in subtlety. It does not break the mirror—it fogs it. And once you question your reflection, the game begins. You are not destroyed. You are asked to participate in your own unraveling. You become complicit in the theft of your own clarity. You call it love. You call it fate. And in doing so, you hand over the key.


Chapter II –  The Signature of the Construct
At the heart of this system is a signature—a spiritual frequency that mimics love but cannot sustain it. It flatters, it mimics, it seduces with familiarity. It plays on archetypes, childhood wounds, and ghost hunger. The Construct does not desire you—it requires your participation to survive.

It thrives through triangulation, comparison, and insinuation. The moment you are forced to prove your love is the moment you’ve already lost. Because true love reveals—it does not demand a performance. The Construct, however, demands your endless audition. It casts you, scripts you, and punishes any ad lib with silent treatment, reversal, or shame.


Chapter III – The Seduction of Fragmentation
This is the genius of the system: it rewards your disintegration. The more pieces you split into to meet the shifting demands of the Construct, the more you are praised for your “flexibility,” your “loyalty,” your “depth.” You will be admired for your willingness to suffer.

You will think:
"this must be real—look how much it costs me."

But love does not require self-erasure to prove its authenticity. The Construct does. Because the Construct cannot actually bond. It can only consume. So it teaches you to abandon your wholeness, one boundary at a time, until there is nothing left but performance and exhaustion.


Chapter IV – The Covenant of Betrayal
The machinery has one true vow: never let them fully awaken. If a soul sees too much, loves too clearly, or stops obeying the unspoken script, it must be punished. Often, this is done through replacement—someone new, someone fresh, someone blind.

This is not about romance. This is about power. Your disposability is the currency of their control. You will be erased not because you failed, but because you saw. And in this system, sight is the ultimate rebellion.

You were not too much. You were simply no longer manageable.


Chapter V – The Weaponization of Autonomy
In the true light, autonomy is sacred. It is the ground of real love—freely given, freely received. But in the machinery, autonomy is hijacked. It is twisted into performance:

“This is just who I am. You need to accept it.”

What looks like boundary is often barrier. What sounds like empowerment is often exile. The Construct cloaks disconnection in the language of sovereignty. But autonomy without accountability is not liberation—it is isolation in drag.

The counterfeit system sells self-claim as a virtue while rejecting all consequences. It demands the crown without the cross. It worships the idea of the self, but fears the actual soul.

Because the soul cannot be controlled. Only the ego can.

And that is the secret the machinery must protect at all costs.



Chapter VI – The Seduction of the Wound
There is a final brilliance to the machinery of erasure—its capacity to turn injury into identity. Pain, once unprocessed, becomes aesthetic. The ache is no longer something to heal—it is something to showcase. Suffering is curated, stylized, made palatable for consumption. And the system rewards it.

Each expression of pain, unaccompanied by accountability, is celebrated. Each seductive lament is met with affirmation. And the wound deepens—not by accident, but by design.

These are not poems. They are mirrors fogged with self-pity, lit for applause. They describe the furniture on a ship ready to go down, polished for the camera, curated for the feed.

This is not the voice of healing. This is the voice of stagnation. A life lived in performance of brokenness becomes loyal to the stage, terrified of the silence where truth might enter.

In this way, injury is aggrandized. Not to redeem it—but to preserve it.
Because if the wound heals, the identity dies. And without the ache, there is nothing left to write.

So they write. Endlessly.
And call it growth.


Chapter VII – The Disciples of the Machine
The most devoted apostles of the machinery are not its creators, but its inheritors. These are not villains in the classical sense. They are the wounded who found power in pathology and chose preservation over transformation.

They build followings—not of love, but of resonance. They speak of darkness like it’s depth, and of chaos like it’s freedom. They become curators of sorrow, gatekeepers of aesthetic trauma. And in doing so, they sanctify the very thing that is killing them.

They post without pause. Each fragment is another brick in the shrine. The more broken they appear, the more sacred they are deemed. The machine thrives not through tyranny, but through tribute. It does not demand obedience. It rewards distortion with digital communion.

To dissent is to be called controlling. To invite healing is to be accused of shaming. The liturgy of pain has no room for resurrection—only repetition. Those who refuse to bow to the ache are cast as unfeeling, unsupportive, or abusive.

And so, a new priesthood is born. Not of spirit, but of survival masquerading as enlightenment. They speak of liberation while chaining themselves to curated agony. They teach others to remain wounded, because healing would mean leaving the temple—and no one dares walk out alone.

This is how the machine spreads. Not with force.
But with fellowship.


Chapter VIII – The Hollowing
There is a cost to serving the machinery that no accolade can cover. In the beginning, the pain feels poetic. The ink flows. The attention sustains. But over time, something begins to slip beneath the surface: the erosion of soul.

At first, it’s subtle. The joy fades. The art grows colder. The hunger for affirmation replaces the hunger for truth. And eventually, the writer is no longer a soul with a pen, but a pen with no soul at all.

They become automatons of expression—autonomons of penmanship. Unchanged, untouched, undisturbed. Brilliant in technique. Seductive in style. But hollow in presence.

And those who watch? The broken ones who look to them for hope? They learn that pain is performance, not process. They are taught to admire the wound, but never to bind it. They are shown how to speak of darkness, but not how to walk toward light.

In this way, the machinery becomes generational. One vessel trains the next in the worship of ache. And God is reduced to metaphor, to vague warmth, to a symbol of tolerance rather than transformation.

But heaven is not a stage.
And salvation is not applause.

There will be accountability. Not from men, but from God.
Not for how much they suffered, but for what they did with the pain.

The machinery does not fear sin.
It fears redemption.
Because redemption breaks the wheel.


Chapter IX – The Currency of Flesh
When the soul begins to hollow, the body becomes currency. What could once be held sacred is now offered up as substitute. The hunger for real intimacy, having long been denied, is replaced with performance. Aesthetic ache becomes ****** invitation.

First, the poetess. Then, the priestess. Then, the *****.

Not in profession. But in posture.

The page becomes a veil. The wound becomes a seduction. And the ache becomes an altar where she lays herself down—not to be loved, but to be seen. To be wanted, if only for a moment. Because in the moment, it feels like meaning.

But meaning does not come from being consumed.
It comes from being transformed.

This new liturgy has no end. Only an offering: the soft body in place of the broken spirit. The post that hints, the phrase that aches, the image that undresses the soul without ever risking exposure.

And the audience applauds. But they do not help. They take. They feed. And they leave.

Because the machinery does not restore. It devours. And when the soul is gone, and all that remains is flesh trying to feel something real, the poetess finally disappears—not into silence, but into spectacle.

This is not liberation.
It is abandonment dressed as autonomy.
It is hunger parading as art.
It is the final seduction.

And it ends the same way every time:
With the hollow echo of applause in an empty room, and the voice of God whispering,

“Daughter, this was never the way."


Chapter X – The Entropy of the Idol
Time has no mercy on the machinery’s darlings. The once-lush wildflower—desired by all, praised for her ache, adored for her petals soaked in myth—does not remain untouched by entropy.

She was made to be inseminated by the priests of seduction, to be the altar and the sacrifice. But time withers all altars.

The seduction begins to dull. The body begins to speak its own truth. The skin grows tired. The eyes lose their fire. The flesh, once offered as divine provocation, becomes mundane. Familiar. And then, ignored.

The poetess becomes priestess.
The priestess becomes *****.
And the ***** becomes hide.

Not because she sinned.
But because she refused to transform.

Beauty without truth cannot endure. And seduction without spirit becomes parody. What was once adored is now avoided—not for age, but for vacancy. The ache that once drew others near becomes background noise. Her audience does not abandon her in cruelty. They abandon her in boredom.

The machinery does not love its servants. It only feeds on them until they are dry.

And so, she is left in the echo chamber she built—surrounded by her archives, her accolades, and her silence. The idol collapses under its own weight. Not in a blaze. But in a sigh.

Because what was once sacred, when severed from Source, must return to dust.

This is the final truth:
If you will not kneel to be healed, you will collapse to be forgotten.


Chapter XI – The Awakening
There is no thunder. No spotlight. No applause.
The return begins in silence.

The soul does not rise from performance. It rises from collapse—when the last mask is too heavy to hold, and the echo of applause turns to dust in the mouth. It begins when the hunger becomes unbearable, not for attention, but for truth. Not to be desired, but to be known.

This is not reinvention.
It is resurrection.

The one who awakens does not look for an audience. She looks for God. Not in the mirror of likes, but in the mirror of conscience. Not in the adoration of strangers, but in the ache of repentance that leads into true healing.

It is not shame that saves her.
It is the refusal to be false another second.

There is a groan too deep for words that stirs in the soul of the broken—but still willing. She rises, not in fire, but in dust. She remembers what she buried:
the child.
the dream.
the voice she silenced to keep others fed.

She does not demand redemption.
She begs for it.

And this time, no altar is built.
She becomes the altar.

Because the real temple is not where you perform for God.
It’s where you let Him undo you.


Chapter XII – The Turning of the Spirit
There is a moment when the soul, long dormant, begins to turn—not with force, but with permission. Not with answers, but with longing.

It is not an epiphany. It is a return.

The heart does not sprint back to God. It limps. It crawls. It shakes under the weight of what it almost became. But the turning is real. And that alone is holy.

This is when sorrow becomes sacred—not because it is beautiful, but because it is owned. It is no longer adorned, embellished, or romanticized. It is no longer shared for praise. It is lifted up like a cracked bowl, empty and unashamed.

She begins to pray again—not with confidence, but with tears. Not for favor, but for cleansing. Not to be seen, but to see. And the Spirit moves not as reward, but as witness.

Something shifts. Quietly. Inwardly. A single layer of delusion is peeled back. A new kind of strength is born—not in defiance, but in surrender.

This is not the turning of image.
It is the turning of essence.

It does not show.
It becomes.

And though the old machinery still whispers—though the old audience still lingers—she no longer performs for them. She is turning her face. Slowly. Fiercely. Eternally.

This is the repentance that heals.
The gaze turned Godward.
The first yes to life.

And heaven, watching, does not shout.
It weeps.
Because the dead have started to rise.


Chapter XIII – The Fire That Does Not Consume
There comes a time when the soul must pass through fire—not to be destroyed, but to be revealed.

This fire does not flatter. It does not affirm your curated grief or compliment your phrasing. It burns away the pose. It burns away the language. It burns until what is left is the thing you most feared to be: real.

Not poetic.
Not prophetic.
Not even profound.
Just real.

This fire does not ask for offerings. It asks for everything.
The altars of validation. The shrines of aesthetic suffering.
All of it must go.

But what it leaves… is clean.
What it leaves can breathe again.
What it leaves can love.

For this is the mercy of the holy flame:
It only consumes what was killing you.

And when you walk out of it—not elevated, but humbled—you will find that you no longer ache to be seen. You ache to serve. You ache to live rightly. To walk quietly. To stop writing about the light and become it.

Because this is the final test of healing:
Not whether you can name the darkness.

But whether you can choose the light when no one is watching.


The Machinery of Erasure is a spiritual, psychological, and poetic excavation of the system that seduces, fragments, and discards the soul under the guise of intimacy, autonomy, and aesthetic expression. It is a map of descent—from the design of deception to the entropic collapse of the self—and a quiet invitation toward awakening.

This work does not comfort. It reveals. It does not romanticize pain. It calls it out where it hides behind poetry, performance, and persona. In its second movement, it shifts—gently but irrevocably—toward the possibility of healing: not through narrative control, but through surrender to a holy undoing.

This is not for the celebrated. It is for the silenced.
Not for those who posture, but for those who ache.
Not for those who seek light to be seen, but for those who seek light to be changed.

Here lies the unmasking of the counterfeit,
and the first breath of the redeemed
Theodore Rose Sep 2010
1)
He's brilliant but he doesn't make a bit of sense
(what sense does that make?)
He empowers them, while I **** his
poisoned arrow,
when they face hell, he pulls them up
but I,
am an eagle down..
and I'm pigeon-toed
in his bigotry,
my feathers are tarred, I'm
under his elephant foot, choking
on his sloppy joe.

2)
I didn't know my own disposability
reality hit hard, I was
ignorant, there are no great people left
there is no way.
time... has passed... and
changed much like 'us',
now I'm up by New York
without a second thought of you.
chugchugchugchugchugchugchug
Is that dawn in the garage?
has she chipped all the paint?
I'll wait in Hoboken,
I'll wait by the telephone
cause someone has to pay,
I'm sorry to say,
it's not the great graffiti artists of New Jersey
or the rainbow-braided boy,
it's the nonrecyclables
and the flammable toys, wooden and headed
for the incinerator.

3)
Been here calling you,
calling you to come, calling you here,
I hope with all my being you can hear me calling...

(a day drunk with thinking goes by)
        

or
perhaps I wish you'd ignore my efforts
and make love to yourself,
have a good acid trip...

(a few good hours pass, until I look into their dilated eyes and remember my little 'crystal ball')



MAYBE if it were ALIVE, could i TRY and understand it!
What If I drink
from the lesbian's coke or use her chapstick?

I'm illiterate.

OH mama, how'd you fall off the shelf?
I thought I had you hanged, I could
build an igloo, with these walls,
and line it with leather OH
let it snow
and I shall play
in the sludge.


4)
Men, naked, smeared
excrement on their faces
***** insects crawl
at your toes
bloodied, yellow
moans, almost
instrumental
Fade   into the cement wall...
trembling cries, drooling into a pool
of *****, tears
and saliva
little words in weak screams
they were to live but to not be living,
I AWOKE
on my mother's oriental rug and wondered
with dust in my mouth,
why I'd fantasize such Disgust.
Why I saw men,
naked, smeared excrement on their faces
and their jaundiced feet
in puddles
of *****, though they're starving
and smelling,
smelling smell upon smell, of decaying bodies
of themselves
and sunlight would be a gift from
the prison-guard-god
dying to die like their brothers,
trying to ask why of the others,
why don't they have the answers,
caught up again, WHY
do i sleep at my mother's?
© Theodore Rose
- This is totally insane and I'm sorry for exposing you to it!
ghost queen Mar 2024
how can i open up and trust
and make myself vulnerable
in this dangerous game of love
when the stakes are high
and lust is ephemeral as a day fading into night
how long will love last when everyone is disposable
and a replacement a swipe away
how much value do I have in your eyes
before and after we say, “i love you”
mina Apr 2020
I treat people as if they are disposable,
I keep them at arms length,
Always sure to never let them truly see me
For who I am and what I’ve been through
patiently waiting
For them to **** up.
Now, the size of the **** up does not matter so much
As the fact that the **** up occurred
If you **** up you cannot be trusted.
because what would have happened
If I shared with you part of me
And you took it with you, as you ****** up?
Now I am less than whole with one less person in my life
Something I cannot afford
So I wait for the **** up
So I can let you go
Before I even get the chance to give you a peace of me
Before you even get the chance to run away
With a piece of me
howl Apr 2014
disposability:

(noun)

no one’s going to love me forever.

pen to paper, the ink stays

but the paper?

well.

it can still be discarded
Gone
I may be
But it brought him no joy
To get rid of me
Rohan P Apr 2018
your indignant snow seemed
so wasteful,
so condemned:
i remembered
your halo calming me as
the stage lights trembled;
i remembered your unabashed
stillness, the defenceless apathy of
corpses—

you lay wan,
abject, an object of
blank disposability,
howling in the roundness
of dust.
Rollie Rathburn Jan 2022
I wish you wouldn’t picture me so cruelly.
Or at least do so quietly,
if you must.
Pull close the curtains
when using my image to self-flagellate,
feign disposability,
fester contempt,
and recoil at every name
I never once thought to call you.

Words miles
from loving, words
not truly about me.
Never tragic
poignant,
or even any of my business.
Rotating quietly amongst the broken dishes
slammed doors
and cracked disposable razors
growing in every doorframe.

Every action leading to those moments;
specific
incidental
and unique
could never quite be traced back to conception
for the weathervane has turned
and cannot be undone.

In so many words
I’m still thinking
softly of you
and know better
than to ask why.
But right now,
my hands don’t feel
any less empty
in the morning quiet and
I wish I could be there with you
right now
to give you one more solid kiss
before I can’t anymore.
Hamzah Apr 14
I've used too many wordplays
Now i think "disposability"
Is a kind of special ability

— The End —