Holding onto reality with both hands
His social life in a cup of coffee as he waits
Swamped sinking lifeboats
No longer accepting applications
For jobs that have sailed away

Buried alive, a napkin waiting its turn
To be plucked out and used
Then thrown out
Lucky if recycled and repurposed
To a younger man’s vision

Torn apart, his skills repackaged, Frankensteined for each resume
The boring job of cutting checks means he was
A bookkeeper, an accountant, detail oriented,
Friendly to external and internal users or customer service driven
Or any combination of above.

Leaving his car at home, he walks,
Afraid of running out of money for gas and repairs
Wondering what pieces he will put together today
Reducing his years of experience to a tweet
Comprehensible to the child in charge of his future.

Let a cascade
Feel a little more like dew bubbles
Burst to be with you
On a sunny, lawdy day.

Let the crushed eyes
Be squeezed hands
One in the other
Swinging on the bench.

Let the red face
Be the choke of laughter
At the joke we sewed together
Frankensteined away.

Let the bitter teeth
Bite my lip
And take the inked promises
Into something with a life to lose.

Let the hanging head
Fall asleep on my shoulder.

What is such a pain,
But an ivory sheet
Where we may not sleep,
But lose blood?

What is birthing the new day together,
But another way to say I feel it,
But another way to begin again?
The fall told us to begin again.

There once was a man from Tyrone
Who spent all his time all alone:
     It got on his nerves,
     And he wanted some curves,
So he Frankensteined a female clone.

my bones that have now carried worlds
are frankensteined bits of shells and shrapnel glued
together with calcium paste
and slathered in blue dye
to make everything look new---

I was so whole.

I have now already fractured
in every predictable place,
re-engineered and retrofitted my consciousness with
seismic dampers
and levees

and I am so strong, now.

how does it feel to know that it was you who broke me?
there is no one---
not even you could do what you did to me
again

and it feels good to be a god but mostly infuriating
to think of the fragile thing I used to be
for you, when you knew me.

I haven't seen a waterfall in 4 years,
my re-grafted skin has lost all its electric-sensitivity
and my heart still pumps blood but I reforged my arteries into metal,
which keeps me alive better than before but I
don't remember the last time I
felt anything.

How dare you
click in the dark
with soft, uncalloused fingers
scraping what you didn’t bleed for,
scratching through ash
for sparks you didn’t birth.

I see you.
Vulture-eyed, dead-hearted,
sifting through soul for a dopamine hit.
You didn’t live it.
You didn’t scream it into a pillow at 3 a.m.
You didn’t shake with the ink.

You didn’t die for it.
I did.

But still
you rip out ribs of rhythm,
plagiarize pulse,
regurgitate ghosts
with your baby-AI mimicry,
your Frankensteined stanzas
stitched from the flesh of my grief,
I noticed,
I see you.

Little girl,
child of the click-and-paste spell,
you wear stolen metaphors
like cheap perfume
loud, tacky, choking,
wondering how it must be to feel?

I see the sudden genius
that bloomed from nowhere.
A drought of silence—then flood.
Words once dry
now drip with my salt, my blood, my pain
and you dare to name it yours?

I know my structure.
I fathered that form.
I spit syllables like bones,
stacked them in temples of torment,
broke English to make it feel,
broke myself to make it real,
and you think I don't know?

And now?
You **** the marrow of my music,
flesh-ripper,
content-corpse-dancer,
vampire with no hunger but vanity.
You steal scars and call it style,
Not all vampires **** blood.

Wonder, as you do
Muse won’t visit you.
She’s not fooled by filters
or your cosplay of pain.
She knows the difference
between trauma
and trend.

I see the telltales,
Regurgitated vocabulary,
gpt traced structure.
the sudden depth in shallow ponds,
the cracked mask of borrowed fire.
Your voice stinks of syntax theft.
I smell my soul on your verses,
One look I and I knew immediately.

You can’t fake origin.
You cant fake originality.
You can’t counterfeit truth.
And when you post your pretty poem,
know this:
You’re wearing my bones.
And they don’t fit.

I made this style.
I made this monster.
And it does not love its thief.

So burn in the echo.
You earned that silence.
You earned that shame.
May it echo louder
than any stolen applause
you’ll ever gain,
for every like you get,
know it's not yours.