Oh wise poet, tell me something that is true...

In life, there are two certainties:
“Death comes for all of us,
and every man pays taxes.”

There is no greater truth than this...

Sun-born
Dawn-drawn
Petal-flame
Still-name

Root-deep
Mist-sleep
­Grace-bloom
Shadow-room

Sky-touch
Silk-clutch
Soul-bright
Lotus Delight

Morning eyes blur
   scroll-feed light
    coffee thoughts stir
      filter feels right

We laugh low
   while pressure climbs
     keep it slow
       and play the lines

We fake divine
   with half a grin
     say “I’m fine”
       but ache within

A meme lands
   but doesn’t stay
     with shaky hands
       we text okay

We wear roles
   in office glare
     with fractured goals
       and perfect hair

Storms run deep
   behind the chill
     we post, we keep
       the look, the will

Speak in trends
   with coded tone
     where silence bends
       we're not alone

Tears get saved
   for late night rain
     the smile we braved
       can’t hold the strain

When lights dim
   and stories end
     truth grows grim
       we can’t pretend

So show your face
   or choose disguise
     we all chase
       some curated lies

She entered
not walked
entered,
like dusk sipped through lace curtains,
like sandalwood smoke curling into cathedral rafters,
like bergamot on warm wrists,
like the last spoonful of honey
melting on a waiting tongue,
mine.

Cypress glaze glistened in her wake
bitter pine softened by wind-kissed skin.
She carried the scent of
crushed petals and promise,
of rain soaked through linen,
of memory you try not to name.
I watched her breathe
the rise and fall of something ancient,
something sacred,
something mine.

Her eyes closed
and the air thickened
with the perfume of surrender.
My breath slowed,
tasting of iron and figs,
salt from her lips still distant,
yet already staining my mouth.

The shadows bowed.
Yes, even they
those dark voyeurs
lowered their heads
to the holy hush of her presence.

She was the aftertaste of midnight wine,
the echo of silk sheets being pulled tight,
the hush in a chapel
just before vows.

Ocean sound
not waves,
but breath through parted lips,
warm and wet
like secrets exhaled between collarbones.
Her voice tasted like dark cherries and sin,
and my heart?
A cello string,
taut and trembling.

Unbound,
she peeled the weight from my chest
like fruit from rind.
Silken ground met our bodies
with a hush of crushed herbs—
lavender, thyme, rosehips—
the scent of unraveling.
Love wasn’t found.
It settled
like ash on sweat-damp skin.

She sighed
and it was warm butter and firelight,
the sound of a match catching.
Twilight cried in cinnamon tears.
A golden thread
frayed, glowing
spun around her finger
like a spell whispered in the dark.
I followed it,
hand-first,
then soul.

“Rest,” she breathed,
and it tasted like jasmine tea
steeped too long—
bitter, sweet,
inevitable.
But her voice stirred
embers behind my teeth.
She never meant for sleep.
She meant for ruin.

Air thickened
molasses and myrrh.
Her skin gave off warmth like bread
fresh from the oven
I could smell the hours in it.
Her hand
trembling constellation
slipped into mine.
Honeyed lips brushed against mine
tangy with wine,
spiced with need,
soft as a bite never taken.

Fingertips,
citrus-slick and stardust cold,
dragged rivers across my spine.
They sang.
They told me
who I had been before her.

Echo hush
not silence,
but the hum of blood in my ears
as she leaned closer.
Crimson blush bloomed
in places only she could see.
Sensual touch
velvet cut with silk’s bite
wrapped around my ribs
like a vow without words.

Candle breath danced
hot wax on skin,
scent of smoke and citrus rind.
Murmured depth
her tongue behind my ear,
voice caramel-dipped
and decaying every doubt.
Velvet trace
nails dragged slowly down my chest,
painting constellations I would worship.

And in that moment
the incense stilled.
the wind bent.
the stars dimmed.

Because love
true love
moves
like she does:
with teeth,
with silk,
with the taste of forever
in her kiss.

And in the hush where jasmine drifts,
your breath slows time, your fingers lift
the velvet trace of all we’ve known
a golden thread through dusk we’ve sewn.

Eyes closed, hearts bound in scented air,
where love is found, and stays, and dares.

I count my days
like petals torn from flowers,
soft and dying,
as cold rain
gathers in the gutters of forgotten hours.

I count them
those numbered breaths,
those sunsets swallowed whole,
mornings folded into mist,
every soft cloud
passing like a whispered ghost.

I count my days
as they slip beyond my grasp,
fading,
like echoes down a hall
where no one waits to listen.

Each moment seen,
each life I might’ve lived
gone.
Words I never spoke
lie heavy in the throat of silence.

I count the days
that passed me by while I slept,
as the world spun on
without me.
I count the days
since I lost my soul,
my reason,
since I gave away who I was
to please those
who never truly saw me.

Time moves forward,
a cruel illusion,
a godless god
a mental construct
more real than the dreams
I once held
like fragile glass.

Oh, the dreams I had...
like smoke now,
vanished,
off and gone
without ceremony.

They say:
“It’s never too late to begin again.”
But oh, if only that were true.

Time does not care.
It wounds, it walks on.

And here I lie
broken, sore,
facing the loss
of what I once held
and now have no more.

If I had known
what life truly was,
before it broke me,
I would have clung tighter
to each second.
Every moment gone
is a grave in the garden.

Every day
is one step closer
to what?
To less.
To silence.
To death.

I feel it in my marrow.
One day, I’ll vanish too.
And who will mourn?

I’ve walked alone
all my life,
an outsider
here,
but never truly part.

Love came,
and love went.
Loss slipped
through my fingertips
again
and again
and again.

My eyes have seen
the strangest things,
but never saw
that it would end like this
at the edge of myself.

The truth is:
you only have yourself.
Even love fades.
Even the closest
will drift,
or die,
and you
you will remain,
or be the one
to leave.

Alone.
Alone.
Yes
this has always
been my road.

Looking in
from the outside,
a silent witness
to a world
I was never truly
a part of.

Sunlight kisses
Morning dew
Shadows stretch
Whispers through blue

Raindrops linger
Branches sway
Insects hum
Time slips away

Footsteps echo
Dreams fade
Gravel cracks
Night hugs shade

Hearts wilt
Eyes close
Memory stays
Silence softly flows

Heart tightens
Soul frightens
Breath shallow
Eyes hollow

Pain grows
Silence knows
Lids close
Tear flows

Salt tracks
Hope cracks
Face numb
Thoughts drum

Skin chills
Time stills
Drop slips
Past grips

Hand near
Wipes tear
Palm warm
Breaks storm

Floor bare
Grief there
Cry done
Dark won

Where Every Kiss Becomes a Place
Let us not speak,
nor think of endings tonight.
Let our movement be silence,
our touch the language
softly,
not the empty sort,
but the sacred kind
that wraps love’s shroud around us
like golden threads of twilight light,
woven through your fingertips
and the hush between my thoughts and sighs.

A limber moon leans low above us,
its silver breath gliding soft
across crimson pale vanilla skies,
the last of the sun melting in distance
into soft violet streaks.
Even the horizon blushes
as you press your hand
against the bend of my arm
a wordless promise.

The scent of wild almond, jasmine trails us,
folding into night
with magnolia's sweetness
We walk the path before us,
unhurried,
barefoot and becoming.
Our footprints pressed in white sands
like an unspoken vow
the sea cannot erase.

Oh, this love
it tastes of amber musk and rosewoods,
a flicker in the shifting air
burning slow
with ambered warmth and playful touch,
like incense rising
to stir the heavens
and sharpen the evening stars
into thoughts,
and the sky
into longing.

Let us build our secret sanctuary
in the curl of the ocean’s sigh,
where every glance becomes a verse of a song for which we have no lyrics,
and every touch
paints love
in pastel strokes.

Your voice, low and deliberate,
threads through me
a silk ribbon tugging my name
from the silk of your voice.
I answer in skin,
in pulse,
in poetry.

There is no need to ask
where Eden lies.
It is here
in this soft constellation
we’ve made of limbs and trust,
where lips rewrite time
and our souls lie down
under the scented breath of dusk.

Hold me as if time forgets to move.
Fold me into the story
you’ve only ever told the moon.
Be the myth
and the moth to my flame .
Let me be the prayer
and the flickering candle.

Let us leave behind
not sorrow, but perfume
the memory of honeysuckle
clinging to air,
of warm skin
gilded by moonlight,
of footsteps leading forward
into forever,
where every kiss
becomes
a place we live.

Soft light
Velvet night
Gentle skin
Drawn in

Moon sigh
Hearts high

Flame bloom
Lips swoon
Fever lace
Timeless space

As Love Nears, Winter Answers
I do not greet the day with arms wide
no
I flinch from the light.
Love... is a slow knife in warm skin
and I, already frostbitten,
tuck my longing beneath coats of silence.

There is a chill behind your eyes.
Or is it mine?
Perhaps I’ve worn winter too long,
I don’t know how to thaw without drowning.

You came with a look
like spring pretending not to hurt
but I smelled the snow behind it.
Felt the avalanche between your ribs
and mine.

I wanted to stay.
But want is not warmth.
Want is a wound rehearsing trust
then backing away when breath fogs glass.

I am not made for soft hands.
I am made of doorways and drifts.
Of hearths I never lit.
Of letters I never sent.

So I leave before I feel.
Before the blood dares run hot again.
Before love comes too close
and finds no fire here.

I tell myself
it’s better this way.
To freeze quietly
than to burn
and beg
to be held.

Begin each day
not with conquest,
but with a quiet intention
to soften the world.

Let kindness be your language
before your mouth even opens
a look, a nod,
a held door,
a breath that makes space
for someone else’s pain.

Remember,
everyone you pass is carrying something.
They may not show the weight,
but it is there.
And still
they move.

Live in a way
that alters a single moment.
Change the hour,
the silence,
the heaviness in another’s chest
by choosing grace.

A coffee left at a counter,
paid for by a stranger
you’ll never meet.
A whistle that fills the void
where someone’s laughter used to live.

Be the pause.
Be the small warmth
on a day that began in shadow.

Empathy
is not an achievement
it is a choice,
a quiet rebellion against apathy.

As Whitman said,
don’t just feel for the wounded
become them.
Understand
without needing to fix.
Hold the ache
without fear of becoming broken.

When you give,
give completely.
Anne Frank knew:
you don’t grow poor by giving.
You grow whole.

And in the giving,
don’t seek to rise.
Let humility shape you.
Not the kind that shrinks,
but the kind that listens,
the kind that walks behind
to see the world through another’s eyes.

There are those that remind us:
the world pushes success,
but love asks for service.
It is not loud.
It is not proud.
It is not in the headlines.
But it is holy.

Be the one who says
good morning
first.
Even when it’s not returned.
Be the one who sits with someone
in the quiet
because their storm doesn’t need
more noise.

You don’t need to change the world.
Change a moment.
A mood.
A mind that’s spiraling.
A heart that’s closing.
That’s enough.
That’s everything.

There is no nobility
in being better than others
only in being better
than you were yesterday.

So become a little softer.
A little less certain.
A little more generous.

You are not here
to shine above
you are here to light the path
at someone’s feet.

Let that be your legacy.
Not your name.
Not your voice.
Just the warmth you leave behind
in the places
where it was cold before you came.

You don’t see the harm you do
why would you,
when the mirror only shows you?

It’s always your way or the ruin of all ways.

No compromise, no bending, just command and blaze.

You preach your truths like gospel fire,
demanding love, yet feel no desire
to see the wreckage in your wake
the hearts that break, the hands you take.

Empathy’s a stranger you never knew,
and guilt?
Just weakness in those who do.

Those who love you—oh, how they fall,
on blades you wield, denying them all.

You wear the crown of your own design,
and call it virtue, call it divine.

But your throne is built on shattered bone,and in the end,
you stand—alone.

Love is not a question whispered to the dark,
but a blossom daring the frost to bloom.
It comes not in thunder,
but in the hush between heartbeats
where silence leans in to listen.

It does not ask for witness or applause;
it is the feather drifting from a swan’s wing
as it cuts the mirror still lake of your being.
No blaze, no crescendo,
just a flicker of warmth laid soft on your soul
the feeling that rewrites the geometry of longing in all depths of understanding.

Many will search but you may find it
where whispers of gold dust gather on old windowsills,
in the unpolished spoon resting beside a bowl,
or the way your name feels
when spoken by the curling tongue of someone
who leaves quiet pauses for you to breathe in the moment.

Love wears no crown,
yet it rules the wind and raises oceans
guiding petals to fall where they are missed
and leaves to spin like dancers as they fall slowly
returning home from exile.

There is no map,
only the way the stars rearrange
when you touch the back of someone’s hand
and feel, for the first time,
that the universe answers in quiet.

Even in absence of all things, love sings its song or can be found
in the bent spine of a book shared once,
in the ghost of perfume that lingers on an old scarf,
and in letters written upon fine paper never sent
but folded like prayers
and placed beneath a moonless sky
as if the heavens were meant to understand.

To love is to step barefoot under moonlight in night air
into a cathedral made of warm breath and dusk,
to find within the remnant faint echoes of
a voice that calls you by your truest name.

Let it not be caged by expectation,
nor bent beneath the weight of forever.
Love is the art of being known,
even for a moment,
so entirely
that the world begins again
in the shape of your gaze.

Where Noise Can't Reach
Some believed I was a citadel
stone-walled, serene,
a monument untouched by storm.
Others glimpsed the fissures,
the tremble in my foundation
just before collapse.
But no one dared to knock,
to test if the halls echoed hollow.
They never knew
I didn’t run from people.
I ran from the famine
of being surrounded
yet starved of connection.

The inner silence I chose
was not empty,
but sacred
a chapel carved
from the marrow of self-preservation.
bright coloured mosaics
clouded dull
Because the loudest loneliness
sits beside laughter
that forgets your name.

I watched the world’s masquerade
faces polished like glass,
eyes glinting with absence.
Their words were confetti
bright, falling fast,
never meant to stay
blown by a simple breeze.

So I built my retreat
from quieter things:
dust, breath,
the pulse beneath thought.
I wrapped myself in stillness
stitched from nights that never asked
why I wept without tears,
my loneliness in the dark.

I remember warmth
like sunlight on skin
too long kept from morning.
I remember hands
that felt like promises
before they slipped into memory.
But I also remember
how a touch can vanish
even while it holds you.

Now, I live
in the space between collisions
where no one knocks,
no one shouts,
where the world forgets
and I remember
without bleeding.

Not lonely
just carved into solitude,
a sculpture of what survived.
Not cold
just hidden
where noise can’t reach
and silence finally listens back.

If an Angel Loved Me
If it whispered my name
into the hush between stars,
would i turn
or would the heavens shudder
and pull me deeper into their breath?

Even one glance from you,
one touch drawn from the edge of fire,
might undo me.
I would dissolve
like moonlight poured into a kiss.

For what is beauty
if not the ache of reaching
the sweet peril of standing near the flame
that chooses not to burn?

You terrify me
in the way a rose might
if it suddenly spoke my name.

And yet, beloved shadow,
I call to you.

Not in fear,
but in the wild hope
that you might step down
from that solemn choir
reach out
and touch me,

barefoot,
radiance tucked beneath a traveler’s coat,
your voice no longer thunder,
but rain on sleeping skin,
of the lost.

I would go with you
without map,
without question
if only once,
your wings bent low,
not to rescue,
but to rest
beside me.

Whisper, and the Stars Forget You
Who listens now,
when a voice breaks the silence like a wing through frost?
Not the flame-eyed watchers above
they burn too bright to bend.

If one touched me,
even with gentled hand,
I’d vanish
a moth stunned by the pulse of a god's breath.

What we name beautiful
is the mouth of the storm smiling,
just before it swallows the field.

We tremble
not at the scream,
but at the hush that comes
before it chooses not to strike.

Every seraph is a wound in light.
Every halo, a blade.
Still, I call.
Not for mercy,
but recognition.

You, bone-feathered keepers of silence,
what are you now
but echoes wrapped in ancient dust?

Bring me no visions.
Bring me the cloak you wore
when you walked with the blind boy,
feet ***** from the road,
laughter like something nearly human.

Your thoughts flood the stream,
minute after minute — something new.
Looking for a like, or a heartbeat,
anything to feel something true.

When words are meaningless,
scrolling in loops of empty delight.
Affection is a thumbs-up,
a random like —  just casting for a bite, like fish in an ocean of poets.

Moments drift and pass
thoughts engrained in time
dreams nest within our hearts,
eternal forever alive.

Echoes linger still
shadows soft on souls,
whispers of laughter lost,
tears never told.

Time may steal the day,
but cannot steal the spark
love once truly felt,
still burning in the dark.

For every fleeting hour
leaves fingerprints behind,
on memories gently worn,
but never left behind.

Your breath bends the dusk
Aurora kneels to your voice,
planets hush to hear.

Even stars forget
their songs when you pass them by
you eclipse their fire.

The Nile would forsake
its mirrored gold for your gaze,
a flood just to touch.

Temples lose their name
in the hush your fingers leave
divinity hums.

Moonlight wraps your skin,
like silk from Saturn’s wide rings
the cosmos blushing.

You are not of earth
you are the vow Venus made
before time could speak.

You summon storms wild
from whispers in the dust.
I forge new fences
from yesterday’s rust.

This life—a river's flow
with no perfect shore,
your tide, my drift
we've fought the oar.

I’ve chased horizons,
near and far
felt my eyes turn blue,
but every compass true
bleeds back to you.

We stand in twilight glow
where seasons we do not know
a softened breath held tight
between what was and were
and night.

And when the fire
asks us to choose,
we burn, we bend
we learn,
but never lose.

For even mazes
made of rue,
have secret doors
that open to the place
I always knew.

We feared the wind when it came unbound,
it tore through rooftops, split the ground.
It spared the cruel, took babes instead,
and flung them to the river’s bed.

So we gave the wind a face, a name
to shield ourselves from nameless shame.
Spirit. Omen. God. A sign.
Not to change it—just define.

For pain with meaning hurts us less
than chaos cloaked in randomness.

When lightning struck a sleeping man,
we blamed it on a god’s dark plan.
A child was born without her sight
we said her mother failed the rite.

When drought devoured ten long years,
we answered skies with blood and spears.
Called the clouds a womb too dry
to drop her sorrow from the sky.

But prayers fell flat, and bulls all bled,
and still the sky looked down, not red.
So we split heaven, drew a line
one god for wrath, and one divine.

One to cradle, one to break,
one to give and one to take.
One for love, and one to blame
for knives that come with passion's name.

We built our myths to rest at night,
to dim the chaos with a light.
To say "there's order in the storm"
not random death, but wrath with form.

We gave evil hands and breath,
and dressed him in a court of death.
Not an accident, but will
a mind that plots, a vow to ****.

We gave him names: the snake, the sin,
the voice that speaks when trials begin.
Adversary. Shadow king.
The whisperer of every thing.

Oh, the play we wrote was grand:
a silver tongue, a fiery hand.
A trickster clothed in law and lies,
with deals that glint in mortal eyes:

"You need not wait for heaven’s gate
I’ll give you now, you skip the wait.
Beauty, power, gold and fame
just sign your breath, just speak my name."

And we said yes, again, again.
Not fooled—just tired, just weak from pain.
We longed for what he promised near,
and needed someone else to steer.

But here's the twist: he doesn’t win.
He knows the fire waits for him.
He gets his spoils, counts his cost
knowing the war is already lost.

We think he hoards our souls like gold,
but maybe he just hates the role.
Maybe he's tired, trapped in script
a villain cast who can't resist.

Yet still he comes, and still he speaks
at dusk, in banks, in tangled sheets.
Still makes the deal, still signs the slip,
still presses fire to the lip.

Because someone must wear the mask.
Someone must answer when we ask
Why mothers die with screams unheard,
and tyrants rot with riches earned.

Why children starve while angels weep,
and prayers dissolve in dreamless sleep.
Why saints go mad, and just men fall
again,
and then again,
and all.

We say it's him. It helps us cope.
We clothe despair in scarlet hope.
We give our dread a face, a flame
a throne, a crown, a hated name.

But maybe Satan’s just a role
a mirror cast within the soul.
A shrug from nature, dark and bare,
or worse—ourselves,
just standing there.

She’s right here.
Her body’s inches from mine
and it’s still unbelievable.
Not in the dramatic way,
not like in books
just this steady, solid hum in my chest
that won’t go away.

I watch her breathe.
Nothing more.
Her chest rises,
then falls,
then rises again.
And somehow,
each time feels like proof
I haven’t done everything wrong in this life.

The air in the room is warm
the kind of warmth that lives between bodies
that trust each other.
That kind of warmth you don’t talk about
because it disappears the second you name it.

Her arm’s curled under the pillow,
shoulder bare.
There’s a tiny freckle there
I swear I’ve never noticed,
and now it feels like I’ve discovered something
no one else has ever seen.

Her legs are twisted in the blanket
like she’s half-dancing in her sleep.
Her lips are parted just enough to make me wonder
what dream she’s inside of.

I don’t want to wake her.
I don’t want to leave.
I don’t even want to blink too long.

Because this is it.
Not a fantasy, not a memory.
Not a wish, or a poem, or an idea.

She’s here.
I’m here.
And the silence is full.

Not empty.
Not lonely.
Not waiting for something else.
Just full.

I don’t need more.
Not a word, not a kiss.
Just this moment,
this breath,
this woman
sleeping beside me
like peace decided to wear skin
and crawl into bed.

she's asleep
and I’m not.
my arm’s around her waist,
my face buried in the space where her neck curves soft.
it smells like us—like skin, heat, the night that hasn’t fully left.
I don’t want to move.
not because I’m tired
because I’m afraid the moment will slip.

her back breathes against me, slow.
that rhythm I’d follow into the dark if I had to.
there’s light starting to break in through the blinds,
drawing gold across her spine,
the little arch above her hips,
where I kissed her last before we drifted.

her skin—God,
it’s warm like the world never is.
smooth, like it was poured over bone just for me.
her shoulder, her collarbone,
the ***** of her chest against mine.
I know every part of her,
but still I look.
every **** time.

there’s this bruise on her thigh.
a mark I left.
not from hurt—
from want.
from holding her like I was starving.
because sometimes I am.

her lips are parted,
just a little.
like she’s whispering to the room without saying anything.
her hair’s all over the pillow—wild, tangled, beautiful.
I remember how I gripped it.
how she looked back at me like nothing else mattered.
how she took me—no fear, no pause.
that fire in her…
nothing else burns like that.

but now?
now she’s calm.
like a storm that passed but left the warmth behind.
her fingers twitch a little,
then slide over my hand.
she finds me even in sleep.
every time.

I don’t speak.
I don’t need to.
this quiet is louder than anything else.
just me and her.
no one watching.
no masks.
no pretending.

she stirs.
presses herself back into me.
and I pull her closer
like I’ll never get enough.

her body fits mine
like we built each other out of all the broken pieces that finally made sense.

outside, the world is already starting its noise.
but in here?
it’s still us.
just me and her,
and this space we made
out of heat and breath
and something I’ll never find anywhere else.

Whispers in the wind,
I posted soul to silence
the thread scrolls onward.

A single soft flame,
snuffed beneath the wildfire breath
of hungry poems.

Click. Another post.
They chase hearts like falling stars
mine fades in the blur.

Desperate fingers
fire thoughts like broken arrows,
no aim, just impact.

My poem, quiet,
drowns beneath their loud hunger
a voice in the mud.

Each line I carved slow
lost to the flood of wanting
what were they needing?

Not read, just noticed.
Not felt, just fed by the feed.
Echoes die, unseen.

I don’t need the likes.
Just a pause. A soul. A breath.
One reader who hears.

This ever winding road, the smell of uncertainty and despair
Thoughts buzz like little insects in my mind, mosquitoes
Days flash like lights or a candle flickering in the wind
Time passing like sand through the hourglass—so are the days of our lives.
Laughter as this thought passes my mind, but true
Screaming at silence I wonder what is it all worth, this life of decline
Moments and people, our relationships build but only to break
These are the thoughts that stick to my skin
That burn without a flame.

The end seems so empty at times
Strange how days and moments last when you're young but pass you by ever more quickly with age.
Life is like a roll of toilet paper, an old man once told me
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, the closer to the end you get, the quicker it goes.”
Didn't make sense at first
I thought life would stay like those long days of May
Or the running through summer or spring
Autumn—oh those red skies of shepherd’s delight, those rolling hills of forever more
Those golden sunrises of I miss you more
Left with only grey as days pass away

You only realize you're getting older when you start going to fewer birthdays with cake and candles
and more funerals with sandwiches and tears,
more memories than wishes
Trading tears of joy for those of loss and
“I’m sorry you're feeling this way, but it too will pass.”
The inevitable is—we all end up on the shelf,
scattered to the wind and the ocean or eaten by the worms
as we lay forevermore in the stone garden, a reminder that we were here,
Birds will ****, fly over, and if you're lucky, pass a plopping **** on you
to say you still were part of something, even in absence.

I remember looking to the sea once and thinking I own this life
only to revisit that same space years later asking why.
I asked the ocean,
Why do we grow old too soon and learn so late?
Why do the hands of time keep moving?
The reflection in the mirror no longer recognizes me,
or is it that I don't remember the reflections?
Those that I have loved—all things come to pass,
probably the most cruel reality,
and everything I thought mattered once

well look now that I've walked the path of the unknown,
upon the days and nights of yonder wide,
I've come to realize—well, these things don't matter much anymore.

Oh cruel life, what is this terrible game you play
of moth to flame, knowing it will always end in death?
In life subtly burning its wings off,
you knew all along—little children reach to touch the sky
but instead touch the sun and burn our fingers, one by one.

I know my time comes,
creeping at first it seems, but these days—
it's almost like they run, and I'm trying to catch up.
I know my time is coming, and even if I don't like this concept
it's how it is.
I know that time comes for me, and it will carry me forward in its wings
until the day comes where I no longer can fly with it like a dove.

And that's okay
because I know my words will scatter the earth
and find refuge in new minds, in open hearts,
and the distance of the souls.

As I walk this path, mornings come and days go,
night consumes and flowers bloom,
birds do sing and rain does fall
and this is what happens to us all.

I shouted up with trembling fists,
"Tell me, stars, why do I exist!
How do I shine? How do I last?
How do I burn into the past?"

I’m small—too small to make a mark,
a flick of dust beneath your dark.
But still I scream: “How do I rise?
How do I echo through your skies?”

The universe blinked, slow and wide,
and let the silence stretch and slide.
Then clouds rolled in and whispered low,
"Ask the rain what it longs to know."

The rain replied through windowpane,
“I fall, I vanish, then rise again.
Not all are built to carve in stone
some change the world by being unknown.”

I yelled, “But I want crowds and cheers!
I want my name in future years!
I want to matter—more than breath!
I want a voice that fights off death!”

The stars looked down with silver sighs,
"Ask the sky what fills her eyes.
Ask the dusk, the sea, the pine
they’re old, and wiser still than all time."

The wind blew past with tangled grace,
“You’re not remembered for your face.
Not for your name, or shine, or shout
but what you gave when no one found out.”

I slumped beneath a restless moon,
demanding, “Tell me something soon!
How do I matter, small and loud,
beneath your stars, beneath your cloud?”

The universe did not explain.
It wept in dew. It breathed in rain.
And through the hush, the silence spoke:
"To be the fire, you feed the smoke.

To be the name, you live the vow.
To matter then—you matter now.
Not for applause, but what you give
in how you love, and how you live."

So here I stand, still small, still bright,
still yelling questions into night.
And if no answer ever comes
I'll burn like stars whose names are none.

Until the day of mine has come .

I tore silence apart in my mind.
The universe spoke softly, whispering secrets of the unknown.
Unspoken truths fractured my thoughts apart
into tiny shards.
I watched it all crumble.
Meaning slipped quickly through the cracks of my hands,
where all logic folds.
Every drawn map of my mind dissolved
How would I find north
when my compass lies?

My dreams echoed lands unseen.
Waking to think of it made my skin hum.
A wolf moved in and out of my visions,
eyes of glowing green.
It was as if the mirrors warped.
Every door was a new question.
How could it be,
while madness smiles?

The wind blew intuition restlessly.
Everything I once knew trembled.
The trees whispered, Instinct knows.
I wanted to run, but instead
I followed the unknown path.
All fear behind me,
each step as unknown as the path.

My thoughts danced through each moment.
There was no knowledge to watch.
Facts pile.
Truth slips.
Hands empty.
Cathedrals fall.
Mosaic of every colour.

Wisdom now waits
not still, but circling above.
Its eyes are moons that do not blink.
It speaks in ruins,
and I follow where the path cracks wider.

The ground becomes dream—then memory—then nothing.
I walk barefoot across my forgotten years.
Cities built from questions rise and fall.
Rain falls sideways.
Time bends into golden loops.
A crow leads me down a hallway of mirrors.
I speak, and my voice echoes in languages
I never learned, but always knew.

The sky peels back into velvet stars.
Each one pulses like a heartbeat.
I remember the name I had
before language was born.

A stairway made of books ascends the sea.
I climb.
Clouds whisper philosophies too ancient to hold.
Mountains lean in, eavesdropping.
The wind tastes like fire and ink.
I drink water that teaches forgetting.

I meet a version of myself
with eyes made of clocks.
We trade silence.
We argue with no words.
We weep into the same river.

Forests hum with dreams still sleeping.
There are doors inside trees.
Oceans where light has never been.
Stars that teach me how to kneel.
Every creature speaks in riddles.
And all of them are me.

The road vanishes again.
I walk anyway.

Not gone—but woven through shadow.
No answers wait on peaks of glass.
Stillness rings inside the void.
Release doesn’t shout.
It softens everything.

Deeper than thought, beneath sleep,
we breathe the same breath.
We dream from the same source.
Thoughts ripple through unseen waters.
Echoes remain.

I hold nothing.
Fingers trace the edge of myth.
Questions spin.
Meaning slips.
Madness nods.
Silence stays.
Quietly looking into the abyss.

All is question and echo,
a dance between shadow and light.
Wisdom is the stillness beneath noise,
and silence—the place where knowing begins.
We are fragments seeking the whole,
walking maps made only as we move,

held gently by a vast, patient void.
of this great unknown.

Palette yellow of yolk,
silver guns—many—hung high on the wall.
A man sips whiskey in a short glass,
thinking three, maybe four.
Black coat pressed to brick,
he wonders:
What is it all for?

People pass—tall ones, short—
their eyes scan the street
like art for sale.
Men in white jackets,
women in skirts
with long legs
that could outrun yesterday.

And what if the guns
on that yolk-yellow wall
were melted into sculpture,
and the sky turned
from grey to night?

Sculptors and sculptures,
artists with red-stained brushes,
writers dropping clichés
like skyscrapers collapsing into verse.
Letters stretch like towers,
spaces bustle like streets.

Salesmen and people preach—
pitching concepts
to crowds like prophets in tailored suits.
The sound spills into the square.

Horns hoot,
cars hiss past,
exhaust coils in the air
like city incense.
People march left, right
ants with nowhere real to go.

A man taps a bucket drum
metal echoes in rhythm.
The cling-clang of falling change
fills his heart with warmth
but not the scarf
that guards him at night.

Coffee steam and scattered chatter
ghost through his thoughts.
Green light: go.
Amber: maybe go faster.
Red: stop, or forget to look back.

A man in a pressed white shirt,
Italian shoes,
watches it all.
Importance—just a trick of the mind.

Windows sparkle in every direction—
selling what we crave,
but never need.
Cliché,
but honest.

And in the center,
beneath neon breath,
a statue—bronze and copper—
shines.

A buffalo.
Mighty.
Fighting off a leopard
as it leaps upon his rear.
What did the artist feel
when tool met form?
What soul spilled
into metal?

Around me
reds, blues, greens, yellows.
Purple sweaters
draped like royalty.
Name-brand blazers,
black shoes polished
like ambition.
A black-and-white scarf
like city stripes.

This place hums
with sound, with scent,
with people and pulse.
Billboards beam
scenes that feel
like a worm becoming butterfly.

This is the city I live.
Alive. With potential.

Yet so many
walk head down,
clutching yesterday’s newspaper
like it still breathes truth.

And then—
I met the flower seller.
A basket of blooms at her hip,
bunches of color
and single red roses
like soft weapons of the heart.

“Buy these for someone special,”
she said with a smile.
And I thought, who could that be?

I paid.
Clutched the roses
as their thorns pricked my hand
love is just like this,
a sharp poke
wrapped in beauty.

She smiled,
a kindness in her eyes
as I walked away
holding six red roses
with no one to give them to.

It’s strange
how women smile
when a man carries flowers
like a banner of romance.
They think: some lucky woman.
But the truth?
I bought them out of pity.
They had no home.

So I gave them away.

To strangers
not for beauty,
but for need.
Left one on a park bench.
Another at the feet of a sleeping person.
One placed gently
on a café table
where a woman sat alone,
a waiter laying down the bill.

She declined.
I left it anyway.
And walked off.

Looking back,
she held it.
Smiling.

The final rose I held close for a moment,
stopping a couple walking hand in hand.
“Excuse me,” I said, “this is for you.”
The gesture caught them off guard.

This is what the world needs more of.
More cling-clang of change
in a busker’s bucket.
More roses
for those who need a reason to smile.
More quiet kindnesses
that ripple outward.

And then I moved
toward the subway,
where people crowd the cars
everyone going somewhere.
Who knows where?

A pregnant woman stepped on,
her hand resting on the small of her back.
Someone stood,
offering their seat
without a word.

I caught their eye,
nodded,
and smiled
a silent thank you
carried in the crowd.

Everyone
going
somewhere.

My thoughts are terracotta armies
not for war,
but for remembering.
Buried beneath the sleep-skin of time,
fragile, intentional,
but already forgetting
what they were meant to protect.

Each soldier a hypothesis.
Each silence, a map.
Each crack—a failed attempt
to understand why people leave
even when they say they won’t.

Dreams flow like soldered platinum,
beautiful in the way
only toxic metals shimmer
they promise softness,
but dry into armor
you didn’t ask to wear.

I don’t mind the impact,
the crash,
the unpredictable tide of another’s undoing
because even oceans
must exhale.
Even the storm eventually
forgets your name.

But I remember falling.

Not once.
Not dramatically.
Just…
incrementally.

Falling into love that wasn’t ready.
Falling through logic
patched with performance.
Falling for eyes
that said everything
and meant none of it.

They say time flows
but I saw it bleeding,
dripping sideways
through the spine of a clock
that refused to chime.

We walked beaches
stitched together
from half-spoken apologies.
Moments, beautiful
but so easily rewound
by a sudden lack of reason.

And if I had a crystal ball…
would I use it
to avoid the pain,
or just to better frame it?

Would I steer my ship
to safer harbors,
or miss the waves
that taught me
how to drown gracefully?

My rainbow didn’t arc across joy.
It stained my palette
with residue.
Not color—echo.
Not hope—just remnants
of what was almost true.

Crows gather where clarity fails.
Gulls fight over the leftovers
of intention.
They don’t care what was meant—
only what was left behind.

Tomorrow came dressed
as an accident.
Today,
I misplaced again.
And yesterday
it whispered something
I wasn’t ready to hear.

Perhaps we should’ve arrived
with a manual for contradiction.
A diagram of desire.
An index of ambiguity,
where every should-have
had a page number,
but no resolution.

People say they love the rain.

They don’t.
They love the idea
that rain is forgiveness,
that wetness means freedom.

But step outside
and watch how they flinch.

They talk of dancing in storms
but build roofs out of denial.
They dream of thunder
but fear the lightning
that asks them
to be honest.

I drove through the last storm
and saw no dancers.
Just faces lit by phone screens,
cars speeding toward comfort,
no one tasting the grief
that falls for free.

And maybe,
maybe that’s the point

We’re all trying
to understand each other
through metaphors
no one agrees on.

We speak in rainbows,
but listen in grayscale.
We promise always,
then vanish between yesterdays.

And maybe that’s human.
Or maybe that’s just
what we became
when the gods
forgot to write us
an instruction manual.

Does it really matter in the end when the Rainbow Spilled Sideways

She walks where night forgets itself
beneath flickering signs,
past alleyways that hold their breath.
Not quite seen,
but the traffic hushes
when her heel touches the curb.

Streetlights spill down her spine
like a chapel of small suns,
and puddles ripple with memory
not rain.

She doesn’t look at you,
but you are already unraveling
Her name no longer fits your mouth,
your past left leaking behind her steps.

Shopfront mannequins turn to watch.
Buskers miss a beat.
Dogs whimper low like sinners in pews.
Something shifts.
Paint peels. Neon falters.

No perfume, no sound
just the scent of once-loved letters,
and a warmth like someone you mourned
standing just behind you,
never speaking.

She walks on.

Her dress, midnight silk
stitched with the hush of every goodbye.
Her face
you remember it wrong
every time you try.
Like smoke, or poetry,
or the space between subway doors.

Coins clatter.
Lights change.
You blink
and she is
gone.

Still,
you swear the sky
tastes different
since she passed.

I climbed out from under my own noise,
the static of too many selves
all speaking at once.
I just wanted silence,
or at least
a glimpse of something real
beyond this glassy, shifting mask I wear.

For a moment,
I thought I found it
I felt light,
untethered,
soaring past the reach of what they made me.
But I flew too far,
and forgot my own wings were stitched with lies.

My eyes
yes, they opened.
But they looked inward and saw only fog.
My mind
it turned, it turned,
but always into walls.

I still hear them
when the night softens
and sleep forgets to close the door.
The voices,
not cruel—just certain.
And that certainty cuts.

I pretended to know why I keep breathing.
Told people there’s a plan,
that I’ve got it sorted.
That’s the performance.
That’s the whole show.

And when I say I’m wise,
what I mean is
I’m tired of being wrong
so I’ve learned to speak
in riddles.

I’m not anchored.
I’m not grounded.
I’m a feeling in search of a name,
a boat without a harbor,
tossed in the ache of old waves.

I once thought the wind would save me.
But even that
whispers like them now:
"Where do you think you're going?"

They told me the climb would make me whole,
but I lost pieces with every pull.
Each truth I reached turned into smoke,
and every promise
just a joke.

I once believed the sky would catch me
a soul too cracked to feel the scratch,
but falling taught what is flight disguised
the stars don’t speak
they only shine.

My silence grew its own sharp teeth,
it gnawed my sleep, it bit beneath.
I smiled in rooms,
I couldn’t stay,
then vanished softly,
day by day.

There’s a hush where my name should be,
a space between the ‘you’ and ‘me.’
I’ve become a ghost with lungs and skin,
forever locked in where I’ve been.

And still they call,
those quiet screams,
the ones that echo through my dreams.
Not demons, no–
just echoes made,
from every truth
I’ve thrown away!

I walked so far to not be me,
but found myself in every fleeting minute,
in shadows cast,
in windows cracked,
no matter where, I still come back.

Words come from the distant deep,
where silence hums and secrets sleep.
Thoughts that flicker, wild or meek,
drip like rain from the soul's dark beak.

They rise from marrow, not from air,
from bloodied dreams or whispered prayer.
Sometimes steep, a summit scream,
sometimes soft as a lullaby dream.

They ride on crows with razored wings,
or butterflies with silver strings.
Some arrive like axe-blade sighs,
some as tears in a child’s wide eyes.

They are born beneath the skin,
in quiet wars we hold within.
Lines crawl out through open scars,
stanzas shaped like fallen stars.

Married in unison — pulse and page,
they outlive time, they outgrow age.
A poem doesn’t end — it loops, it plays,
it’s sung through moonlight and firelit days.

Words don’t rot, they bloom and bite,
etched in ink or screamed at night.
They are rivers of chocolate, or ******-red,
they live when we are long past dead.

So write — with truth, with flame, with breath,
for poems cheat both time and death.
They touch the places no one sees,
they plant forever in the breeze.

Noon burns bright.
Orange sunsets.
Earth breathes.
Candles flicker
light slips away.
Gone is day.

Storms roar loud,
then quiet fast.
Chaos folds in waves;
silence breathes last.

Night moves slow
for those who wait,
a velvet hue
deep and late.
Fallen leaves rest,
new-found fate.

No clocks here,
no time, no tense.
Just dark and light,
turning night
in heaven’s hush
along earth’s fence.

A poem is built from thoughts so deep, truth so obvious
laced through knuckle-script
and molar brass.

It leaks when no one’s watching
from ankle-chords,
from the valve behind the eye.

You don’t find it.
It outgrows you,
It lives when
you don't .

It’s the eighth toe
you never knew you had,
curling in a sockless shoe,
itching
during weddings.

It is not about trees,
or time,
or the myth of birds.

It’s the scent that doesn’t belong
crushed battery in rosewater,
ozone in your mother’s drawer,
that unforgiving scent.

A poem bites the slowest nerve.
It knows which tendon you dream through.
It blinks in ternary.
You forget its face
until it replaces yours.

Don’t look for it.
Check your palm
That spinal shiver
next time you speak.

Shaded shadows cometh to carry my weary soul,
burdens lifted not in part but whole.
Life, it changes from now to then
does it end, or start again?

A breath unclaimed in silent air,
a final blink, a distant stare.
Time folds in on whispered skin,
and all I was drifts deep within.

I don’t fear death
we all go.

What haunts me
is return
no memory,
no map

just ******* it all up
again
like it’s
new.

Death is coming
fast in the bones,
slow in the breath.

Each day, the fight grows heavier,
but will grows thin
a thread unraveling
in falling wind.

Still, I wait.
Not for mercy
but for the hush
that follows pain.

The sound of the siren curls like a question,
spinning through concrete veins.
Mist settles like smoke from a lie,
wrapping rooftops in guilt,
truth leaking out,
no doubt.

Ey *****, what you say now?

The quick brown fox jumped over a fence
dropkicked a lazy red faced little cow.
Ooh—million attempts at what,
a vow?
You think that pretty little grin,
that “look at me!” skin,
a smile like a tooty fruit troll-face is your win?
Was that enough to stall the fall,
to silence the cracks
in the mirror where you crawl?
get your sad little point through a crooked corridor door,
what a bore.

Fake shouts—“Oh me!”—
****, the picture hangs skew,
naming different artist oh no
what we going to do?
Raise one wait maybe raise two!

Don't you all see,
come quick have look
I think it's the cover of a old stolen book,
but you?
Still posing like it's new, true
like you bought it, distorted
taught the paint colour in a shade,
oh my architecture
Come put on a parade.

Sirens scream,
ambulance or wambulance, who knows?
I called it for you ! 911 what's your emergency?
A thief stealing stained glass and borrowed hymns / from cello kids in cathedral whims,
sky dims.

We hear you loud and clear.
we were already on our way !
It's me ma –it's me ma – it's me ma !
the sound of the siren in the distance while mist settles truth in a darken hue of blue red blue
just definitions oh so clear
words they disappear,
just like you.

Do you think putting a wall between changes my life,
Oh dear me how can this be?
your poetry sounds like Bert and Ernie,
Wambulance pulled out a gurney.

Lights—camera—play your part,
the damsel routine,
the broken-heart art.
Sending smoke signals
into the void,
hoping someone out there
feels annoyed enough to care,
while you hang onto a distant stare,
When you think your poems are:
Rare as dime in a bubblegum machine.

Look everyone—flatter her
while she’s battering,
Chattering
but truth?
Just uncouth.

Yeah, satire packs it in
like a left hook to your chin.

You think you’re special, huh?
Generic tone with a borrowed soul,
dancing all night in knockoff roles,
trading moans for coin in bathroom stall.
under gallery lights you’ll never know,
painting tears you moan, groan "nut"
never own, "moaning Lisa on loan".

Living in a glitch of an AI scheme,
is that where your writing dreams?
Minimal with a lisp, stale not crisp,
just a blur in a comment stream,
boohoo he just being mean!

You shout so loud
for your petty crowd,
like this song must be you
Bet you think this song is about you too
Dupe do dube doo
Maybe it is.
Maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s just a monkey
at a five-card standoff
Raised the stakes
flinging ****
at signs it forgot.

Either way,
I couldn’t give two *****.
Not three, not four.
**** girl,
you inspired even more.

Chum-chum, here he ****
crusty knight in silicone armor,
itchy little *******,
twitchin’ for trauma,
chasin' **** like karma.
Old ******* always show up to rescue
anything with cleavage and a crisis menu

Then he sends out a drive-by "flex" / like he’s living in the ******* Ritz
quick on the text
running for any pair of ****,
click n' follow!
dam don't wanna sound ******
that’s twenty "likes" right there,
ain’t that the bitz?

Ah just so silly
Not even a real brit
But he give you a "like"  for a ***,
excuse the wit..

The next day,
your words decay.
Lovers brawl,
no one’s wrong
but I’m still right,
because I don’t belong
to your broken juries
or boo hoo storybook flurries.
They didn’t hang me
they found you wanting.
So fix your shoes.
Get braces.
Chase your high
at the soapbox races.

Boop-boop-de-doo,
cry me a meme.
I don’t fit your box
I reshape the dream.
Turn corners to clouds,
make square roots bloom
in the garden of my mind,
where there's no room
Kazoom.

You thought the judge
would swing your way
as you wagged your finger,
tried to slay.
Hey hey hey, lies! Barney rubble
But turns out fate had a line or two,
No trouble double double
and now the curtain’s drawn
on you,
maybe you should get a clue?

I’m no status, do I look like facebook
looking for likes,
looking for fights
stars and fake blends
No hashtag trend.
I don’t bend
for clickbait or dead-end friends.
I write for the real,
for those who feel
not ******* in trash bags
with wait - oh fake flags
and empty mags,
not turds in windsocks

Stamp your feet, scream your shame,
twirl like a TikTok user caught in flame.
“What you trying to ******* do?”
Here’s a suggestion:
*******.
Kiss a frog.
Post it on your blog
choke on a log,
“****-sing your lies like a sad lil cartoon”
Bet thats your kinda thing too.

Here’s my *******,
signed in Sharpie
Big, loud, and bright:

****. YOU. FULL STOP
While we all have a laughie.

There is an island where night wears perfume
of crushed orchids, rain-soaked roots,
and the shadows of drums echoing through
wild fig, mahogany, and sandalwood.
It is shaped like her
hips in the curve of the bay,
lips in the rise of each tropical thunderstorm.

Dark waterfalls pour from her crown,
cascading curls of black fleece,
chaotic rivers that snap the teeth of combs
and drown the day’s discipline.
In each cove, a secret hums
a memory, a map,
a honey-thick promise.

She shakes herself loose and I follow
a rag in the wind of her motion,
spun silver threads, stripped, surrendered.
My thoughts tangle in her forest of scent
spice, sweat, incense,
a melody too wild for music.

This is no place found on any map
but I’ve been here in dream and fever.
Oarsmen chant in rhythm with my breath,
bright sails crack like kisses overhead,
and vessels glide over gold-threaded waves
toward the core of her heat.

Her island is a hearth for the starved,
where no thirst remains unquenched,
no ache unacknowledged.
I come hollow, dry
I leave fulfilled, wet
she fills me with color,
with rhythm,
with her storm-fed pulse.

And when I rest,
head cradled in the dark tide of her,
she rocks me gently
as the night sings low
under moonlight sky
and eyes staring down
a connoisseur of ecstasies,
nursing the nerves of every storm-tossed soul
that dares arrive
and stay.

From heaven’s grace or hell’s unholy flame?
You move like wine—both remedy and sting.
Both love and ruin follow in your name,
And eyes like suns make trembling senses sing.

Your kiss undoes the pride of wiser men,
Transforms the meek to kings, or kings to dust.
No law can tame your steps, again and again
You rule with neither mercy, care, nor trust.

I’ve seen you dance where tombstones split the earth,
Your jewels like blood, your laughter like a knife.
You dress in death and sell it under mirth,
And fools call that destruction love, or life.

What matters source—divine or demon’s art?
You light the dark, and that undoes my heart.

The sun stood still,
and Earth began to move
not in sky,
but in mind.

A lens,
tilted toward the heavens,
revealed that silence
was not stillness.

A knife cut through belief
not to wound,
but to ask,
again and again.

An apple fell,
and with it,
the veil between the stars
and the street.

I wandered through the vaults of thought and flame,
Where peristyles in basalt bore no name,
And columns stretched like hymns across the seas,
Painted in twilight’s thousand reverent degrees.
The sky, it kissed the ocean’s mirrored gaze
A temple drowned in ever-shifting haze.
And there I lived in lush, immortal ease,
Where fans of palm blew slow, obedient breeze.

Their silence served to cool my burning brow,
As naked slaves moved time without a vow.
Yet in that land of dream and dusky gold,
A deeper, stranger symmetry took hold:

Why is it all I see returns in three
Like some divine and ancient guarantee?

The Father, Son, and Spirit veil the soul,
The Id, the Ego, Superego’s role.
The Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu guard the gate,
While Maiden, Mother, Crone unravel fate.
Three Fates who spin, three Graces clothed in charm,
Three curses, three desires, threefold harm.

The world itself obeys a triple voice:
Solid, Liquid, Gas in fluid choice.
Evaporation, Condensation’s dance,
And Precipitation’s downward trance.
The atom sings in Proton, Neutron, Charge,
Its silence split across a spectrum large.
Red, Green, and Blue compose the prism’s song,
Three notes of light that carry life along.

The Past, the Present, Future never sleep
They guard the hours we borrow but can't keep.
Producer, Consumer, Decomposer rise,
And write the food chain’s truth beneath the skies.

Our minds are threes: Conscious where we tread,
Subconscious murmurs, Unconscious sleeps like dead.
A triune brain of Reptile, Feeling, Mind,
A holy tangle evolution twined.
Our needs arise as Survive, Belong, Transcend,
The Maslow path we chase until the end.
And still we speak with Logic, Heart, and Trust
Logos, Pathos, Ethos born from dust.

A First name, Middle, Last we often bear,
To walk our Youth, Adult, and Elder stare.
Mind, Body, Spirit are the roles we keep,
We Work, we Play, and then we fall to Sleep.
The Hero, Guide, Antagonist all meet,
On stages where three Acts make life complete.
The Setup, Clash, Resolve in story’s shell,
A dance of Thesis, Anti, Synthesis fell.

The Trident stands with Power, Balance, Will,
And fairy tales grant Wishes by the thrill
Of threes: three trials, three locks, three golden keys
Three riddles echoing in whispered trees.

Why so much threeness clings to every breath?
Why three to shape a life, a fate, a death?
What secret lies in this repeated spell
This triad truth the world has learned so well?

I lay beneath those caverns carved in lore,
Drunk on the wine of metaphors and more.
Is this the code, the song, the god’s decree?
The structure of the soul? The cosmic plea?

Or is the third not curse, nor gift, but test
The balance point between the east and west?
Where chaos meets control in perfect bind,
The echo of a Universal Mind?

Three stars above me blinked in calm delight.
Three steps I took into the endless night.
Three questions burned like brands inside of me:

"What are you? Where from? What will you be?"

They say a painting hangs in silence,
but listen closer.
There’s breath in the pigment,
ache in the line.
Each stroke: a fingertip pressed to time
a plea,
a promise,
a person,
or a price.

Da Vinci’s Mona wasn’t for you.
Klimt’s lovers weren’t thinking of your ache.
Picasso broke forms, not hearts,
and yet we all see ourselves in his fractures.
Van Gogh painted stars
not to claim the sky,
but to survive it.

Caravaggio lit his sinners with holy fire,
while Vermeer captured silence
as if it were a form of prayer.
Frida poured pain like molasses onto linen.
Turner wept storms into colour.
O'Keeffe painted the body
without apology.
Chagall made lovers float
because gravity was too dull for love.

What madness, then,
to say a moment
is yours
because the pose feels familiar?
Because you too saw two figures beneath a tree?
As if love and death
are trademarks,
as if a cherub in the clouds
belongs to one man’s hand.

No two said, “you stole my sun,”
though they all painted it.
No master shouted theft
when another touched sorrow
with the same red.

The artist owns not the subject,
but the sweat.
The trembling hand.
The night stared down with doubt.
The day it was finally finished.
And more sacred still
every moment
they toiled,
half-blind with longing,
to make something
that might be
beautiful.

And here’s the irony:
today’s loudest mouths
the self-appointed guards of “originality”
pen their spare lines with surgical caution,
write in whispers
to avoid the radar of truth.
Minimal not by craft,
but by fear
fear of artificial detection,
the same that bleeds through
minimal lines.

Yet the quiet hypocrisy shows
in the empty space between their words,
the absence of soul where colour should be.
For the difference is this:

One form dares the test.
The other
hides from it,
until they meet.

Stone columns stretch,
sun melts into sea.
Sky leans low,
its breath a plea.
Brushed in fading flame,

Orange bleeds
across sky blue
a canvas rare,
a moment true.

I lived there once:
cool air, slow hands,
the hush of palm leaves
and quiet pain.

Beneath the beauty,
what could not be said
remained.

Often I stand on life’s sidelines,
thinking – real calm, real clear:
I couldn’t give two *****,
’cause without a doubt,
you’d just want more…
and I ain’t about to give three or four.

When I was green, the heavens oft did frown,
With tempests dark, yet sometimes pierced by gold.
My garden, scarr’d by rain that beat it down,
Bore naught of fruit its gentle womb might hold.

Lo, autumn cometh with her solemn tread,
And I must seek my grove, now left forlorn.
The yield I ought have gatherèd lies dead
By briny tides to grave and shadow borne.

In soil thus sick, by salt and sorrow marred,
What hidden balm could nurse a seedling’s breath?
May blossoms dreamt in sleep the frost discard?
Or must all bloom be choked by time and death?

An inward fiend grows glutted on my pain,
It drinks my heart and sings in tones profane.

Thy hollow eyes like haunted lanterns blaze.
In silence dost thou bear thy soul's unrest,
While madness cloaks thee in a shadowed haze.

Did sirens draw thee with their viper’s breath,
To drown thee in a brine of love and fear?
Or didst thou dream too close the verge of death,
And wake to find no guiding angels near?

I knew thee once all fire, fierce and fair,
Thy voice a flame that sang in measured grace.
Now wand’ring winds do toss thy golden hair,
And chaos paints strange sorrow on thy face.

Yet rise, O Muse, from ash and bitter rain
Let verse restore thy light, and break thy chain.

Quick thoughts crack your calm
should I call someone for you?
Wambulance inbound..