I prayed and called out
those who had left long ago,
some returned,
God, within me stays
and hears me.

Precocious baby, tempered to a china-blue hue, you
Had not been ripe as a morning glory
Before riots mongered in the plasma of your shapeless head.

Haunting as an omen, you
Had drank from the cord of my cold-blooded artery.
Turned my insides out like a shimmering dime bag
As we fell to the earth.

(Maddy’s Music challenge:
“Write a poem based on three words from a song.”
Song: 'Words of love' by the Beatles 1964)

I’m the harshest critic,
the truest of nonbelievers,
when words of love are used.
Soapy words will not deliver
so please stop trying to be smooth.

Don’t compare me to a summer’s day!
I know that’s from some Broadway play.

Waste not flattery’s rose
praise not my grace,
at least not to my face,
you’re better off praising my clothes.

Forgo sweetness, promise nothing
then you may be onto something
say it, straight up, I won’t faint
trust me, sir, I am no saint.
.
.
A song for this:
Words of love by the Beatles

One night, I lay on the roof of my uncle’s car,
the hush of metal beneath my back,
the sky a cathedral of stars above me.
I was ten—
barefoot, breathless,
a soft creature still untouched by the weight of knowing.

I gazed upward,
as if the constellations could answer questions
I didn’t yet know how to ask.

And a strange thought drifted through the dark:
Will I remember this?
This stillness, this smallness,
this girl stretched across a car roof
believing the stars were close enough to touch.

Now I wonder—
how odd it is to know someone so well
who knows nothing of me.
She lives in my marrow,
but I am a ghost to her.
A whisper never spoken.
A future never imagined.

She couldn’t have foreseen
the weight I would carry,
the cracks I’d survive,
the nights I would look up,
but no longer feel wonder.

Did she know
we would be alright?
Or that “alright” would mean enduring
a thousand quiet heartbreaks
before finding the strength
to reach for the stars again?

If I could fold the sky and speak through time,
I’d tell her—
You made it. You did so well.
Thank you for holding on when it was hardest.
Thank you for dreaming when the world was still kind.
You planted the seeds.
I only grew from your light.

And to the woman I am yet to meet—
the future self still waiting in the wings of time—
I don’t know your face,
only the shimmer of your possibility.

But I promise you this:
I will keep going.
For you.
Through every storm,
every silence,
every starless night.

Know me
as the girl who stayed.
Who bore the weight.
Who held on.

And when it's your turn—
fly.

they said the clown was sorrow-shaped.
so I looped up in greasepaint—
swallowed a sunbeam,
coughed out a smirk,
and called the ache comedy.

somebody whispered
i fear the bruise.
nah,
i catalogue it.
line breaks for scars,
syntax for shame,
run the hurt through a voice modulator
’til even god can’t tell if i’m praying or riffing.

i’m not dodging the wreckage.
i just built a couch in it.
named the crater: “home?”
drank laughter from a cracked thermos
and kept warm in the glow of a rerun i never starred in.

i’ll play the ghost
if the script pays in quiet.
but don’t staple my name to your healing
and call it holy.

the truth?
clowns rot too.

some nights
i wanna peel off the latex,
lose the joke,
shave the wig,
and just exist—
not perform pain
in a dialect
you can quote later.

i wrote the ache down,
filed it under temp/data/emotions_v27/
and still—
it boots at startup.

don’t ask me where it hurts.
it’s in the whitespace.
it’s in the semicolon i forgot to place
between “i’m fine”
and “but.”

you think this is poetry?
nah.
this is me
trying to make the silence less slippery.

i’ve been laughing in sans-serif
so nobody prints me in italics.

i bury metaphors like landmines
because i don't want your sympathy—
i want your uncertainty.

this isn’t an elegy.
it’s a system restore point.

and if you’re reading this,
know:
i didn’t survive it to write about it.
i wrote about it
so i wouldn’t code myself out of the scene.

Oh Tzar of ******'s bleaching bone
Thee of blood soaked terror's home
Whilst striding from thy crimson cusp,
Anointing children, dead at dusk,
Weeping mothers, poets slain
You sip from goblets brimmed with pain
Soldiers fall at your command,
Prayer unheard across the land
And hatred drips from those who sing
Thy death-- the dawn's red sun shall bring.

The whispers of unearthly screams
Breath the foulness of your dreams,
Touch the agony, the flame,
Ignited in your tyrant brain
Treachery becomes thy ilk
A garrote soaked in mother's milk,
The stiletto to the small of back
An assassin's terminal attack.

No vespers from thy closest friend,
No grief at matrimony's end,
No crowds lamenting in the square
Just cold, hard earth awaits you there....
Gone those groveling to win,
Gone the subservient, then within,
Gone that snap of fast salute
Now curses flail with lashing boot.

Now the curled successor's grin .....
Thy image ---
A forgotten thing.

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