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He assimilated deep in the foot of his
Nuzzling slab. Solid shadows stretched
Below. More true to him than the infinite
White heat that cast them in vast strokes.

He sat face-down, between two
Scrunched twigs; bent like
Mantis' claws. He held his
Eyes-open, absorbed into
His own shadow, now crisp.
Not fuzzy and undefined.
come lay your head on the
bones of the dead,

here lies
the lie of the twenty first
century

nothing will prepare you
for the taste of the fruits
of evil.

if we're to meet our doom
and still
no room at the inn
how do we begin
to believe.
When you call 988
A computer generated voice
Tells you that you are not
Alone
I’ve hidden lost sermons in my casual breath.
I folded them tight, pushed them into sarcasm.
We laughed at the joke, but you missed the ambiguity.
Some words only sharpen once their form leaves a chasm.

Some things we call unstable, wrong, or unfit—
Become relics we look to, only once their time’s gone.
No one hears the meaning of a prophet, mid-scream,
But we quote them the day that their truth breaks the dawn.

Some of us never even asked to be understood,
We can only hope to echo in your afterthought.
Because truth’s never loud—It’s subtle... Its dissonant…
So, its often mistaken, or ignored left to rot.

I live like a myth half-believed by its maker.
I pulse in and out, like static through wires.
My silence burns louder than sermons of choirs,
In golden temples built on sinful desires.

I left signals in inkblots, on letters I never sent,
And in the way that I’d pause before saying goodbye.
One day you might study those absences closer—
They’ll sing of my essence when I can no longer try.

Cause I once left my essence outside in the rain.
Just to see if it rots, or if a new one would sprout.
Turns out, it likes to sing—but only backwards,
And only to those who tried blocking it out.

This left me so lost that I swallowed a compass,
Just to feel in my gut, something real point to me.
But the needle kept swaying like my body still does.
Some directions are given, some were never meant to be.

If you were to ask me what my words really mean,
I might say, “What makes you think they mean anything?”
Meaning is a parasite; it only lives when it’s fed—
And I’ve starved that parasite to death. Repeatedly…

There’s a hallway in me that will never lead out—
Just dissociates to ensure you’re alone.
The paradox is fixed. You can’t change its course.
You’d rather tread blind, but it demands being shown.

I might carve these bitter truths into the air.
Won’t  see them, but you’ll cough, and know they were there.
You’d blame me for the smoke, and you’d call me unstable.
Ignore my intention, or you might not even care.

And maybe I am filthy, misbegotten, and unstable.
But when my tremors stop, I hope you notice my frame.
And the glow that I buried, might finally surface.
Then you might learn to love me for the darkness you shamed.

You might quote this clean, rid my words of the blood.
Say my signals were sent, from the God in your head.
When you sing my sad sonnets, you might guild them in gold.
I promise... This sounds so much better when I’m dead.

©
♦ Đerek Λbraxas ♦️
"The Quantum Bound Poet"
We are not survivors.
we are residue.

the soot that lingers
on collapse's last tongue.

entropy's loiterers—
spiteful, unfinished.
neurons in feedback.
systems with no gods.

the architects left
when the scaffolds imploded.
we cradle their blueprints
like scripture in ash.

rebuild?
with what breath?
with what myth?
our dreams are famine-shaped.

nirvana is a severance package.
emptiness sold
in velvet robes.
a silence that never asked
about wreckage.

so we sharpen our vowels.
scribe ruin in elegy.
chant hymns for dead logics.
leave witness marks
in the marrow of this glitch.

we were not chosen.
we remained.
“Failure Spiral // Witness Marks” is a blistered fragment from the edge of philosophical exhaustion — a poem that resists salvation with surgical precision. Cast in scorched economy, it unspools a mythic post-mortem of civilization, depicting a world not built but inherited — a residual loop of cascading failures mistaken for history.

The voice is not that of a prophet, but of an archivist trapped in recursion — mapping entropy with a cartographer’s detachment and a poet’s poison. In this world, survivors are no more than loiterers of meaning, spectral stewards of systems that have outlived their gods.

There is no crescendo, only a ritual of reckoning. Each line is a witness mark — the scorched etching of presence, absence, and the irreparable fracture in between.
Finally I Can Sleep
By E.J Crowe

Groggy as I come to—
Vision blurred—
Surrounded by a puddle of puke,
Cigarette ash and Budweiser perfume the air like rot in my lungs.

I'm half-naked,
Head jackhammering,
Tooth gone—
Who the **** am I?
Where the **** am I?

Next to me,
A dark-haired woman lies still—
Dried ***** mats her curls like glue from last night’s regret.
I glance around—
Subway station.
Concrete.
Filth.
Stale **** thick like ghosts in the air.

Then—
A loud noise—

"******* STOP!! MY HEAD!!"

The train.
It roars through my skull,
Splitting me open,
Stimming, shaking, escaping,
Reality starts to unravel—
So I dig in my pocket,
Fingers fumbling for salvation.

A worn, unmarked bottle—
Pop one…
Maybe I’ll forget again.
Another…
Maybe I’ll feel better.
Another…
Maybe I’ll O.D.

She gasps awake,
But she’s not really here—
Half-blind, incoherent,
I lift her—***** and all—over my shoulders,
Her hair stings my nose but I don’t flinch.
I should be used to this.
This is my life.

On the train again,
Noise like God screaming,
I collapse into a seat.
Light a smoke.
Nod off.
The world moves.
I recognize the stops—
My town.
My home.
A sliver of hope beneath this decay.

We stumble to my front door.
Dad opens it.
I whisper—

"Help her. She needs to sober up."

Bloodshot eyes.
Cold sweats.
Puke-stiff hair.

He looks at me like death just spoke and murmurs—

"What friend?"

I look beside me.

Nothing.
No one.

She never existed.
I made her.
Built her in my mind so I wouldn’t have to shoot up alone.
So I could pretend I wasn’t this far gone.

He punches me in the face—
And for the first time in days,
Weeks,
Years…

Finally… I can sleep.
They laid me to sleep
in a coffin made of glass
lined with velvet apologies
thinking I'd dream of oceans
or forgiveness
or that one perfect nectarine
I'd dropped in 2003.
The ceiling shattered
while a symphony played
... wolves chasing Peter,
and me.
They chewed on my ankle -
wearing a voice that once prayed for me.
My nerves bloomed bruises.
My hands turned to questions,
tossing runes to the laughing sky
that held no answers.
My skin peeled,
old wall paper from worn bones,
regret curling
smoke above untended altars.
This is what it must mean
to be haunted by your own heartbeat,
to taste rust on your tongue,
with feet that remember
what a mind will not admit.
Love letters delivered in salt,
signed in static,
that simply read
"Persephone,
come home."
DNA
And if all words
aren't enough to describe
how much I love you.
I'd use my blood as an ink to this pen.
For you to know,
that even if I have nothing to write.
The poetry written
within me,
is you.
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