And at last he prayed,
Prayed since all hope had perished,
All virtues faded and all sentiments gone.
Down the river he now floats, cursed with angst and pain.
He mourns his loss but his grief won't go away, for this is the consequence —
The consequence of action he so inadvertently did without a second of thought.
Oh, the lives he ruined, the chaos he brought.
Denial is the river, and denial is what he sought.

In denial he drowned,
And in denial he remained.

-Asher Graves

It's a feeling that I can never
put my finger on,
to seize its power with a name.
It's that slight rhythmic delay
in conversations on the phone,
the footfall of our voices
constantly just out of step.
Moments that are almost inconsequential,
but I keep picking at them
in my mind
like the loose skin of a hangnail.
Thumbing at the thoughts
in a way you tell yourself is harmless.
Just a bit more...
Only in an instant, it's all irrevocably undone.
It's that bitter stone of doubt in your chest
when there's a full stop instead of an "x".
You can't help circling back
to that seed planted in your mind
earlier than you can ever remember,
that it's you - fundamentally,
objectively, intrinsically.
Against your own better judgement,
it's so easy to sink into the ruminations
of inadequacy and psychological self-flagellation.
How many more times must you feel this way?
It's so familiar that you can almost detach.
That every time you feel that sparkle of
human connection, of being wanted for a moment,
it's already waiting for you.
You already know it's inevitable.

Father, listen, do you hear
The wailing spirit's desperate sound?
See you the black despair
That like a python 'round his neck is wound?
His light, it flickers, dimmer seeming,
As he off his hope is weaning,
As the stars all fall careening
From his eyes down to the ground.
He wonders if You've vanished,
Or if 𝒽ℯ is lost to ne'er be found.

Father, I know that You
And your compassion for us Men are real.
Your hands can still do miracles,
My eyes have 𝓈ℯℯ𝓃 them work and heal.
So hear my prayer as I plead
For this dear soul in dire need --
Set him from this bleak shadow freed,
Wrap him in love that he can feel!
And if he must these fires endure,
Then forge him into stronger steel.

Adrift in shadows, hollowed by the night,
Yet gratitude still flickers, frail but bright—
A thirst for dawn, though weighed by whispered sorrow,
We clutch the fraying thread of tomorrow.

The ache of absence hums, a silent hymn,
Melancholy’s wine pools to the brim.
But in these ruins, treasures softly gleam:
A map of scars where longing dared to dream.

Our story trembles, ink on splintered wood,
Yet pulses warm where hopelessness once stood.
The thread, though thin, spills gold through vacant air—
A silken ladder climbing despair.

We’ll stitch the rift where darkness bleeds to blue,
And weave the tale our hunger dares renew—
For even fractured light still claims the skies,
And dawn persists in tired, stubborn eyes.

the rulers of time must be blindfolded
they invent voidless words, old eager hands
in this time without dimensions
in this space devoid of meaning
they delete their mothers from themselves
the warmth of bodies is imprisoned in anguish
the body invades the mind, and the mind replies,
it invades the body, an impossible conversation
thoughts are transitional landscapes
but thinking might rebell and fragment into a standstill
time filled my mind and stuffed my throat
to tighten the unthinkable pain
on days with thick blood and stagnant winds
no words to fill the void, the unbearable hopelessness
the letters got destroyed by the gastric acid
and so I became... the reflux of pain

a letter unread is left outside the door
like a snare of anxiety
left to uproot all security in bone.
hanging heads-
hung themself;
what difference does it make
when choosing different hells.

what can i do?
a poem lamenting their anguish
so i can feel proud
to have whispered a word:
justice to the oppressed and undeserved.
what power lies in my hands
to give to those with none-
a transfusion of privilege;
one couldn't even dream it to be possible-

once diversity is blanketed in white
like harsh winter,
we will starve of life itself
and weep for days void of color.

She’s lost circling corners
As the flash of green turns to red
A stop and go, she goes to stop
But she’s driven
Down these roads she knows-
There’s a dead end,
As deadened eyes affix
Time to play for tricks

Anything you want
She’ll do anything
Need to feel something more
Feigning for a feeling
Numb as they take
Paint her in their *******
One more meal to make
One more as the shame drips down

“Oh mister dealer,
Can you please make it better,
I need my medicine”

She can’t see the stars
The sky won’t let her
No matter how high she climbs
Down the boulevard
Retracing the steps she took
And where she lost her soul
Gingerbread man chases,
A race in the faceless
As veins scream in agony
But there’s a smile upon her,
Is it better now?

Hours pass
And she’s circling corners
Stop and go,
She goes to stop
Driving down a dead end.