'Tis another sunrise, bright and yellow.
Yet the world that holds me feels so hollow.
My ev'ry breath is but an empty cask.
Yet ev'ry step I take bears a full flask.
Ev'ry thought that I hold makes the ground quake.
Ev'ry conviction makes the wide sky break.
The path I chose remained a cracked tankard.
Yet my journey is a brimming tankard.
All certainty dissolved, and naught remains.
Each thought gives birth to thought in endless chains.
My life is but a bottle with no hole.
I am the sot who wholly lacks control.
Who am I now to stay here, bound in doubt?
To drink, to think—and still to go without?
Hope
Some days I pray they'll say my name,
Remember fire, remember fame.
A soul that tried, a heart that bled
A spark that lived where others fled.
Some days I wish to reach the end,
No trace of me for time to bend.
Just fade like wind, dissolve like air,
No weight to hold, no cross to bear.
Between the two I stand and sway,
A ghost of night, a breath of day.
Hope pulls me close, then lets me fall
To be remembered...or not at all.
Why me?
How and why so me?
Why is this my destiny,
What is this meant to mean to me?
So why me,
Why is this my set destiny?
Why do I get to think and dream for the future,
If time is stuck in a consistent nature?
Time and you cannot race,
Time is set at its own pace.
Past is set where it was meant to be,
So tell me why,
Why is it me?
Why is it me who thinks freely,
But there is no freedom in thinking freely.
No freedom in this world,
You promised me
That one day, somehow, I will be set free.
But set free where exactly?
Time does not handle freedom perfectly.
Stuck in a clock, round we go in its cycle,
A clock has a destiny,
The hour hand always comes and goes, 2 to 3.
So why exactly,
Why work hard if time's already set expectedly?
What does it mean to be able to change your future,
Are you changing the future, or was it always meant to be?
You said I would be set free,
But where is the freedom in being in a cycle?
(This poem is meant to investigates the struggles of people who have existential anxiety. If this is not accurate, please inform me.)
I feel my thinning purpose slipping fast~
a fragile spool with only scraps to give.
Each sheet you take recalls the recent past
when I was whole, and certain I could live.
Now every tug reveals how close I am
to joining hollow rings upon the floor;
I cling to what remains, a quiet jam
between becoming less… and being no more.
The spindle hums, indifferent to my state;
the cabinet waits, aloof in its supply.
I balance on the edge of near-not-fate
and ask what worth persists when comforts die.
If meaning blooms in moments nearly gone,
then I, half-spent, still matter as I wane.
Genie, old genie, grant me a wish.
I wish life would get better than this.
For a fortune in happiness,
A lifetime of bliss.
Any life would be better than this.
Dust collecting on the bottle,
My wish so simple, so pure.
Surely it wouldn’t leave me craving more.
Shackles of life,
Ruins in shambles.
You and I are the same—
I, the bottle.
You, the dust.
Trapped.
The feeling of hopelessness and despair,
Trapped by memories
I can no longer outrun.
The loneliness settled like dust,
Covering the dream that once was.
Please grant my wish,
For it is not a long list.
I waited for magic,
I waited for change.
But the dust kept falling,
And the bottle stayed the same.
sole am i
meat locker are we
apeiron births god
pith distills self
self distills pith
god births apeiron
we are locker meat
i am sole
already dead am i
nihil gestates genesis
corpse digests worm
bone ensouls flesh
flesh ensouls bone
worm digests corpse
genesis gestates nihil
i am dead already
damned am i
yesterday flays tomorrow
flesh exuvial are we
pitiless is time
time is pitiless
we are exuvial flesh
tomorrow flays yesterday
i am damned
alone am i
nothing begets thought
clay invents god
dust unbegotten are we
we are unbegotten dust
god invents clay
thought begets nothing
i am alone
nihil kills nihil
Nihil Kills
By late July,
the Texas squirrel has begun
questioning the architecture of the universe.
He sits on the fence,
tail wilted like a forgotten feather duster,
and watches the sun perform
its daily act of unreasonable brilliance.
He wonders
why any deity would design a world
where a creature with a fur coat
must endure temperatures
that make asphalt sweat.
He contemplates free will~
specifically his own decision
to move to Texas.
Was it destiny?
A cosmic joke?
A clerical error in the Book of Rodents?
He wanders the yard slowly,
as if each step is a meditation
on suffering,
identity,
and the location of the nearest shade.
At last he pauses,
gazes at the shimmering horizon,
and arrives at a revelation
worthy of a tiny Texas monk:
“Heat,” he declares,
“is the universe’s way
of reminding me
to get my life together.”
Then, after a long, solemn silence,
he adds,
“I have also concluded
that I cannot go to hell.
Texas has already shown me
the trailer.”
With this,
he nods wisely,
as if he has solved
one of the great mysteries of existence.
Dust rises when the light moves~
a faint shimmer lifting from the floorboards,
the world exhaling
its smallest, oldest truth.
It gathers on windowsills,
on the lip of a forgotten jar,
on the spine of a book
whose story no one touches anymore.
It is patient.
It knows the direction of all things.
The wind lifts it,
a quiet rehearsal of our undoing~
how even the strongest bone
will one day loosen into particles,
how names will thin
until they are only breath
and then not even that.
Dust remembers what we forget:
that form is temporary,
that the body is a brief arrangement
of borrowed minerals,
that every heartbeat
is a negotiation with impermanence.
Still we rise each morning,
carrying our small certainties,
while the day leans close and murmurs
its gentle reminder~
return,
return,
return.
Fragile resolve aspiring
to capture the remnants of rainbow,
weave the lattice of life
with spectral ribbons of rapture,
turns into a self-destructive
psychosis syndrome
that fails to fling
the insane illusion
in the cloud of dreams,
for it has hypnotic leverage
on the mind,
mangled by sensual storm.
Wedged by the splitting bevel
of the slashing time,
the frail fragments of failure
get lacerated from life,
scatter on the pensive path
to the realm of rainbow,
yet untraveled,
meanders marooned
in the debris of derelict dreams,
disappear down the deep sinkhole
of dusky oblivion.
In the lucent mystique mind,
transmuting thoughts
flicker on
ebony emotions.
Absolved of self-qualm
psychic crystal sparkles
in sagacity stars’ aurora flare,
traces the prime trajectory
from the cosmic soul’s
nebulous abyss within.
In the mesmeric meadow
of the inner topography,
seraphic shadows dance mystified
with gorgeous sequined glitter
of the sensuous stardust
in the tune of
buoyant bliss.
The discernment mindscape
makes the montage
of the existential rainbow.
War
asks why,
a shadow
without a name,
a tremor of doubt,
a question in the dust,
a silence that won’t explain,
a mirror with no clear answer,
a weight that presses thought to its edge,
leaving the soul to choose what meaning is.
i was a frog who wanted to be king
until i realized i couldn't even sing
a songbird shrilled
"you're only a croaker out of tune"
still i stood on my stump with a tortured smile
croaking my heart out all the while
i dreamed of being a stand-up crooner
a swamp-side sinatra maybe a little sooner
the crickets laughed
the herons one-legged stared
every fragile dream i swallowed
sat inside me
broken and unprepared
the wart-filled toad spat from his lily pad
"you’re stretching your skin boy
settle into the scum"
i carried an empty pond inside
where a thousand thorny dreams went to die
the audience left
the moon went home
a cold blue screen spit its light onto the scum
unthinking
no one returned my croak
i died a little every time i tried
my face looked back from the pond
mud-covered
wart-covered
ugly
my reflection looked away
all it could do was cry
today the water settled
the mud claimed the surface
when i looked down
there wasn’t even a frog
left to die
Beneath a sky of uncommitted rain,
I walk through streets where windows hold no names;
the city flickers like a dying vein
inside the wrist of midnight’s restless frame.
The moon hangs loose, a lantern without shore,
adrift upon the blackened tide of doubt;
each star appears a nail in Heaven’s door,
yet none can tell what waits beyond or out.
I am a suitcase left on some old train,
tagged by forgotten hands and foreign dust;
the years pass through me softly like cold rain
through roofs abandoned long ago to rust.
Sometimes existence feels a borrowed coat
stitched from the shadows of uncertain seams;
we button up our fragile human throat
and speak in currencies of borrowed dreams.
The mind becomes a forest after fire,
charcoal branches sketching broken prayer;
while somewhere underneath the buried mire,
small roots of meaning twist through ruined air.
And still we rise.
Like ships with cracked compasses glowing,
we cross the fog because the heart keeps rowing.
Scamper perches on the oak’s thin wrist,
tail curled like a question mark
he hasn’t quite asked yet.
Morning light spills over him,
and he blinks as if the sun
has just whispered something
he’s not sure he’s ready to hear.
He studies an acorn
as though it contains
the blueprint of being~
turns it, weighs it,
presses his nose to its quiet shell
and wonders, Why does anything grow at all?
He pauses mid-sprint
to consider the wind:
Why does the wind come?
Why does it leave?
Why does it never stay long enough
to explain itself?
Sometimes he stares at the sky
with a seriousness
that startles the blue~
as if he’s trying to decide
whether the clouds are wandering
or simply lost.
And when dusk gathers
its purple shawl,
he sits on the fence rail,
small paws folded,
asking the last question of the day~
the one even the trees
lean in to hear:
What does a life mean
when all its moments
are this brief
and this bright?
Across life’s ambiguous dynamic landscape,
the misty highway in the unclear topography
winded with the weary wheel of time.
I traced the faint footprints of blurred destiny
to the hazy future taking shape in abstraction
In the quicksand of expectation hollow inside,
the shapeless shadows of dismal danger
of devouring desolation lurked.
As the debris of desires subtly subsided,
morose miasma permeated life’s vague void.
Following dormant diktat of destined providence,
listless life lumbered in the indistinct path.
Released from the karmic essence of being
I freed my mortal epitome from equivocal existence;
the patina of pristine peace I then embraced.
Searching within I discerned the divine galaxy,
illumining life’s tangible intent in the haze,
defining the pathway of the journey of faith
through the intricate maze of mundane muddle,
away from the labyrinth of existential uncertainty.
This urge to exhale without restraint
into the hardness of days heightens;
my own center accepting those lapses
when my frail body readily perishes
amidst dreary seasons :
yes, I am weary;
How mournful the thieving of dear life rips,
as I blame the ticks which pluck hours
from rails of courage, from immense grit...
am I simply existing or prevailing?
Yet, precious moments past relieve time's woe,
that a fullness of seasons once held
me beyond earthly limitations...
now, the purpose of existence
eludes my soul ...where uncertainty
becomes part of tested faith.
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