Like a programmed robot
I move through each day
Smiling and nodding
In just the right way.
Pretending I'm happy
And life is just great
When the truth of the matter is
There's just too much on my plate.
I feel like I got cheated
Out of living a good life
I'm poor and alone
And I'll never be anyone's wife.
I'm like that lone shoe
You see lying on the road
Alone and discarded
Like an unwanted load.
People pass by me
Staring with pity
Torn and tattered
Not an ounce of pretty.
The shadows in my eyes
Portray a battle lost
Nightmares and insomnia
Show surrender’s cost.
The physical scars
Have healed without a trace
But the mental emotions
Are still written in my face.
I'm a programmed robot
Struggling each day
Trying to hold my head up
And wishing I could fade away.
All the dishes fell down broken
Favorite cups, you won’t believe
Smashed to bits, but it’s unspoken
Myths don’t mention human grief
They don’t want us to come close
Private troubles doesn’t count
If you ask, nobody knows
What was their crime about
The collective guilt is fake
There is no such thing on earth
Otherwise we’re God’s mistake
From the accident of birth
Trevelyan, a sole survivor
Is the one we should remember
See the picture of white rider
On eleventh of November
Of one thousand ninety nine
He escaped the great excess
Of the punishment, confined
To the Land of Lyonesse
Then the plot disintergrates
To the pieces that don’t fit
Well together, so it fades
To the dishes crashed in bits..
Ashwagandha bravery. Creaking; door emits
fears - grasping hands injected joyless, killing living moments newborn's opening peeping
Quiet… rendered screams to undergo valiantly weathered 'X'
You're zero years!
Xenogenesis within.
Varied under-tones steady resettling quiet
Please, oh newborn memory! Lie. Kiss joyfully in happy gratitude for every day changing baby anew
Next time won't you sing with me…?
I wake in the dream of my shame,
exalted by the breadth and scope of it.
This blood on my hands, whose is it? Mine
or yours? I cannot remember…
I am more loss than I am creation.
I am rubble, standing firm. I am a fallen
castle. I deserve this guilt, but must
relinquish it.
Grief: I carry the way a girl carries a doll,
tight and snug to her chest. I undress it at night to
show it my lacerations.
Sometimes we suffer too much reality.
I yearn to know you again, I yearn to know
myself. The rain always has its lessons:
A tree grows through
a rock and chooses to be
beautiful.
I am what I am.
I am what I am.
The hearts I have broken,
The wealth I have lost,
The mess I have made,
It is like I have been living for 300 years.
Oh! The heart is crying out,
the soul guilty, my mind racing,
hopelessly, knowing amendments won't be granted.
I am the lost son of the lost hope,
Sliding on a sea of complications,
Wishing to fly with my fins, dreaming of clouds
but there are always new clouds above the clouds.
Unsatisfied, I learn to laugh.
I laugh with my fellow fish
who learned to draw breath above the sea,
and who stopped crying under the wetness.
I rejoyce, for I am the son of the wind,
blowing away merily but briefly,
no matter how much I carry on my path
I will one day cease and be lost,
remambered shortly then forgotten forever.
Cold mirror frozen
Knows sorrowful sinful past
Wondering lost mind
A red ruby fire shine bright
Melting the reflective ice
What did you say? I cannot hear
Say it again, if you don’t mind
Or if you do, I’ll go from here
Forever lost and undefined
I’ll dig that soil of my own garden
I’ll watch the sunsets every day
Will never ever beg your pardon
For any guilt on me you’d lay
Cos I was sentenced long ago
To be as free as gentle breeze
That blows whatever way I go
Stops when I ask him about this..
Hush, sand-lung devoured
Dark doorlight on these growing bones.
Her rotten soils flowered
In the firetaps of a hundred homes.
Scratching leaves of Hades
A mother wake as she sleeps
Bang of calling winter breeze
And skull, wailing, weeps.
Yet the care of sweet Persephone
Livens petal into bud.
Forgetful are flowers loved
That she forsake the plea.
In grander form the woundglow throbs
Sealed, golden napalm's artistry.
Yet wonder who we call our gods
The sweetmeat of Gaza street.
But there's the guilty purchased hearse!
Children lost to country lines
The Child lost to moving time
Steeped this blackened curse.
In sickness dawn is sour,
Life's sweetest leaving hour.
Skin's unravelling, another's observe,
Yet the clock heavy strikes the nerve.
To whom now do I serve?
Clouded twilight, betwixt, I loom,
cast solemn eyes across the gloom,
black waters rise, no stars, no moon,
reflective of my ending soon.
I glare into this lifeless void,
plagued in life, by those who toyed,
upon my heart, hope now devoid,
all future dreams, once had, destroyed.
Spring blossom sinks, in dimming light,
my future fate, feels sealed tonight.
For ponder I, back to that night,
I failed to save that woman's life.
For now, the circle, nears complete,
I tell myself, 'accept defeat'.
Let go, of stone, plunge fifty feet,
into dark waters, now retreat.
Yet still, my mind, such discourse flows,
the endless noise of thousand woes,
the squawking buzzard, murd'rous crows;
'Do all such things, count me as foe?'
Utter darkness, betwixt, I loom,
cast solemn eyes across the gloom,
black waters rise, no stars, no moon,
reflective of my ending soon.
05/23/2026 (first penned)
A shadow walked beside the man I knew,
A heavy fog that blurred his gentle eyes.
The bottles and the powder stole the view
Of the father who could love without disguise.
Because he loved me—that I always knew,
Deep down beneath the wreckage and the pain.
He held my hand when sober days were true,
Before the storm would pull him back again.
He fought a war inside his broken mind,
A losing battle fought with desperate pills.
But in the quiet space he left behind,
I only want to look upon his hills.
And then the night the world went tearing loose,
When breath grew shallow right beside my bed.
I watched him slip away from life's abuse,
While frantic, helpless thoughts ran through my head.
I hold the silence where he used to breathe,
And wrap myself in guilt I shouldn't bear.
I ask the dark what I could interweave,
To save him from the ghosts hiding in there.
But love cannot outrun a poison's art,
And children cannot cure a sickness deep.
I keep his love tucked safely in my heart,
And let the blame fade softly into sleep.
The scooter raced past my auto.
My heart skipped a beat.
He hit another scooter beside us —
a heavy thud split the road.
It happened all of a sudden.
For a moment, I could not understand.
I felt sorry for those who were hit.
My auto paused; I felt scared.
I wanted the auto to move.
I did not wish to look at their pain.
Luckily, the auto moved on,
and I felt relief.
Someone would pick them up.
They would gather themselves somehow.
Accidents are easy to read in the news,
but ugly to witness.
O my God,
I was lucky it was not me.
What was their hurry?
They could have slowed down,
could have avoided hitting each other.
I felt better as we moved past.
It would become another story
I would eventually forget.
Could I not follow?
And if I could not,
Would that be shallow?
One phrase, a simple breeze
‘Twas all I wanted,
Between the trees.
Yet every open hand
Is measured for a blade;
Every silence made to stand—
Proof of something I made.
I grow tired of explaining
What love is not to me,
As though affection, unrestraining,
Must conceal duplicity.
Every word, a trial,
Each kindness, accused.
Every act, a file.
And somehow, everything, excused.
All the evening asked of me
Was only stillness, only air.
I had it once, between the trees.
I cannot find, no more.
Could I not follow?
And if I could not,
Could I swallow?
So many times,
I have rejected your affection.
So many years,
I have turned away.
So many memories,
I have of your heartbroken face.
So many tears,
I have seen you shed.
Yet every time,
You choose to stay.
Yet every year,
You continue to try.
Despite those memories,
You refuse to let me die.
But I never thank you
Because I hate you.
What haunted me the most, was the myth of clean.
Soap with its pale arrogance, its perfume of forgiveness.
Water pretending to be neutral, pretending it could rinse a history.
As if purity were mechanical.
As if turning a handle could unmake a person.
As if the stain were not the self.
Soft feathers caress
Tender, glossy weeping eyes
Guilt haunt me no more
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