Before you give every citizen a number, give every dollar a name. Build a living ledger that does not sleep, a cathedral of code where each cent leaves a footprint in light. Let the money speak plainly—this much to classrooms, this much to concrete and steel, this much to contracts signed in quiet rooms where the ink dries faster than the truth.
Thread a bright wire through the arteries of the state. Follow the pulse from paycheck to policy, from tax form to turbine, from the small-business owner’s trembling signature to the vast machinery it feeds. Strip away the velvet language of “allocation” and “miscellaneous,” words that blur like smoke and drift into ceilings no one can see beyond.
If we are to be rendered into data—faces mapped, eyes scanned, identities distilled to digits—then let the spending be rendered just as bare. Let every mother trace her overtime into textbooks and lunches. Let every veteran follow the echo of his labor into clinics and clean water and the promises made in his name.
Map the current before you map the citizen. Illuminate the flow before you illuminate the face. Because a nation courageous enough to track every dollar in daylight may finally be worthy of holding every identity in its hands.
They told us it was progress and we believed them because the word sounded clean, because it arrived polished, glowing, humming softly like something that wouldn’t hurt us. Progress never announces its teeth. It smiles first. It promises convenience. It offers speed where patience once lived and calls the trade fair. We accepted because exhaustion makes believers out of skeptics, and hope—real or manufactured—still feels better than admitting we are being managed into silence.
Both parties swear allegiance to the people with one hand and sign contracts with the other. Red or blue, the ink dries the same. They perform outrage like theater, shouting across podiums while agreeing on everything that matters behind glass walls and catered lunches. The argument is the distraction. The unity is the danger. They know if we’re busy choosing sides, we won’t notice that the house belongs to neither of us anymore.
Billionaires don’t see the world as a place; they see it as a portfolio. Forests become assets. Water becomes futures. Human attention becomes currency. They don’t ask what something costs in lives, only what it returns in growth. They talk about legacy as if it isn’t just another brand extension, as if history hasn’t already learned their names and sharpened its knives.
Technology was supposed to save time. Instead, it ate it. Hours dissolved into feeds, thoughts flattened into content, identities reduced to data points that predict what we’ll buy before we know what we need. Machines learn faster than we do because they aren’t burdened with conscience. They don’t hesitate. They don’t grieve. They optimize without asking who gets erased in the process. And the people who own them prefer it that way.
Inflation is framed as weather—unfortunate, uncontrollable, nobody’s fault—but storms don’t selectively spare the wealthy. Prices rise with intention. Wages crawl by design. The distance between effort and survival grows wider each year, and they call it the market, as if the market isn’t a room full of people who decided this was acceptable. As if hunger were a bug instead of a feature.
Industries no longer compete; they collaborate. Energy courts war. Tech romances surveillance. Healthcare profits from never quite healing you. Food is engineered to keep you full but not nourished, alive but not well. Everything is interconnected now, except empathy. Supply chains stretch across continents, responsibility disappears into logistics, and suffering is outsourced to places we’ve been taught not to see.
Privacy died quietly, without a funeral. We traded it for convenience, handed over our inner lives in exchange for faster checkout and curated desire. Now our thoughts are mapped, our fears monetized, our anger weaponized against us. They don’t need to control us when they can predict us. They don’t need force when compliance is frictionless.
Artificial intelligence writes poems and diagnoses illness and decides who gets an interview. It mimics understanding without carrying its weight. It doesn’t know what it means to be disposable, but it’s very good at deciding who is. We trust it because it sounds confident, because it doesn’t stutter like humans do when truth gets complicated. We forget that it learned from us—from our biases, our hierarchies, our quiet cruelty dressed up as efficiency.
They call it polarization, like we woke up one day and chose to hate each other for fun. As if rage wasn’t engineered, fed, amplified because outrage keeps eyes open and hands busy. We argue with neighbors we used to borrow sugar from while corporations siphon value out of entire communities. The fight is horizontal because the theft is vertical.
Voting is sold as salvation, as if a single day every few years can undo a system designed to absorb dissent and continue unchanged. They offer us choices that never threaten power, candidates who promise reform but swear loyalty to donors. Hope is recycled, repackaged, resold. The expiration date is always after the election.
The middle class exists now as nostalgia. A myth told to keep people striving instead of questioning. Work harder, they say, as if effort alone can overcome a rigged equation. Two jobs become normal. Burnout becomes character. Rest becomes laziness. Survival becomes a personal failing instead of a systemic verdict.
Solidarity scares them. That’s why they teach us to brand ourselves, to compete, to treat each other as obstacles instead of allies. If you fail, it’s your fault. If you succeed, it proves the system works. The exceptions are paraded as evidence while the majority are buried under statistics.
Mental health is treated like a malfunction instead of a response. Download an app. Breathe through the panic. Meditate while the ground shifts beneath you. They prescribe coping mechanisms for a world that is fundamentally unwell. Healing is individual; harm is collective. That’s the trick.
Education trains obedience wrapped in ambition. You pay to learn the rules of a game that will never love you back. Debt ensures compliance. Curiosity is tolerated only when it’s profitable. History is softened so we don’t recognize ourselves in it, so we don’t notice how often this story ends the same way.
They insist technology is neutral, as if power doesn’t leave fingerprints. As if tools built for extraction will suddenly prioritize care. As if growth has ever decided it had enough. They promise a future that is always almost here, always just one more sacrifice away.
Philanthropy becomes absolution. A donation here, a foundation there, a name engraved over damage that cannot be undone. You can’t give back what was never yours to take, but they’ll accept the applause anyway.
The planet is running a fever and they argue about the cost of medicine. Fires burn. Water rises. Species vanish without press releases. They say it’s complicated. They say it’s too late. They say it’s not profitable enough to matter. Delay becomes policy. Collapse becomes background noise.
They sell green dreams powered by the same exploitation, just painted differently. Cleaner aesthetics, dirtier truths. Violence hidden behind supply chains and silence.
We are managed, not represented. Pacified, not protected. Entertained into compliance while the architecture of control tightens quietly. Left versus right keeps us busy while wealth consolidates like gravity.
And still, beneath the sarcasm, beneath the jokes, beneath the numb scrolling at midnight, something stirs. A realization sharp enough to hurt. That this is not inevitable. That this arrangement is chosen. That the future they’re designing doesn’t include most of us alive.
This is not a solution. This is a refusal. A naming of the machinery. A reminder that normal is a story told by those who benefit from it. They call that cynicism. I call it waking up.
Invigorating flare, divine storm Slipping into a harmonious dimension wrapped up in all of your inferno vicious kisses, candy like touches immersed in your tactile desires, my muse Taste the hunger of the blazing star
And the electricity ripped the champagne sheets And the sparks lit up in the tragic skies
A liquid sigh, voluptuous wildfire gliding into a psychedelic mist surrounded by your musical sirens delightful growls, exotic whispers sparkling in the moonlight, my muse craving the thirst of the blazing star
And the provocative motion burned And the ricochet sent shockwaves
whiplashed tension, pulsating snake spiraling into a smoldering spasm toes curling, spellbinding tongue breathtaking havoc accelerating oblivion touching nerve endings, my muse yearning the skin of the blazing star
And the enigma was quite exquisite And the mesmerizing fever glistens forever
At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin is awake in the way people become awake when something inside them has already stood up and gone to the window. The house is quiet but not asleep. It breathes the low, familiar breaths of waiting—floorboards holding memory, walls keeping secrets, the refrigerator humming like a promise it never finishes. Outside, the streetlight paints the living room in pale gold, and dust drifts through it like slow snowfall. Karina sits at the edge of the couch with her feet tucked under her, hands wrapped around a mug that went cold an hour ago, listening for a sound she has been rehearsing for six months.
Six months is long enough to learn the weight of absence. Long enough for mornings to stretch and evenings to fold in on themselves. Long enough to discover which corners of a room collect loneliness and which ones refuse to let it stay. When he left, she told herself she would be brave in practical ways—pay the bills on time, water the plants, answer questions with calm certainty. She did all of that. What she did not plan for was how love behaves when it is asked to wait. How it paces. How it sharpens. How it grows more articulate with every quiet night.
She checks the time again. 2:35 AM. The numbers glow like they know something she doesn’t. The hours since midnight have been a soft procession of memories: the way his jacket always smelled like outside, the way he reached for her hand without looking, the way he said goodbye at the airport like it was a comma instead of a period. Six months ago, she stood in a crowd of departures and told herself that love could survive distance if it had somewhere to land when it came home.
Karina learned to mark time by small rituals. Coffee brewed for one. Two plates taken down, then one put back. The way the bed insisted on the shape of him long after it should have let go. She learned the sound of her own footsteps at night, the creak near the hallway that always startled her even though she expected it. She learned that courage sometimes looks like staying soft when it would be easier to harden. She learned that longing can be gentle, that it can sit beside you like a cat, purring, insistent, refusing to be ignored.
At 2:35 AM, a car passes too slowly. She lifts her head. The sound fades. Her heart settles back into its practiced rhythm. She exhales and laughs quietly at herself, a sound she has made many nights now. Hope, she has discovered, is a muscle. Use it too much and it aches. Don’t use it enough and it forgets what it’s for.
She remembers the first week he was gone, how she kept the lights on too late, how she filled the silence with television she didn’t watch. She remembers the second month, when the ache dulled into something manageable, something she could carry without announcing. She remembers the fourth month, when she found herself smiling at his name on her phone without checking the time, when absence had stopped being an emergency and started being a condition. Through it all, she kept a careful ledger of moments she would tell him about when he returned—how the neighbor’s dog learned to open the gate, how the old oak dropped a limb in a storm, how she fixed the sink herself and felt impossibly proud.
She checks the time again. Still 2:35 AM. The clock does that sometimes, holds a minute like it wants to feel important.
Karina rises and walks to the window. The street is empty, expectant. The moon hangs low, unembarrassed by its own brightness. She presses her forehead lightly against the glass and lets herself imagine him driving through the last miles, hands familiar on the wheel, thoughts finally allowed to arrive where his body is going. She imagines his smile, the one that starts on one side first, the one that always made her feel chosen even before he said anything. She imagines the weight of him crossing the threshold, how the house will recognize him before she does.
Six months ago, they made promises that were practical and unromantic. Call when you land. Text when you can. Don’t forget to eat. They didn’t say anything about rings or kneeling or forever because those words felt too fragile to ship across oceans and job sites. They trusted the quieter vows—the ones that survive weather and time zones, the ones that show up even when no one is watching.
A sound interrupts her imagining. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a car door closing with the unmistakable certainty of arrival. Karina’s heart leaps, stumbles, rights itself. She does not run. She walks, because this moment deserves steadiness. The front door opens, and there he is, framed by the night he has finally finished traveling through. He looks thinner, older in the eyes, more himself in the way people become when they have been tested and returned intact.
They do not speak right away. They step into each other as if gravity has been rehearsing this reunion since the day he left. His arms feel exactly right, exactly remembered. Her face fits against his chest like it was designed with this purpose in mind. She breathes him in—road, work, the faint echo of places she has never been but knows intimately through his voice. The house exhales with them.
“It’s late,” she says, because someone has to say something, and because time has taught her to respect itself.
“I know,” he says, smiling into her hair. “I tried to hurry.”
They pull back just enough to look at each other, to confirm what touch already knows. His hands are warm. His eyes are wet in the way that suggests gratitude rather than sadness. He sets his bag down like it no longer matters, like the life he carried away has been successfully delivered and signed for.
They sit on the couch, the same one she has kept her company for half a year. He notices the mug, cold and abandoned. He notices the way she has changed her hair, the way she carries herself now. She notices the new lines at the corners of his mouth, the confidence that comes from surviving something difficult without becoming bitter. They talk in short bursts at first—safe details, familiar ground. How was the flight. How was the drive. Did you eat. Each question is a bridge, each answer a step closer to something larger.
At 2:35 AM, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pauses. Karina feels the air shift before she understands why. He looks at her with a seriousness that has been earning its place for months. He takes her hand, the left one, the one that has reached for him across continents without knowing it was practicing.
“I didn’t plan to do this tonight,” he says, and she knows immediately that this is not true in the way people say things to give themselves courage. “I wanted to wait until morning. I wanted it to be perfect.”
She smiles, because perfection has never been their language. She squeezes his hand, because some truths need encouragement.
“I spent six months thinking,” he continues. “About work, about distance, about what it means to come back to someone and feel like you’re coming home. I thought about the nights you stayed up, the mornings you handled alone, the way you made space for me even when I wasn’t here to fill it.”
He reaches into his pocket again and this time does not hesitate. The box is small, almost shy. He opens it with care, like he is handling something alive. The ring catches the light from the streetlamp and throws it back in a way that feels intentional, as if even metal understands ceremony.
Karina’s breath leaves her all at once. The room tilts, steadies. She feels the weight of six months compress into a single moment that asks to be answered. She thinks of the nights she went to bed early because hope was exhausting. She thinks of the mornings she woke up proud of herself for making it through another day. She thinks of the love that waited with her, patient and uncomplaining.
He lowers himself to one knee, not because tradition demands it, but because gravity does. Because some questions carry enough meaning to pull the body toward the ground.
“Karina Larkin,” he says, and the sound of her name in his mouth feels like a blessing. “Will you marry me?”
Time does something strange at 2:35 AM. It widens. It softens. It gives her room to feel everything without rushing her through any of it. She laughs first, because joy needs a release. Then she cries, because relief has been waiting a long time to speak. She nods before she answers, because her body has already decided.
“Yes,” she says, finally, clearly. “Yes. Of course.”
He slides the ring onto her finger, and the fit is exact in the way things are when they have been imagined enough times. He stands and pulls her into him, and they hold each other like people who have crossed something wide and lived to tell about it. The house watches. The streetlight approves. The clock blinks and moves on, satisfied.
Later, much later, they lie in bed and talk in the low voices of people who do not want to wake the future too soon. They plan nothing and everything. They laugh about how tired they are. They marvel at how simple it feels now that the hardest part is over. Karina traces the ring with her thumb, learning its presence, its promise. She thinks of all the nights that led here, all the waiting that turned out to be a kind of preparation.
At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin learned that love does not waste time. It uses it. It stretches it. It asks it to carry meaning until meaning is ready to arrive. She closes her eyes with his arm around her and feels the quiet certainty settle in. The long night is over. Morning can take its time.
The bar breathes like an old animal—slow, practiced, familiar with survival. Not alive in any holy sense, just functional. Lights dim enough to forgive faces. Music limps between songs. The floor remembers every spill better than the people who caused them. This place doesn’t ask why you came in. It already knows.
Maynard Wells sits three stools from the end. He learned long ago that the end is a confession and the middle is a lie. He chooses the space where no one expects anything from him. His glass is whiskey because whiskey doesn’t pretend to be anything else. He didn’t need it. That never stopped him before.
Mara works the bar like a priest without absolution. She slides napkins under glasses the way you might tuck dirt over a grave—neat, respectful, temporary. She doesn’t ask Maynard how he’s doing. That’s how he knows she sees him clearly.
To his left, a couple dismantles their life in whispers. The dangerous kind—the kind sharpened over weeks. They smile for the room, but their eyes don’t participate. The man worries the rim of his bottle like it might answer back. The woman studies her drink as if it owes her instructions. Maynard doesn’t know their names, but he knows the posture of people realizing love has become labor.
Across the room, laughter blooms too loud and too fast. A cluster of friends leaning into one another, pretending gravity hasn’t started its work yet. One of them—red jacket, restless hands—keeps checking his phone. Waiting. Everyone here is waiting. They just use different excuses.
Loneliness doesn’t announce itself. It sits down beside you like it’s always belonged there. Orders what you’re already drinking. Says nothing. Maynard respects that. Silence, at least, doesn’t argue.
He tells himself he came here to write. That’s the version he prefers. The truth is messier: he came to be seen without being known. There’s a notebook in his jacket, thick with intention, thin with follow-through. It weighs enough to feel like hope without demanding proof. Writers carry notebooks the way some people carry prayers—unspoken, unfinished, still believed in.
The man at the end of the bar breaks open mid-sentence, spilling a story about a job lost or abandoned. The details shift, but the injustice remains solid. He gestures at empty air, arguing with something that left him years ago. No one interrupts. That’s the rule here. You let people speak until they’re done bleeding.
Maynard wonders what would happen if he spoke. If the truth would come out as poetry or complaint. If it would sound brave or just tired. There’s comfort in staying quiet. Quiet doesn’t get corrected.
Memory shows up wearing a familiar face. Orders the drink she used to love just to see if it still hurts. It does. She believed places like this were confessionals. Said you could hear the truth in how people ordered—neat if they were hiding, on the rocks if they were stalling, cheap if they’d already surrendered. She laughed with her whole body. Leaned in when she talked. Made strangers feel chosen. Maynard loved her for that. Hated himself for needing it. They were good until they made a sport out of wounding each other.
A song everyone knows finds its way out of the jukebox. Heads nod. Someone hums. For a brief moment, the room aligns—strangers stitched together by a chorus that once meant something in another life. Bars are good at compressing time. You can be young and old and heartbroken all at once if the music hits right.
Maynard writes: The mask slips here, but no one notices because everyone is busy adjusting their own. He doesn’t fix it. Overwriting feels like fear.
The door opens. Cold air follows a man who looks like he’s already lost something tonight. He orders a double without looking. Scans the room for a reason to stay. Doesn’t find one. Sits anyway.
Hope is quieter than people expect. It doesn’t shine. It doesn’t ask. It sits in the corner pretending it’s fine either way. Hope has learned manners.
The couple beside him stops whispering. The silence is surgical. The woman delivers a sentence she’s been sharpening for weeks. Clean. Accurate. The man nods like gravity has finally won. They don’t touch. That’s how you know something is finished—or close enough to mourn.
Mara wipes the bar, listening without collecting. Maynard wonders how many versions of the same story she’s heard. People explaining their loneliness as if it needs justification. As if it isn’t just another weather pattern.
He drinks. The burn proves he’s still capable of feeling something sharp. The glass leaves a ring on the bar—evidence that will be erased without ceremony. There’s a lesson there. He ignores it.
The red jacket starts talking about meaning. About how everyone is just trying to be less alone. His friends nod like this speech has been rehearsed in a hundred bars. He means it, though. Meaning doesn’t require originality. Just sincerity.
Maynard writes again: Loneliness isn’t the absence of people. It’s the absence of recognition. That one stays.
A siren passes outside, distant but insistent. The world hasn’t stopped just because they needed a pause. Inside, last call looms. The room groans. No one is eager to return to what’s waiting beyond these walls.
The man at the end pays, tips heavy like an apology, and stumbles toward the door. For a moment, Maynard worries about him. Then he remembers: everyone makes it home somehow. Or they don’t. Worry doesn’t change the math.
He thinks about who he’ll be tomorrow. Which stories he’ll tell. Which ones he’ll bury. This night will shrink into something manageable—a glass, a song, a feeling he never quite named. He’ll describe the bar someday and leave out the important parts because they’re too quiet to explain.
Maynard closes the notebook. Some moments don’t want to be captured. They want to be endured. He pays, thanks Mara, means it. She nods, already turning toward the next confession.
When he stands, the room tilts—not from the drink, but from the weight of everything unsaid. Outside, the street is colder and more honest. Neon buzzes behind him like a dare. He pulls his jacket tight, the notebook warm against his chest, and walks on.
This kind of night doesn’t stay behind when you leave.
I want to die on my birthday, not because I hate living, but because I am tired of the arithmetic of it, the way years stack like unpaid bills, the way candles turn into tiny interrogations asking what I did with the light. On that day the calendar claps, people text confetti, and I feel like a guest of honor at my own inquest, smiling while the room waits for a speech I never practiced. Birthdays pretend to be doors; mostly they are mirrors, and I am sick of learning my face by surprise.
I want to die on my birthday the way a song wants to end on its own chord, not dragged into an encore by polite applause. I imagine the cake sweating sugar, the knife clean and ceremonial, the wishes folding themselves into paper boats that refuse to float. I imagine the room forgiving me for leaving early, the clock loosening its grip, the candles admitting they were tired too. This is not a plan, it is a metaphor I keep touching like a bruise to see if it still hurts.
Every year arrives with a receipt. It itemizes mistakes, discounts the miracles, charges interest on love. I have learned how to carry gifts with one arm and grief with the other, how to say thank you while inventorying exits. The party hats fit like borrowed confidence. Laughter behaves, obedient as a trained animal. Inside me, something feral circles the truth, asking whether survival is a habit or a choice.
If I could choose the ending, I would choose a quiet that knows my name. I would choose to lay down the weight of being seen, the exhausting labor of translation between who I am and who I perform. I would choose to stop proving endurance is a virtue. The body keeps score, they say; mine keeps ledgers, tallies nights slept in pieces, mornings stitched together with coffee and resolve.
Still, birthdays are stubborn. They keep showing up with balloons like minor gods, insisting on witness. Friends insist too, their hands warm, their eyes unsolved. Love is an interruption I never schedule but always answer. It knocks with groceries and bad jokes and the audacity to believe tomorrow is not a trap. Sometimes I let it in. Sometimes it stays.
So if I say I want to die on my birthday, hear the grammar beneath it. I want an ending that listens. I want the counting to stop hurting. I want to blow out the candles and not be afraid of the dark that follows. I want to live long enough to learn another language for staying, one where the date on the cake is not a verdict but a comma, and the sentence keeps breathing. Maybe the wish is simpler: to be held without a stopwatch, to be celebrated without being measured, to be allowed a softness that does not require proof. Maybe the wish is to keep arriving, quietly, without fireworks, learning how to stand in the year like weather, changing, survivable. If there is a gift, let it be this: another breath that does not owe anyone an explanation, wrapped, opened, kept.
I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, and I don’t mean needed in the utilitarian sense, like a spare key or a reliable paycheck, but wanted in the way thunderstorms want open fields and mouths want names whispered into them. There was a time when desire arrived without asking for permission, when it leaned into me with its elbows on the table and said, you, as if no other option had ever existed. Back then, I didn’t have to audition for attention; it found me mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-flaw, and decided to stay. Now everything is scheduled, measured, softened. Affection comes with disclaimers. Attraction clears its throat before speaking. People circle each other like polite planets, careful not to disrupt the furniture. I have become very good at being agreeable, very good at being digestible, very good at being the kind of person you admire quietly and forget loudly. I fold myself neatly into conversations, make room, ask questions, laugh on cue. I am impressive in a way that doesn’t interrupt anyone’s life. I am safe. I am considerate. I am never the thing that ruins sleep. Wanting used to be loud with me. It used to spill drinks and forget plans and text twice in a row without apology. It used to look at me like a problem it was excited to solve. Somewhere along the way, I became a suggestion instead of a craving. A “maybe” instead of a pull. I watch desire now the way you watch weather through a window—aware it exists, unsure how it feels on skin. Sometimes it almost remembers me: a glance that lingers too long, a hand that hesitates before pulling away, a joke that lands closer than expected. But it always corrects itself. Responsibility clears its throat. Long-term thinking wins. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted without a risk assessment, without a pros-and-cons list, without the need to explain myself in advance. I tell myself I am whole, and I believe it, mostly. I am not broken. I am just untouched in the places that used to feel electric. Still, there are nights when I miss being the hunger, when I miss being chosen with urgency, when I miss someone looking at me like restraint is a temporary inconvenience. I forgot what it’s like to be wanted, but I remember what it’s like to ache, and that feels like proof. Wanting is still alive in me, pacing, impatient, waiting for someone brave or foolish enough to knock without manners and mean it.
There are nights when desire becomes a tide so deep it nearly drowns me, and all I can do is let it rise. I sit in the quiet and feel the weight of you moving through my thoughts—slow, warm, inevitable. And with every breath that remembers you, tears gather at the corners of my eyes, not from sadness, but from the ache of wanting you beyond language.
They fall like small confessions, each one carrying a trembling piece of my longing. I try to wipe them away, but they return—persistent, tender, honest. They taste of craving, of the fire you leave smoldering beneath my ribs, of the way your name moves through me like a soft, irresistible command.
I crave you endlessly. Not in a passing way, not in a moment that fades, but in the deep-rooted sense of desire that refuses to sleep. You live in my pulse, in the quiet between thoughts, in the part of me that reaches without ever touching.
If you could see these tears, you would know how completely you unravel me—how my longing spills over, again and again, with your memory at its center.
I have come to love the sincere curves of you the gentle tremble of your hands, like leaves drifting on a breath of wind, the way your laughter spills softly, tiptoeing over itself into warmth, how your eyes cradle shadows that shimmer like morning dew catching the first light.
Your imperfections are soft constellations only I have learned to trace each scar, each pause, each sigh is a small lantern glowing quietly in the night, illuminating a world that belongs only to you.I would follow those lights endlessly, for they are the tender poetry of your being,the secret melody I hear when the world goes still.
I love the gentle angles of your thoughts, the corners of your heart that curl quietly inward, the way it folds like a paper boat floating on a river both calm and restless. There is a fragile beauty there, a whisper of magic in the way you simply exist.
I do not wish to smooth your edges; I want to lean into them, like a stream caressing stones, like a hand resting in the warmth of yours. Every imperfection is a brushstroke, painting the luminous masterpiece that is you, and I am endlessly, endlessly in awe.
So remain tender, remain luminous, remain human.I will stay here, in the quiet glow of your light, celebrating every soft, jagged, radiant piece of you for in your imperfection, I have found my home.
I’ve been in love with the nectar and the sour drippings of you I’ve been captured by the glaze of your caress I’ve been in awe by the comfort and the shivers of your embrace I’ve been enamored by the never ending kisses and the affection I’ve been mesmerized by the sparkle dancing in your midnight eyes
And the love with you is breathtaking And the love with you is indescribable And the love with you is remarkable And the love with you has opened me up
After so many years I wouldn’t have changed a second
I’ve been in love with the honey and the radiant treasures of you I’ve been enchanted by your words and glamorous skin I’ve been aching for the centerpiece to wake me up and feel alive I’ve been daydreaming of an endless love I’ve been intoxicated by the shimmering light twinkling in your soul
And the love with you is breathtaking And the love with you is indescribable And the love with you is remarkable And the love with you has opened me up
After so many years I wouldn’t have changed a minute
To me, music and poetry go hand in hand. I have a playlist that I consistently update weekly. I really enjoy finding musicians or artists that are hidden gems. I tend to add music that is gut wrenching, heartfelt, and voices that stir the soul. I will play the song multiple times to embrace the music and lyrics separately before adding to ensure it fits the playlist. I call this playlist “Breathe in, Breathe Out.”
This playlist is cleansing and makes me think of so many things. This kind of music makes me reflect, reminisce, cry at times, and inspires my writing. I call this playlist “Breathe in, Breathe Out” because it brings clarity to the essence of life when I hear it. The music just makes me think about what is important and what isn’t.
My son consistently listens to it as well and it’s priceless to hear him singing the words to any song. I love hearing him sing. He sings so passionately and with joy. It’s a blessing to watch how music impacts him.
It’s 5am, I’m carrying those restless thoughts like a backpack over my shoulder. I’ve tumbled through an existence with my freudian slips, gray instincts, and coarse satire. I’ve been dripping misery on the edges of my inner shell. I’ve been playing with matches with ten foot flames higher than my self doubt. Take a long long look at me and you may see yourself. The only distinction is that I’m not afraid to seek for help.
I was the ghost that you were afraid at the age of five.Remember when I made you smile when you wanted to cry. I was there when your world caved and you couldn’t move. I was there when the doubters left and shouted “you have nothing to prove.” I was there when your scenery started to change. I was there when you took all the blame. Here we are, seeing nothing is the same. Where does the ghost go from here?
It’s 5am, I’ve got nonsensical riddles on display and the Gods are poking fun at the answers. I’ve been talking to myself with a straight jacket and heckling the clowns in the audience because it feels like I’m on stage. I stumble with society because I force rhymes because I’m staring at a blank page. Take a long look at me and you may see yourself. The only distinction is that I’m not afraid to seek for help.
I was the ghost you made love to at the age of sixteen.Remember when I held you in my arms in silence when your nightmares wanted to scream. I was there when your world crumbled and you couldn’t move at all. I was there when the people around you started to build walls. I was there when the colors of your painting started to fade. I was there when your soul needed to be saved. Here we are, everyone is gone and I remain.Where does the ghost go from here?
She identified me an uncoordinated head shaking wallflower. I was dressed in awkwardness and mentally out of place. I use to strut into Jackknife Cafe with a buzz cut with my neon shirt with the jagged words “If you take a chance, I got a little something in my pants.” She glazed at me like a I was lunatic with pick up lines I bought from a used car lot. Our conversation drifted sideways, jumped into a canary yellow cab and headed into the Low Ball motel. Three sentences were muttered as my hand slid up her skirt. She chuckled at my clumsiness, thin frame, and off colored jokes.
I lit up a cigarette as she sipped on a bottle of Crown Royal. We played like snakes in the sky-high grass. Our tongues tasted like Satan’s favorite sin. I caught a glimpse of her blue eyed ink on her backside. I couldn’t whisper nothings in her ear. I crooned a satirical lullaby within the motion. I was her escape and she was my escapade. She was a luxury in my intoxicating eyes and I was her convenience from her view. She serenaded me for hours as we cracked the headboard and the sheets wore an exotic aroma.
We exchanged crude humor, fashion statements, and upside innuendos. Miraculously I shared a few confessions. I’m a contextualist, religious free, libertarian, and fond of simplicity drenched in beauty. The comfort creeped in like a stalker. She, Lisa Ann, laid her cards on the table. She’s finishing up nursing school, working at a thrift store, residing with her retired mother, and seeking a straightforward relationship. The peacefulness took a nap as we shedded our likes, dislikes, philosophies dipped in hunger, and a thirst for curiosity.
I didn’t anticipate the afternoon rendezvous. Expectations were dim and the walls in the room saw me grin from ear to ear. We parted ways as if our skin would touch again. I walked around town with a jukebox playing in my head and loved the New Jersey breeze more. Unfortunately our eyes met again on the somber sidewalk. I greeted her with joy and was reciting her name. She acted as if I didn’t exist and we never met. Instantly the warmth turned frozen. I continued to walk as the buffoon she met. I shoved my dignity in my pocket and never wanted to hear music again.
Would you be my savior between the echoes and my morning screams? Would you paint the daffodils in my lucid dreams? Would you erase the smirk from my face? Would you ever remove the melancholy from my darkest place? Would you ever silence me and rip the rhymes from my tongue? Would you gather all the pieces from my heart and mold them back to one?
Will you be my joy and sorrow dripping from my eyes? Will you be my forever and never say goodbye? Will you make promises that you won’t break? Will you learn from the blisters and the comforting mistakes? Will you hold me until the midnight cracks? Will you always have your tenderness send shivers down my back? Will you be my thunder and lightning that my pupils adore? Will you be the one to beside me forevermore? Will you be my waterfall when the wind loses all control? Will you fall in love with my weaknesses and the fragrance of my soul?
Could you be the one to calm my rattled nerves? Could you be the one to hold me when our road curves? Could you be the one to have all the answers to my endless questions? Could you be the song with a sweet hidden message? Could you be the one that makes me smile and laugh in the afternoon rain? Could you be my constant when everyone decides to change? Could you be the one that sets my heart on fire? Could you be the one to fulfill all of my desires? Could you be the one that feels my heart beat? Could you be the one that makes my life complete?
Television is a disturbance of luster and plentiful Television is a scandalous invention Television is a disruptive mechanism clogging your arteries Television is a vacuum sucking the cells from your cerebellum
And the imagination crumbled And the ingenuity succumbs And she seduces hour by hour
Television is nerve gas crippling your legs and motivation Television is a apparatus blended with hype and inferior hogwash Television is a machine gun of information with a steering wheel Television is a junkyard of contraband with sounds of justification
And the mind evaporates And the muscles sit And she seduces hour by hour
Television is a volatile substance with a grin Television is a crutch with a bomb chained to your feet Television is a fifty two inch rectangle civilians idolize Television is a glass religion with no faith
stomach acid gorges the frame of the picture ceramic villains stand in the center of the image credit card smiles seek the light of the troubled road wallets become empty as they cling to the objects of the room
Love was just a word to deceive
camouflaged tears reckon within the twitching of souls charades is not just a game but the poison they drank daily They laid drunk in the center of the bed photographing plastic memories
With bureaucracy, cities are filled with coal black odor and oily propaganda With a nation split, curbsides are weeping ignored tears With silent voices, the suburbs are submerged in delinquent credit cards With unlocked screens, cybersecurity is ringing in their ears With devastation, vacant buildings are filled with cynical vagabonds
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the thunderous chill I can feel the drops of poverty hit the ground
With phobias, the empyrean is brimming with frozen echoes and hallucinations With trampling chaos, wallets are vacant and figureheads spit out quarters With melancholy, anklebiters and adolescences lose a pinch of oxygen With blatant defamation, freedom is pulled and slapped With misinformation, points of view are written with a vindictive tongue With fraudulence, whispers and blackmail are sleeping in a king size bed
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the winter’s nights subside I can feel the battle’s fire descend
With deceit, finger pointing and raised eyebrows come with nail biting With money laundering, hands of indulgence are shaking With bombshells, ammunition comes in diabolical forms With sleep deprivation, insomnia is staring at the eyes of the moon With coercion, manipulation is a bouquet of addictive flowers With anger, the dust is swept away under a hand knotted rug
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel the pride sparkle like a star I can feel the graveyard’s breeze glisten
With commentary, opinions shuffle and parade in the opaque air With disregard, wings disintegrate and laughter is tossed in the dumpster With hopelessness, arbitrary symptoms turn into a derogatory spell With disinterest, the jargon is masked with ill conceived agendas With double talk, the carelessness tone is at full volume
Within the letters from Johnson Boulevard I can feel liberty silently falling from her cheek I can feel the compassion scream as the ink dries
Here I am, I don’t have followers I have sanguine blisters and indecisions stirring in my reckless mind I’ve stood in the corridor of my considerations and wide eyed aspirations I’ve been guided by intolerable vices, a stench of trivial knowledge and sarcasm I have concoctions growing in my garden I’ve borrowed money from my child like brother to rent a house not far from the Porcupine River We use to play like thieves, run like dogs, and wrestle in the amber mud for hours I live in a two bedroom apartment, One block away from the Midtown bakery On Sunday’s I can smell the Apple fritters I’ve worked at the local grocery store since I was fifteen “Lucky” isn’t a word in my vocabulary I bite my fingernails as I ponder in front of my 1971 typewriter From 9pm to 10pm I’m a rapid reader I fell in love with Mark Twain and the storytellers from the innocent wild Stuck on the lucid and elusive chapter ten Captivated between the commas and engaging dialogue I cough at the errors and sniffle at the page count of my thrill seeking novel I stretch out my imagination like a rubber band Manuscript growing like a an oak tree Here I am, born an offbeat writer The people who know me stand distant Afraid to crawl inside the brain of characters I left my day job at the age of forty two Perspiration and diligence were on my side
