Drowning thoughts,

Frightening bots,

Tightening knots,

Stretching cots.

Spending nights where silence stays,

Those once near now drift in haze.

Newborns cry while old dreams fade,

Life still pokes like a thorn, half-flayed.

Throwing cards like Gambit in trance,

Wolverine healing wounds in advance,

Guarding ghosts in a still war dance

Captain’s shield, but pain’s in my stance.

Ignored like Van Gogh’s brush, dismissed,

No match in talk no spark, no twist.

Living buried, unloved, unkissed.

You pick my lines like hidden gifts,

Mining my silence for what you missed.

Falling asleep to Bach’s slow ache,

Reading murals like fossils flake.

Straying far from the guided wake,

Dockside thoughts while clocks forsake

Still chasing time that love won’t take.

I am what John Clare wept in the rain,

Loving like Sidney, stuck in the pain.

Filed like Kennedy in unjust chains,

Still syncing rhymes like rusted trains

No coins for art, just cold disdain,

While chimes move on like I’m insane.

Descendant dusting domains,

Remnant rusting remains,

Tenant teaching terrains.

Standing alone in a monsoon’s beat,

Tears erased in the storm’s deceit.

Life is a gamble with rigged receipts.

Like stations the trains refuse to meet.

Like grain dying at a farmer’s feet.

The mirror breaks, but I repeat,

Inside and out, numbness complete.

In love with Penelope, like Sidney’s plea,

My muse chose elsewhere never me.

My heart breathes smoke like a chimney,

Like Astrophel, I bleed poetry.

Like Pliny the Elder in volcanic light,

I chased the ash for truth and sight.

Not to escape, but to ignite

I walked into ruin, thinking it was right.

I wrote to remember, I burned to write.