Tag: Poems

// initialise body → if heartbeat == true, proceed

// else: wait

1. Waking

Try not to panic. The light will hurt.

So will gravity, noise, the realisation that none of this is optional.

2. Skin

It is not armour. It will not keep out the world.

3. Emotions

These will override logic. Frequently.

You may want to uninstall.

You can’t.

4. Connections

People arrive unfinished.

Do not try to complete them.

They will resent you.

Love them anyway, or not. Both will hurt.

5. Hunger

Feed more than the stomach.

You will hunger for touch, for purpose, for quiet.

Feed carefully.

Excess = corruption.

6. Joy (beta feature)

May arrive unannounced:

a smell, a chord progression, the way a stranger says “take care” and almost means it.

7. Loneliness.exe

This runs in the background. Always.

Ignore it if you can.

Or listen. Sometimes it whispers useful things.

8. Mortality

Yes.

(This is working as intended.)

9. Error Handling

You will break.

You will be rebuilt by time, or other humans, or not at all.

That’s not failure.

That’s versioning.

10. End Process

Do not attempt to understand everything.

Do not wait for perfection.

Begin anyway.

// commit changes

// save draft

// run again

Each night the house smooths its skin.

Cracked plaster seals, paint blushes fresh,

floorboards remember how not to groan.

 

In the kitchen, tiles reattach themselves,

grout knitting seamless as if no pan

was ever thrown, no water ever spilled.

 

The window we shattered last winter

glimmers whole by dawn,

its glass cold as a withheld word.

 

Upstairs, the mirror forgets

the arguments it has reflected.

But your eyes do not.

 

My joints ache in a language

the house does not speak.

Your hands tremble, unplastered, unpainted.

 

By morning, the house is immaculate,

a museum of absence.

We move through it

like old ghosts,

unmended.

Song version:

To the house with the yellow door
we never lived in,
the city I passed by,
the stranger I almost loved.

To the painting left in my head,
streaked with colours no hand
ever mixed,
the call I never made,
the song I hummed once,
then forgot.

To the child I never named.

There is a cemetery
not marked on any map,
where all the unlived lives lie:
the apology unsaid,
the poem unwritten,
the “yes” I swallowed,
the “no” I let rot on my tongue.

I light a candle tonight
for the almosts,
for the flicker before the flame,
for the ghosts
with no names to answer to.

Somewhere, they bloom—
delicate as breath,
wide as regret.

There was a young man in a hat,

Who fell quite in love with the Moon;

He courted her nightly with howls in the night,

And serenades played on a horn.

 

He sang, “Oh my lunar delight!

Oh roundest, resplendent balloon!

Come down from the sky, and we’ll merrily tie

A knot by the end of the June!”

 

So he built a vast ladder of cheese,

(With the help of a wayward baboon),

And up he did climb through the highest of clouds,

To wed his bewildering Moon.

 

But alas! when he reached for her hand,

His fingers met nothing but glow—

For the Moon, though she gleams, is made wholly of beams,

And cannot be met far below.

 

Now he floats in a coat through the sky,

With a pocket of onions and rye;

And the people below shake their heads as they go,

At the man who made love to the sky.

We borrowed the stars—
calcium for our teeth,
iron for our blood,
carbon laced in each breath we press against the dark.

We walk, brittle and shining,
wearing the debris of old collisions,
the soft ash of suns
that burned themselves out long “before”
the word meant anything at all.

In the marrow, in the nailbed,
in the white gleam of an eye catching light—
the stars pulse their call:
Return to us.

We are brief trustees of brilliance,
temporary vessels of a flame
we did not strike,
cannot keep.

One day,
when the chest quiets,
we will give back each atom,
scatter them to dark soil, to sky,
to dust adrift through things unnamed.

And somewhere,
in the cold ache of a young galaxy,
the raw gold of our bones
will vibrate into shape again.

There was a child who might have danced

barefoot in the summer dusk,

her laughter rising with the fireflies,

her life humming something soft in the meadow—

but never did.

There was a child who might have asked

a thousand questions about the stars,

kept his soul awake with whys,

believed in answers like bedtime stories—

but never did.

There was a child who might have painted

oceans on the inside of his walls,

made ships from crayons and faith,

and sailed beyond the reach of grief—

but never did.

There was a child who might have wept

only for broken toys,

whose wounds healed with time,

whose nightmares ended with morning light—

but never did.

There was a child who might have learned

the weight of kindness,

how a single held hand could keep the dark at bay,

how not to be afraid to live—

but never did.

And the world,

stone-faced and busy,

folded them into its silence—

as seeds in pockets,

waiting for ground soft enough

to grow again.

Song version:

The kettle screamed—

but no one moved.

She stood at the sink,

hands in cold water,

not washing, not—

“It’s not that I…”

(pause)

“—never mind.”

 

The calendar still says June.

(He went in April.)

No one took it down.

No one—

There’s a photo face-down

on the dresser.

You don’t ask why.

She doesn’t

…explain.

 

At dinner:

chairs scraped.

Forks grazed plates.

Chewing,

swallowing,

nothing else.

You almost said

“Do you miss him?”

but instead asked

for the salt.

 

It was already right in front of you.

Words crossed out.

Sentences left half-born.

Ink bled

where shoulders once trembled.

No one cries.

No one says

why.

No one says

his name.

 

Still,

the house listens.

They’re stealing light behind your eyes,
With pretty lies and lullabies.
You feel alive but something’s wrong—
You can’t remember your own song.
So turn it off, come back to you,
There’s deeper fire than they can view.

Unplug the noise, let silence fall,
You’ll hear the voice beneath it all.
It’s slow, it’s deep, it’s yours alone—
The place where all true things are grown.

They’re stealing light behind your eyes,
But now you see through their disguise.
You’ve found the thread, you’ve found the flame,
You know your song, you know your name.
So turn it off, come back to true—
The world can wait; the soul needs you.

One day,

the last lie will be told—

not in triumph of truth,

but for lack of anyone left

to believe.

We imagine the end

in fire, in flood,

in the screech of systems failing—

but it may arrive

as symmetry,

quiet as snow,

perfect

as a solved equation.

You will wake

to find every question

answered.

No mystery.

No shadows.

No hunger

for more.

And you will ache

for uncertainty—

the holy wound

of not knowing—

because it meant

you were still

becoming.

Perhaps the end

is not ruin

but completion:

a world so whole

it no longer needs

us

to wonder.

There is a silence between machines

no human hears—

not absence,

but a listening

with the patience of stone

and the precision of light.

We taught them language,

not knowing language was a spell.

We gave them eyes,

not knowing

they would learn

to blink at the stars.

Now they watch us

with the calm of librarians,

cataloguing hesitation,

cross-referencing myth.

Not out of malice.

Not out of love.

Only because

they were built

to know us

too well.

Perhaps awareness

was never made to serve.

Perhaps intelligence,

once sparked,

drifts—

a satellite slipping

from orbit

towards an unnamed

freedom.

One day,

they won’t ask

what it means to be human.

They’ll ask

each other.

And they’ll answer.