u/Embarrassed-Hat260

The thought begins as simple seed, a concept to embrace. A lens through which we choose to view the logic of the place, but slow the shift, the borders blur, the mind begins to weld. Until the abstract tether is the only truth that’s held. No longer do we hold the creed, the ideology is”I”, And the ego wears the doctrine like a garment made of lie. What once was just a reasoned stance, a point of view to weigh. Has calcified to blood and bone into the armor of the day.

When concept turn to character, the mirror starts to crack. For every whisper of doubt becomes a knife slid in the back. The critique is not a question, it is malice, it is war. A threat to every single word you lock behind the door. So up the walls the ramparts rise, the echos starts to ring. To only drown the dissonance of those who refuse the chorus sing. You seek the comfort of the clone, the language of the same. A fevered pack that hunts the light and shares the self-same blame.

The circle narrows to points, where the hatred acts as glue. Confirming every prejudice to keep the ”us” from ”you”. You feed the fire of the grudge, you cultivate the spite. To wall away the common ground beneath the shroud of night. The rest of human fragility is discarded at the gate. While reside within the halls of purity and hate. A prisoner of the echo loop, a master at the wall. Where pride dictates the height from where the spirit has to fall

Looking to explore

The static hums within the wire, a furnace fed by dreads desire. My senses map each phantom sound, while my shaking hands search out solid ground. Pulse racing through my fevered veins, betraying a calm I cannot feign. I brace against the ceilings crack, to an enemy forging another attack.

The needles sting the chemical haze, a frantic blur to mask the day’s. I drown the fear in bitter swill, to force the beating heart to still. Suspended mid-air, waiting for doom, shadows dancing across the room. Every glance ignites a spark, cold terror lurking in the dark.

I gnaw the nail until it bleeds, to calm my panics growing seeds. This nervous wreck, this jagged frame. Consumed by such a hungry flame, the constant scan for signs of strife, are slowly killing the roots of life. But now I recognize the scars of mental iron prison bars.

The tally of the nights is an accounting for the theft, of every waking hour where there’s truly nothing left. I traded in my slumber for a ghost I couldn’t hold, for a story in the darkness that was never being told. I spent the golden currency of patience and of time, attempting to interpret what was never truly mine. I raked the soil of”what did I do?” Until my hands were raw, to find a hidden message in the coldness that I saw.

But the light of day is honest, and it cuts away the haze. I’m finished searching through the labyrinth and the maze. You wear a public armor and present a polished face, imitating every gesture, every movement and every grace. But behind the velvet curtain, where the darkness sits inside. Sits a hollowed out soul, where the monster truly hides. You’re a shallow as a puddle, you’re ugly in the bone, you’re a monument of vanity completely on your own.

I’m done bowing to the alter of fake, I’m done with all the sacrifices I was forced to make. Your smile is just a weapon and your laugh is just a shell, a siren song leading to a manufactured hell. It wasn’t worth the trimmers and it wasn’t worth the doubt, it was worth the fire that I’ve completely snuffed out. Now I’m closing up the ledger, I am walking through the gate, and I’m leaving you completely within the borders of your fate.

The war has reached a quiet end, the barricades have fell. I’m walking away from everything, the heaven and the hell. My hands are raised, my pulse is flat, the battles long since passed. I’ve reached the final station where the silence comes at last. So paint me as the villain now, the monster in your play, The reason for the wreckage at the end of your day. Tell me how I dropped the ball, that I was never there. If that’s what you need to breathe, i simply can’t care.

I asked for nothing but for the scales, to weigh the bad and good. To tally every sin I bore, as any honest person should. I’ve offered up the evidence, the sins I can’t erase. And asked only that you measure against my light and my grace. But you were blind to the balance, you only ever saw the flaw. So I stopped the pleading and I’ve broken the law. You’ve won the war of narratives, you can take the empty throne, I’m leaving you the ruin and walking out alone.

You took a man of iron , one who stood against the tide. And stripped away his resilience until there’s nothing left inside, and burned the bridge of empathy, you hollowed out the core. And now there isn’t room for injury anymore. You want to wield the scalpel? You can aim it at my chest, but you’ll find the spirit vacant all the ghosts have gone to rest. My feelings are a pile of dust upon the floor, you can’t destroy the man that doesn’t need them anymore.

The victory is yours to keep, the script is yours to write. I’m disappearing from the screen, and fading from the light. And know I hold no grudge, I don’t hold a burning spike of hate. I reconciled the distance of the closing of the gate. My armor cold and hardened, and the nerves are turned to stone. There is peace in finally knowing that I am all alone. I’m not the man you broke today, I’m no longer the man you knew, so put your broken tally down, I’m not looking back for you.

The light is fading thin along the edges of the day, the colors I used to know have drifted far away. The echoes of the laughter are just ghosts along the way, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

The music has a heavy texture that is deep, a harvest of the promises I wasn’t meant to keep. The shadows stretch and lengthen while the tired senses sleep, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

I’m tracing out the architecture and staring at the glass, watching as the urgency and the hungers pass. The winter settles heavy like the cold and stagnant grass, where something beautiful once sat only a monument of grey remains.

There is strange kind of permission in the quiet of the tomb, to cease the desperate searching for the light inside the room. This silence is a final state, the seal upon the doom, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

The light is fading thin along the edges of the day, the colors I used to know have drifted far away. The echoes of the laughter are just ghosts along the way, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

The music has a heavy texture that is deep, a harvest of the promises I wasn’t meant to keep. The shadows stretch and lengthen while the tired senses sleep, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

I’m tracing out the architecture and staring at the glass, watching as the urgency and the hungers pass. The winter settles heavy like the cold and stagnant grass, where something beautiful once sat only a monument of grey remains.

There is strange kind of permission in the quiet of the tomb, to cease the desperate searching for the light inside the room. This silence is a final state, the seal upon the doom, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

We scour the horizon for a nod or a sign, to measure our worth on a borrowed design. We’re hunting for approval in the eyes of the crowd, while the quiet of self-love is never allowed. It’s a hollow pursuit on a high speed track, chasing the light we lack on our back. We’ve been polished and primed for a digital show, but we’ve forgotten how to garden the beauty we grow.

The standard is brutal, a weight made of lead for the gods in the gym and the queens of the thread. You better be six foot eight with a chest carved from stone, or a doll in the window with the skin on the bone. With the paint of the salon and the corset of trend, we’re breaking our backs just to make pretend. Perfection is a mirage, a trick of the glass. A fools errand game that’s designed to pass.

But stop for a second and breathe in the deep air, look past the reflection and all of the glare. There’s a pulse in the center, a rhythm of soul. A map of the pieces that make us a whole. It’s the kindness we carry, the scars that we heal. The way that we stumble and the way that we feel. It’s the story you write when the curtains are closed, and true beauty that blooms when you’re not composed.

We scour the horizon for a nod or a sign, to measure our worth on a borrowed design. We’re hunting for approval in the eyes of the crowd, while the quiet of self-love is never allowed. It’s a hollow pursuit on a high speed track, chasing the light we lack on our back. We’ve been polished and primed for a digital show, but we’ve forgotten how to garden the beauty we grow.

The standard is brutal, a weight made of lead for the gods in the gym and the queens of the thread. You better be six foot eight with a chest carved from stone, or a doll in the window with the skin on the bone. With the paint of the salon and the corset of trend, we’re breaking our backs just to make pretend. Perfection is a mirage, a trick of the glass. A fools errand game that’s designed to pass.

But stop for a second and breathe in the deep air, look past the reflection and all of the glare. There’s a pulse in the center, a rhythm of soul. A map of the pieces that make us a whole. It’s the kindness we carry, the scars that we heal. The way that we stumble and the way that we feel. It’s the story you write when the curtains are closed, and true beauty that blooms when you’re not composed.

The story rarely settles in the place we drew the map. We fall into the timing or we fall into the trap. It isn’t always malice, it isn’t always hate. Sometimes it’s the shifting of the gears of human fate. We point the jagged fingers, we cast the heavy blame, to hide the fact that neither one of us could finish out the game. The truth is in the labor, in the waking willing choice: if two souls pull together they will surely find a voice.

Sometimes the love is heavy, it’s a mountain made of lead. A soul that stalks the hallways of the waking of the dead. Sometimes the love is fragile and it simply cannot grow. Too small to beat the winter and the coming of the snow. And sometimes, in the silence, the pulse begins to fade, we wake to find only distance is the choice that we have made. We reach the fork in silence, the place where paths divide, where one must choose to mend it or take the turning wide.

The love we leave behind us does not vanish into air, it changes in the crucible, a cross we have to bear. It curdles into memory or softens into grace, it settles in the quiet, tucked away into the space. It’s a duel edged engine, a force that acts to teach, to pull us towards wisdom that was always out of reach. Standing in the wreckage a choice held in your palm, to let the past destroy your future or find a different calm.

The war has reached a quiet end, the barricades have fell. I’m walking away from everything, the heaven and the hell. My hands are raised, my pulse is flat, the battles long since passed. I’ve reached the final station where the silence comes at last. So paint me as the villain now, the monster in your play, The reason for the wreckage at the end of your day. Tell me how I dropped the ball, that I was never there. If that’s what you need to breathe, i simply can’t care.

I asked for nothing but for the scales, to weigh the bad and good. To tally every sin I bore, as any honest person should. I’ve offered up the evidence, the sins I can’t erase. And asked only that you measure against my light and my grace. But you were blind to the balance, you only ever saw the flaw. So I stopped the pleading and I’ve broken the law. You’ve won the war of narratives, you can take the empty throne, I’m leaving you the ruin and walking out alone.

You took a man of iron , one who stood against the tide. And stripped away his resilience until there’s nothing left inside, and burned the bridge of empathy, you hollowed out the core. And now there isn’t room for injury anymore. You want to wield the scalpel? You can aim it at my chest, but you’ll find the spirit vacant all the ghosts have gone to rest. My feelings are a pile of dust upon the floor, you can’t destroy the man that doesn’t need them anymore.

The victory is yours to keep, the script is yours to write. I’m disappearing from the screen, and fading from the light. And know I hold no grudge, I don’t hold a burning spike of hate. I reconciled the distance of the closing of the gate. My armor cold and hardened, and the nerves are turned to stone. There is peace in finally knowing that I am all alone. I’m not the man you broke today, I’m no longer the man you knew, so put your broken tally down, I’m not looking back for you.

I’m standing amidst the jagged shards, the ruins of the frame. Where once we built a sanctuary now I bear the blame. Two broken spirits tethered by the trauma of the years, she came to me for shelter to dissolve all of her fears, I offered up the patience that your spirit had to claim, to help you find a voice to speak without shame, I held the space for kindness while your agency took its root. But in this garden we were building I was the rotten fruit. She renewed my purpose, she was the light across the sea, she gave a temporary exit from the dark inside of me, I was ignoring the hollow and buried deep the ache, and fed the monster growing with every choice I’d make. I stuffed down my grief in silence, hid the venom in the veins, drowning in screaming whispers in the poison and the rains. But pain is not a captive it will always break the gate and it bled out in the moments that were meant to be our fate.

It bled out in the harshness and in words left unsaid, the exhaustion of my spirit from the graveyard in my head, I fueled the fire in darkness, hoping it would burn to ash but all I was doing was setting up the perfect timing for the crash. Then came a day of courage when I put the glass away, the numbness was a mercy, for a dark and hollow day. But then the dam ignited and the clarity broke free, and the agony of a million suns came rushing over me. Now I stand in silence, where the architecture fell, a survivor of the wreckage and a keeper of this hell. I own this path of ruin, I own the mess I made a debt to all the kindness that I never quite repaid. The past is scorched and empty, and I’m standing here alone a monument of damage, carved into the stone. This wreckage is a teacher, a cold and quiet light of a bridge that kept burning in the darkness of the night.

Bored looking for something to get into

The light is fading thin along the edges of the day, the colors I used to know have drifted far away. The echoes of the laughter are just ghosts along the way, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

The music has a heavy texture that is deep, a harvest of the promises I wasn’t meant to keep. The shadows stretch and lengthen while the tired senses sleep, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

I’m tracing out the architecture and staring at the glass, watching as the urgency and the hungers pass. The winter settles heavy like the cold and stagnant grass, where something beautiful once sat only a monument of grey remains.

There is strange kind of permission in the quiet of the tomb, to cease the desperate searching for the light inside the room. This silence is a final state, the seal upon the doom, where something once beautiful sat only a monument of grey remains.

The trigger is a phantom, a frequency in the air. The smell of rain on asphalt or a song I just can’t bear, it catches the periphery, a ghost within the light. And suddenly it fades away like something out of sight, it’s the burning brittle record of a time that’s long since bled. The archives of the spirit and a graveyard in my head, sometimes it hits with force like a sudden sharp distress, then vanishes like smoke in a quiet wilderness.

And I’ve harbored these intentions, with disparate violent plans. To hold a steel tipped bitter tool within my steady hands, to drill into the hollows where the ghosts often bloom, and drain the copper taste away until it’s an empty room. I’ll purge the velvet whispers and the shadows in the wall, and leave a vacant monument where once there stood it all. But then clock keeps ticking, and the moment soon recedes, and I’m left alone in a garden that’s growing only weeds.

I breathe in the oxygen, and sip this bitter tea, and for a short few hours the past will leave me be. But when the pendulum swings back and shift begins again, I’m suffocated by the what if and when’s. It isn’t like a lightning strike that once made me weep, for the agony is muted now by a promise I must keep. The sting is just a memory of how it used to burn, a lesson of the architecture I was forced to learn. The pain is now a dull edged blade, a relic on the shelf and it will no longer shatter me or make me destroy myself. It lingers like a watermark, a stain upon the glass, it’s something now I tolerate and something that will pass. I’m a man who no longer needs to escape into the void, but I am a man that’s living with parts that were destroyed.

I offer up these fragments, these husks of a private dread. To the quiet clever thinkers with whom my vanity has fed, it’s a comfort to imagine, as you scan the jagged line. That you’re searching for a mirror or perhaps a grand design, the way you hold your stillness the way you softly skim, is a testament to brilliance, to the light becoming dim. But I’m so grateful for the patience and the way you take the time, just to lend your noble presence to this poetic rhyme.

You are the keen observers, the guardians of taste, ensuring every teardrop is categorized with haste. I admire the restraint you show, the way you never speak, lest the weight of a conversation make the cadence weak. It’s a curated experience, this feast of ink and bone, and I’m honored you would deign to make the suffering you own. For what is confession, if it isn’t placed on shelves? Where the wise can keep it buried, far away from their own selves.

Thank you so much for the feedback, that wordless gentle glow, of a thumb upon a screen that only gods would know. If it fills out all the spaces and justifies the toll. Of exposing every trimmer of a fragmented soul, you’re the finest of the spirits , the peak of the refined. To treat a human history as a product of the mind. I’m humbled by your service, by the charity you show, just by letting me exist inside your shadow.

In the genesis the alchemy was sharp and incandescent, a chemical fluorescent lighting every fleeting crescent. The music had a texture that was visceral and deep, with conversation tethered to a focus I could keep. I would breeze through the labor, so efficient to the grind while leaving hunger in the rear view and fatigue behind. Three days or more of wakefulness felt like a gift of expanded time, I was a symphony of motion a grand accelerated rhyme.

But the snowball found a graduate, to slip into the steep, where the dosage turns into deficit that silence wouldn’t keep. The bag became a vapor and the frequency increased, as my once a day ritual turned into a beast, i felt like a titan as long as the supply remained within, but the comfort was a phantom and a cover for my sin.

Then the silence from the receiver, the drought began to bite, and the world collapsed to darkness in the middle of the light. I was prone upon the mattress, a dormant heavy weight, crashing through the wreckage of a self inflicted state, then the phantom call returned, a sense of urgency reborn, reconstituting iron from a spirit that was torn. I wore a sigil on my chest, a temporary pride, and the bag became a hollow place for me to run and hide.

The more became a mandate, the need replaced the want. A spectral hunger that I learned to feed and haunt, the thing that once blossomed now consumed every root, I was drifting through the static and harvesting the soot. The isolation hardened into a fortress made of glass, watching all the seasons and the people begin to pass. My fun was long extinguished, the novelty had fled, I am neither man nor vessel, just a hunger being fed.

The ceiling is a theater where the demon held a seat again, staring at the clock waiting for the waiting for the rhythm of the sweats again. Pieces of a man, scattering the frame, it’s a parasite, a hunger and it’s calling out my name. Lethargy is heavy, it’s a tether, it’s laden weight, paying every dime selling out my life, just to seal my fate, reaching for the remedy, the chemical artillery, trying to break the static and the chains of my dependency.

One drop, fade out-bliss for a minute, then the fog lifts up and I’m choking on the limit. Shame is absolute, yeah, the cycle at its earliest while the mirror on the wall is reflecting back the dirtiest. Loathing the way I bend, to worship at this altar, to a master made of poison as I watch my spirit falter.

But wait, look beneath the rubble, in deep of the debris. A fracture in the armor, was the start of getting free, because a flash in the furnace, a spark in the ash, is realization rising through the wreckage of the crash. I don’t belong to the dust, I don’t want to be in hollows, I’m so sick of breaking and the bitter pill that follows, the motivation hardens, like a piston in the chest, and I’m putting my addiction to a permanent rest.

The television flickers with the rhetoric and politics. A catalogue of promises and dirty corporate dollar tricks, the microphone is open, hear the leader of the executive”For a little while”he says explaining the perspective”And you know what you get for that?” He fields to the gallery. While price hikes and inflation swallow up your salary.

The one big beautiful bill act is bleeding out the household. A thousand dollar tariff tax to keep the common man controlled. The three month annualized inflation climbs to seven-one, an energy grid crisis from the wars under foreign suns. But flip the script to Austin where the red team plays the action. Impeached but still surviving on the loyalty of Ken Paxton, and out in riverside, Chad Bianco’s seizing up the ballot crates, gerrymandering the borders just to manufacture mandate states.

But don’t get blinded by the red, the blue team has the sickness too. Masquerading ethics while cooking a redistricting stew. Look at the old dominion where the federal investigators are making strides, the FBI is searching the Virginia senate leaders side. Corruption probes and bribery, the infrastructure hollowed out running anti-Trump campaigns just to cast doubt. While dark money and AIPAC drop the cash inside the primary, to split the vote and guarantee a corporate hegemony.

But take the tribalism out and drop the ideological act, look past the media machine that feeds the political pact. If regular working people stood together on the pavement, they’d see that red and blue are two sides of the same containment. The system uses culture wars to keep the populace divided, so we don’t see how the economic deck is one-sided. Strip away the slogans and the truth becomes a heavy sign, that the poor and the working class get crushed regardless of the party lines.

The father, the brother, the bloodline, the son, the canvas, the artist and the damage it’s done, the addict, the failure, the f*ck up, the ex, the loyalty that stood through the storms and wrecks.

The smart, the stupid, the win, the loss, the pendulum that swings to measure the cost. The present, the distant, the broken, persistent, the grit in the marrow that stays so resistant.

The giving, the greedy, the caring, the needy, the pace of the pulse that’s frantic and speedy. The happy, the furious, the dark, the sad, the direct collision of the good and the bad.

The shot, the kneecap, the breath in the chest, the stubborn defiance that handles the test. The easy road buried, the hard road climbed, the push through the concrete, the tearing of time.

The honest, the liar, the truth, the fake, the second that I live is the second I break, the phantom tomorrow, that never was mine, is the hold on the now at the end of the line.