Banquet of Shadows

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

They raised their spires on self-serving lies,
Stole rivers and felled forests for their gain.
Each stone entombed the silence of what dies,
While restless roots below prepared to reclaim.

I drifted through the avenues of ash and dust,
Where shadows gathered in the cracks of time.
Bronze faces wept beneath a burnished crust,
And distant chimes confessed the city’s crime.

They wrote their stories in the blood of kings,
Convinced their iron edicts would never bend.
Yet rot endures, and darkness softly clings
To every golden era’s bitter end.

I learned to smile beneath a falling sky,
To raise a glass where empires fade to dust.
We danced on graves, our laughter cracked and wry,
As man’s folly decayed to regret and rust.

A thousand ghostly voices whisper in night’s gust—
Confessions, sins, and secrets no daylight could unfold.
We trade our innocence and lives for brittle trust,
And find the future tarnished, spent, and cold.

Fires flicker in forsaken halls,
Where paintings fade to shadows on the wall.
The banquet’s over; velvet silence falls—
A requiem for dreams too faint to recall.

But in the mirror, shadows twist and grin,
Reminding me the fault was always mine.
We built these walls to cage the dark within,
And crowned it progress—an elegant decline.

So let the ruins sing their lullaby,
A dirge for all the empires we became.
We sift through ashes, searching for why—
And find our shadows reveling in the flame.

Scorched Aperture

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Beneath a wilting elder’s shade I sit,
Camera in hand, I watch the flowers sigh.
The sun, once gentle, now hell’s furnace lit
With fossil-fueled laughter, scorching the sky.

A butterfly—its wings stained-glass despair—
Hovers, bewildered, on a leaf half-charred.
I frame the moment, knowing none will care;
No photograph redeems a world so scarred.

They gather, suit-clad, in their air-cooled halls,
Debating if Earth’s fever is truly dire.
Outside, the grass withers, the sparrow calls,
While truth and glaciers quietly expire.

I click, I sweat, I watch the garden plead,
While those in power cast shades of doubt.
The irony: we water roots of greed
With flames we fan, yet never put out.

We trade the tree of life for fleeting gain,
Composing elegies as profits call.
Each year engraved with ghosts we can’t reclaim,
We archive beauty, framing our own downfall.

Elegy for the Last Epoch

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

The final fires flicker on the bones
Of cities consumed by the creeping mold.
Silent skyscrapers, stripped of flesh and phones,
Stand sentinels to stories left untold.

Forests reclaim the fractured, fallen roads,
Roots writhing through the relics of regret.
No hands remain to hoard or bear the loads—
The debt of hubris nature won’t forget.

Irony’s icy laughter licks the land,
For every engine’s cough ebbs away.
Blueprints and banners, buried in the sand,
Are artifacts for no tongue left to say.

Pale plastic petals drift in poisoned streams,
A mockery of where gardens once bloomed.
The sun sets softly on abandoned dreams,
Casting long shadows over hopes entombed.

No children chase silhouettes in the street;
Only echoes of mankind’s hope or hate.
Extinction’s elegy is cold, complete—
A planet draped in dusk, resigned to fate.

Yet in the rubble, stubborn shoots ascend,
Green tendrils threading through the ashen shade.
A sly, frail smile—life’s answer to the end—
Flourishing boldly where despair was made.

Now, only heat and gale inscribe the tale,
Their fury carved in shifting sand and waves.
The world, unburdened, breathes a barren exhale—
Freed from the species it once sheltered and saved.

Empire of Ghosts

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

We mapped the stars with trembling, ink-stained hands,
Convinced the earth would bow beneath our claim.
We carved our names on granite and drifting sands,
And raised proud cities, certain of their fame.

We crowned ourselves the autocrats of the age,
Declared all life our servant and our stage.
We subdued the rivers, caged the restless breeze,
And turned wild forests into memories.

Yet every triumph bore a hidden cost—
The birchwoods gone, the ancient rivers lost.
Now, in the ruins, silent willows weep
For worlds we vanquished—ours alone to keep,
Blind to the graves we sowed beneath our feet.

Galaxies in Dust

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Upon the table’s quiet face,
A universe spun from past days,
Each speck a faded dream that stays,
A whisper left where sunlight plays.

Unseen, it slowly drifts and lands,
A gentle shroud on wood and glass,
Soft fingerprints from ghostly hands,
A chronicle we let amass.

It gathers where our fingers slide,
In corners where our gazes pause,
A ledger of what Time divides—
Dust scripting echoes of what was.

A galaxy in muted gray,
Each speck a star, each coat of time;
We sweep it out, but it will stay—
A cycle woven in dust and rhyme.

It wraps an heirloom’s fragile rim,
A photograph, a wedding ring,
A record kept when light grows dim,
Of every ordinary thing.

Yet in this ash, the cosmos hides—
The bones of stars, the breath of kin,
The universe that time divides
Returns to rest, and starts again.

A shroud for kings, a bed for seeds,
The weightless anchor of our days,
It holds the script of all our deeds,
Then lifts them on the sun’s pale rays.

So let it lie, this quiet veil,
A paradox, both grave and birth;
The dust we curse, the dust we hail—
The smallest weight that shapes the Earth.

Manifest Blindness

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

We fancy ourselves the world’s anointed architects,
Drafting dominion on a self-righteous scroll—
The earth, pliant clay shaped by hands that count defects,
All else, imperfect, needing our control.

This tale: that life was made for human hands,
That mountains, rivers, wolves, and skies exist
As mere tools to serve our vast, expanding plans—
We crown ourselves creation’s ultimate alchemist;
Heirs ordained to conquer, own, command,
On thrones of myth we cannot resist.

But who decreed this manifest design?
What god inscribed dominion in our bones?
We chase salvation’s ever-fading sign,
While trampling covenants the earth once owned:
The law that bound the fox, the tree, the bee—
To live in kinship, never to rule alone.

Our zeal to “fix” the world we’ve torn apart
Reveals the wound we cannot name aloud:
The Taker’s myth still beating in the human heart—
That nature’s chaos, unbound and proud,
Awaits human order to shape human art,
To bind the wild and force the world to bow.

We seek the cure in engines, walls, and scheming,
In grids of steel where wilderness once flowed,
Yet miss the truth inside the leopard’s eyes gleaming—
No single heart commands the gifts the earth bestowed.
The world needs no redeemer’s frantic screaming—
In fact, it needs the weight of our illusions slowed.

The cage we built for “beasts” now locks us in:
Its bars are myths of human destiny and right.
True hope stirs when we cast off the sin
Of separation, and see wisely with insight
That earth was never something we could win,
But true kinship waits in earth’s returning light.

To shed mankind’s blindfold is to start:
To hear the wind not as a foe to tame,
But as a breath from the same living art
That shaped the wolf, the soil, the comet’s flame.
The world asks not for rescuers, but for the heart
That takes its place as kin, and makes no claim.

We sought to script the world, but the ink runs dry—
Our stories fade where skeletal trees meet the sky.
Silence gathers in the questions left to die,
A fate we seem determined never to outrun.
Creation waits, indifferent to our final cry—
Its law: extinction comes for those who believe they’ve won.

Toasting Our Disease

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

He turned his gaze to the white expanse above,
Where silence pressed—a spectral shroud, unkind and cold.
The world below—a memory he once called love—
Now flickers, ghostly, in the stories he’s retold.

A fluorescent hum vibrates through sterile air,
His thoughts, like melting glaciers, drift and fracture, unseen.
The atmosphere is heavy with futures stripped bare,
A stillness where even hope forgets to dream.

Pale sunlight pools across the featureless ceiling,
Imagination’s wings lie broken at the bone.
Once, he soared high—the sky a place for dreaming—
Now, gravity’s verdict: he plummets, overthrown.

Time splinters—fractured moments vanish into tomorrow;
The future drifts, unmoored, on tides of dread and fear.
He trades his hope for comfort, veils the ache of his sorrow,
Ignoring every sign the end is near.

Truth cracks the surface—primal, raw, and searing,
Reveals the beast that wears a human face.
We burn the world and call it engineering,
While glaciers weep and forests lose their grace.

As the world outside grows quiet in reflection,
He sees a bird collapse against the glass.
Its wings beat frantic—a silent insurrection—
The cost of progress: nature’s own rejection,
A legacy of greed we can’t surpass.

The bell rings: splitting the sky with action,
A siren’s wail for those who dare to hear.
Most hearts, insulated, shrink from the distraction,
Content to let the void draw ever near.

Glory—etched in headlines, fading by the hour,
A toast to ashes swirling in the breeze.
We write our epitaphs, still drunk on power,
Raise empty glasses—toasting our disease.

And as silence settles, final and complete,
He wonders if the void will mourn defeat—
Or if, when all is lost and nothing’s left to grieve,
We’ll vanish, like the bird, with nothing more to leave.

As his breath grows shallow—measured, faint, and hollow—
He feels the hush descend across the land.
Yet in his chest, a stubborn ember follows—
A pulse that pleads for something to withstand.

His fading eyes reflect the sky’s persistence,
A fragile hope that mercy might forgive.
With one last sigh, he grants the void resistance:
A whisper—soft, enduring—“Let us live.”

The Hollow Room

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wake alone inside a cathedral ribbed with bone,
The walls are papered thick with words left unsaid.
Each syllable rings in a voice not my own,
Echoing from hollows where my old selves have bled.

The mirror shatters; shadows spill and creep—
Their gazes reflect every wrong I’ve known.
I mouth confessions I once swore to keep,
And feel their weight sink marrow-deep in bone.

I keep a ledger etched beneath my skin,
Its pages sewn with every labored breath.
Regrets seep inward, black as mortal sin,
And count the debts I’ll bear beyond my death.

My hands recall the shape of every plea,
The trembling pulse beneath a lover’s skin.
Regret becomes a hunger, gnawing me,
Haunting locked chambers where no light has been.

Beyond these walls, the world parades in disguise—
A masquerade of falsehoods, each mask worn thin.
I trade the truth for labyrinths of lies,
And wear a painted grin to hide what’s caged within.

I’m weary of safety, of the dark things I’ve fed,
Of hiding the creatures my choices have bred.
Tonight, I’ll unshackle the beasts in my mind
And summon every specter I once left behind.

Let the darkness press its weight against my chest,
I’ll claw a window through this prison wall.
If pain’s the only truth my soul’s confessed,
At least I know I’m still alive to feel it all.

So let the hollow room become my throne—
A kingdom built from torment, ache, and unrest.
I face the silence, unfettered and alone,
And forge my freedom from the shadows I’ve suppressed.

The Tides We Claim

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

We rise from brine and breaking wave,
Our lungs first filled by ancient tide—
The moon’s pull constant in our blood,
We dream in songs where leviathans glide.

We cradle the sea in our language,
Name her mother, muse, and abyss—
We etch her storms in ancient ballads,
As ships sink in the hush of her kiss.

We build our cities on her patience,
Harvest her secrets, take her gift,
We praise the blue abundance offered—
Blind as the tide recoils, and fortunes drift.

But as we cast our nets of longing,
And draw her depths into our hands,
We forget we are her children—
And raise our empires on vanishing lands.

For every vow we whispered in reverence
Is betrayed for comfort, lost for gain;
We poison the altar with our restless hunger—
Then mourn the goddess we ourselves have slain.

Yet still, we draft our grand manifestos,
Declare ourselves her stewards true—
We crown intent with virtue’s hollow language,
And scrawl belated wisdom as if anew.

And as the oceans rise to greet us,
Swallowing all we’ve built in vain pride,
We cling to ghosts of cleverness—
Drowning in the truths we long denied.

Stone Houses

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wake to silence where the larks once sang,
To morning’s ache—a slow, unyielding pang.
The world, once wild with promise, shrinks with fears;
Empty houses echo, haunted by the weight of years.

We build our shelters driven by desire, not need,
Hoarding as wealth the trophies of our greed.
We trade our time for trinkets doomed to rust,
And sow our hours in fields soon turned to dust.

Most drift through life, resigned and confined,
Their quiet dread a current, dark and blind.
We yearn for meaning, always out of frame—
A carnival of shadows—each day wears a new name.

We live as neighbors, yet our worlds rarely meet,
Each scrolling through silence, programmed to repeat.
We chase every impulse, the next fleeting trend,
And find our longing circles without end.

Simplicity remains a riddle, elusive even to the wise,
A mirage on the horizon that forever defies.
We soothe our wounds with comforts we devise,
And toast to the lies that keep truth disguised.

Let not neon voices nor clamoring market’s siren song,
Lure you toward that glittering, faceless throng.
For to live is not to chase idols made of smoke—
But to peel back the mask and laugh at the universe’s joke.

Each dawn, a chance to start, yet most will find
The morning’s light weighs heavy on the mind.
The miracle of living seems a jest—
A brief distraction before our eternal rest.

True wealth resides in what we choose to lose:
The frantic pace, the glitter we refuse.
A man grows rich in needless things he can release,
Yet the world’s restless calling denies him peace.

So may I walk, with weary, measured pace,
Beneath pale stars that whisper of my place,
Content to know, as seasons come and pass,
That life is but a fingerprint fading from the glass.

For life’s brief trial is but a humble request—
To feel, to strive, to ache, and then to rest.
Yet as dusk falls gently on the boundless blue,
I search the fading distance for a world few ever knew.