The Watchmaker’s Lament

Tags

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

Among his gears and springs precisely wound,
The watchmaker heard time’s relentless sound.
Each tick, each tock, each chime a mournful sign,
Resounding through the workshop of his own design.

He’d crafted clocks for fifty years or more,
But lately heard their tickings all conspire—
The pendulums like scythes across his floor,
Each hour that drew him nearer to death’s pyre.

He prayed to halt the pendulums’ ghostly dance,
To still their swing, defy cold circumstance;
But time, amused, unmasked its ageless grin,
And sent him endless work he’d ne’er begin.

He smashed the first at quarter after three,
Its face reminded him of wasted years.
He crushed the next at half-past, lost in lunacy,
But found the silence bred more desperate fears.

For when the ticking stopped, he felt it still—
The phantom pulse beneath his trembling skin,
The seconds marching forward, cold and shrill,
The drumbeat of mortality within.

He wound the clocks, then set them all to chime,
Then stayed their hands and stopped them once again.
If he could just arrest the tide of time,
Perhaps he’d stay Death’s unforgiving chain.

But time cares not for mortal dread or wish—
It flows regardless, merciless and true.
His heart, a clock of meat and blood, grew skittish,
Its rhythm faltering to something dark and new.

He clutched his chest, tumbled through gears of grime,
His workshop silent save his labored breath.
A lifetime spent in measuring out time
Had brought him face to face with certain death.

They found him there at dawn, his eyes still wide,
Surrounded by the timepieces his hands arrayed—
Each clock had stopped the instant he had died,
As if time froze the moment his soul had paid.

His spirit turned within the gears he made,
Condemned to wind the ages without cease;
While time looked on, unmerciful, unswayed,
And mocked his toil with sardonic peace.

The Clock Within the Soul

Tags

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

Within a shop of dim, forsaken wares,
A clock sat silent on its dusty throne;
Its face unscarred by time’s relentless cares,
Its hands forever fixed at twelve alone.

The merchant smiled, a secret on his lip,
“This timepiece measures not hours as they flee,
But frees its keeper from time’s unyielding grip—
And grants its bearer immortal majesty.”

I bought the clock and set it by my bed,
And watched its motionless hands hold the night,
While all around me, mortal minutes fled,
Yet I remained untouched by morning’s light.

The months grew pale, my friends all waned to gray,
While mirrors showed my face unfazed by years;
I laughed to see time’s reach held far away,
And mocked the world’s age-ravaged tears.

But soon I found the seasons lost their form,
While lovers aged and memories seemed the same;
Each joy grew stale, each passion lost its storm—
An ageless fool in time’s relentless game.

I struck the clock, my hope beyond repair,
But found its glass no mortal hand could break,
Condemned to watch eternity laid bare,
I lived to rue the choice I dared to make.

The centuries like drifting ashes pass,
And I remain as empires rise and fall,
The clock’s dark jest reflects within its glass—
Time stopped for me, yet freed me not at all.

The merchant’s smile consumes my haunted mind;
For those who flee time’s toll must pay the whole.
Who shun the hours that fate itself designed,
Will find each moment torment to the soul.

Each wish to cheat the scythe becomes a chain,
Forged link by link in silence, pain, and woe,
For Time, though still, will evermore remain
The master none may bribe nor overthrow.

So heed, you dreamers hungering to flee,
Beyond the hold of hours that claim their due—
No art nor prayer nor cunning sorcery
Can halt the clock that lives and dies in you.

The Last Orator

Tags

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

In shadowed halls where silence chills the air,
I stand alone—the final voice of reason;
Before cold seats, abandoned, mute, and bare,
The ghost of truth betrayed by human treason.

I mount the boards where greater minds have stood,
With scrolls of proof and diagrams precise;
I speak of rot beneath the polished wood,
Of creeping flame and innocence sacrificed.

My voice rings clear through rafters and balconies,
Through galleries dressed in dust and tarnished gold;
I warn of fire, flood, and slow disease,
But only echoes mock what’s long foretold.

The clock ticks on, a tyrant in disguise,
It hoards the hours we squander in our haste;
Potential burns like stars in midnight skies,
Yet systems strangle it—dreams condemned to waste.

I show them trends, the cost of broken chains,
The mathematics mapping our decline,
The melting caps, the droughts, the parched remains,
Yet every seat remains a voiceless shrine.

Our laws, those iron webs woven with care,
Protect the few, yet bind the many’s plight;
They promise justice—noble, bright, and fair—
Yet crush the seeds of change beneath their might.

Outside, the world parades its garish charade,
The barkers crying fortunes to the skies;
The crowds that spurn the truths I have displayed
To chase the painted miracles of lies.

They crowd the rooms where hucksters mislead, cheat,
Where smoke and mirrors veil the abyss approaching,
They pay with their lives for comfort’s honeyed deceit,
While I stand still, my dark omen encroaching.

The engine drones on toward oblivion’s pyre,
They measure worth by cold mechanical charts,
Each wheel spins us far from life’s lost choir,
Their souls betrayed by withered, hollow hearts.

And when the blaze at last consumes the stage,
Survivors may return—bewildered, rueing.
They’ll sift the ashes, searching for a sage,
Finding only my warnings carved upon the grave of our undoing.

Even Ruin Has Form

Tags

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

The barn that raised me bowed with grace,
Surrendered slow to patient rot—
Its weathered walls the green reclaim
A shrine to things the years forgot.

The rafters sag like broken vows,
The loft where swallows stitched their nest
Now opens, raw, to grasping boughs
That pierce the ribcage of its chest.

I climbed these beams when they stood tall,
While hay dust whirled through honeyed light—
Now lichen veins the listing wall
And dims my childhood into night.

The door hangs crooked, half-unhinged,
A mouth mid-sentence, mute with shame—
The paint that once was white has thinned
To ash, as if confessing blame.

It kept our secrets, kept our tools,
Our rusted tractor, winter’s feed—
Now only stillness and shadow rule,
The hallowed psalm of fallen seed.

I loved you vertical and square,
Sentinel cut against wind and storm—
Yet watching you unravel bare
Is to learn even ruin has form.

The beauty isn’t what you were,
But what you’ve given to the ground—
How gracefully you now confer
To wilderness without a sound.

You caved, but not without goodbye—
This splintered hymn through roots and stone.
The things that shelter years gone by
Must fall to feed the forest’s throne.

2035: Permanent Crisis – The World After American Unraveling

Tags

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

Introduction

By 2035, the notion that humanity is on a steady arc of expanding freedoms, material security, and political progress has been replaced by a paradox of abundance and instability—an epoch of persistent, often overlapping crises that batter even the most developed societies. Globalization, once celebrated as an engine of mutual benefit, now reveals itself as a carrier for planetary risk: a disruption in one region—be it a cyberattack, a climate event, or a new pathogen—sends shockwaves through fragile supply chains, financial markets, and political systems everywhere.​

The United States, once the chief architect and guarantor of liberal order, now epitomizes the hazards of backsliding. Its political transformation into an oligarchic managed democracy has global ripples: international standards weaken as Washington abdicates leadership on climate, human rights, and security; alliances fracture as trust erodes; and autocrats worldwide feel emboldened to tighten their grip without fear of global censure. What happens in America is mirrored in the world: crises of legitimacy, soaring polarization, and the collapse of shared truths become planetary facts of life.​

Beneath the surface, the most civilization-endangering data all points toward the relentless convergence of four historic megatrends:

  • Ecological Overshoot: Civilizations now run against ever-tighter planetary boundaries. Earth’s biosphere can no longer absorb the externalities of economic expansion, leading to mass species extinctions, topsoil loss, aquifer exhaustion, and climate systems buckling under anthropogenic stress.​

  • Demographic Explosion and Aging: The population curve has bifurcated between the explosive growth of largely ungovernable urban slums in the Global South and the cascading demographic collapse in wealthy societies, straining both young and old.​

  • Faltering Legitimacy and Institutional Decay: Public faith in expertise, the rule of law, and even basic national identity is undermined by the very technologies and media once hailed as liberators. Truth and authority grow ever more contested, destabilizing the state’s capacity to respond to collective threats.​

  • New Forms of Violence: From automated drone warfare to rampant organized crime, violence is being privatized, fragmented, and diffused throughout society, eroding the distinction between war and peace, security and chaos.​

This 2035 is not merely “dystopian”—it is a landscape where basic assumptions about progress, order, and security are upended. Yet, as this essay details, adaptation and renewal remain possible—not from above, through heroic intervention, but from below, in networks of resilience that cross old boundaries of nation, class, and ideology. The age of permanent crisis is as much an evolutionary test as it is an epitaph for a passing world.

The New Authoritarian Normal

Executive Supremacy and the Erosion of Checks

By 2035, the collapse of governance is not merely a story of corrupted elections or the loss of institutional checks, but a wholesale transformation of how power is conceived and exercised in society. The U.S. federal government—once an exemplar of constitutional limits—will bear the hallmarks of classical despotism, cloaked in bureaucratic routine and the familiar rituals of democracy. Descent into executive supremacy means whistleblowers are criminalized, courts are routinely bypassed, and opposition parties exist only to create a façade of pluralism.

The Collapse of Decentralized Innovation

The implications extend far beyond the federal level. State and local agencies, once laboratories for democratic innovation, are financial wards of the central government, kept compliant with the threat of fiscal strangulation. Major media outlets, consolidated into a handful of conglomerates, self-censor or amplify the party line, amplifying “manufactured consensus.” Technology platforms, both public and private, become tools of mass surveillance and algorithmic control: dissenters are deplatformed, protest is digitally cordoned and rendered ineffectual, and the line between social science and behavioral control blurs into irrelevance.

Global Wave of Managed Democracy

Globally, America’s self-demolition catalyzes a wave of competitive authoritarianism and “managed democracy.” In states such as Russia, Turkey, and China, the ascendant model mixes relentless technological monitoring, legalistic suppression, and the co-optation or destruction of civil society. Even in places like India, the judicial system is packed, the press is threatened, and security agencies operate as extensions of the leader’s will rather than the rule of law.

Paralysis of International Governance

International governance enters a state of paralysis. Increasingly, powerful states ignore treaties, rewrite trade and security arrangements for narrow nationalist interests, and wield global institutions as weapons for retaliatory politics, not as arenas for global problem-solving. UN peacekeepers mutely witness atrocities, the World Health Organization is blocked from pandemic zones, and the WTO is stuck in endless deadlock over climate-related trade barriers.

The New Normal: Apathy and Episodic Unrest

What is most civilization-endangering is the normalization of this collapse: the world’s “new normal” is not civic engagement and shared progress, but widespread apathy, episodic unrest, and the durable expectation that force, not consensus or legality, determines outcomes. The project of liberal modernity, far from inevitable or self-sustaining, stands revealed as a historical exception—now rapidly fading.

Environmental Havoc and Resource Wars

Climate Chaos and the Politicization of Survival

By 2035, environmental havoc and resource wars have blurred the line between “natural disaster” and “political emergency.” The steady drumbeat of climate models has given way to a reality of accelerating feedbacks and unexpected cascades. Unprecedented heatwaves—frequently surpassing 50°C (122°F) in parts of South Asia and the Middle East—render entire regions intermittently uninhabitable, forcing the temporary or permanent displacement of millions. In North America and Europe, “once-in-500-year” mega-fires and crop failures are now recurring events, decimating both food supplies and public confidence in the state’s capacity to respond.

Saltwater intrusion renders freshwater aquifers unusable along entire coastlines, from Egypt’s Nile Delta and the Mekong to the American Gulf Coast, causing small and medium-sized cities to literally run out of water for weeks or months at a time. Strategic infrastructure—power plants, data centers, food storage, and ports—require militarized protection or forced abandonment, as gangs or desperate populations seize whatever can be used or sold.

Urban Exodus and Fortress Civilization

Urban flooding is not just a story of coastal megacities. Inland cities too are battered by swelling rivers, overwhelmed storm drains, and crumbling infrastructure built for a vanished climate. Jakarta, Mumbai, Miami, and parts of New York see regular “climate exodus” periods where millions temporarily shelter in manufactured tent cities or move in with relatives, overwhelming already strained services.

The lens of “environmental security” now shapes geopolitics as much as traditional military doctrines. China’s damming of upstream rivers amplifies irredentist tension with India and Southeast Asia; the U.S.-Mexico border is as much a climate barrier as a geopolitical one, and North African states deploy special forces to secure dwindling wells and desalination plants. Meanwhile, black-market trade in water, food, precious metals, and even genetic seeds rivals the revenue of drugs or arms.

Martial Law and the New Order

Internal security responses are often indistinguishable from martial law: climate emergencies become pretexts for indefinite curfews, aggressive suppression of civic protest, biometric monitoring of population flows, and even the suspension of core civil liberties. Governing elites frequently retreat behind fortress infrastructure, triggering a new “archipelago” model of civilization: stable, heavily protected islands of privilege floating in a sea of ever-accelerating collapse.

Planetary Megaslums and Urban Fragmentation

The Rise of Global Megaslums

By the mid-2030s, the relentless surge toward urbanization has collided with chronic underinvestment, ecological strain, and state retreat—creating the unprecedented phenomenon of planetary megaslums. Globally, over 70% of people live in cities, and well over one billion reside in informal settlements or slum-like conditions—zones marked by makeshift structures, lack of secure tenure, and irregular or absent municipal services. In Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America, entire megacities have become mosaics of walled enclaves standing amid vast districts abandoned by formal governance.​

Engines of Ingenuity, Laboratories of Dysfunction

These urban margins are both engines of resilience and laboratories of dysfunction. On the one hand, their citizens display extraordinary ingenuity: underground economies thrive, mutual-aid societies emerge, and digital connectivity brings global influence. Yet daily life is increasingly shaped by overlapping “stress tests”—gang violence, erratic electricity and water, forced evictions, and outbreaks of disease or food riots.​

Digital Tools as Double-Edged Swords

The spread of digital technology has done little to democratize or liberate. Instead, smartphones and social platforms have become double-edged weapons—ubiquitous tools for controlling population flows, suppressing unrest, and maintaining new forms of extortion and digital kidnapping. In states where governance survives, policing is marked by algorithms that profile entire communities; in those where it has failed, criminal cyber-cartels fill the void, wielding both digital power and street violence.

Fortress Zones and Escalating Division

For the wealthiest and best-connected, the solution is flight: the “fortress zone”—hypermodern compounds secured by private security and ringed with digital exclusion zones—becomes the new urban ideal. Meanwhile, rising migration from ecological collapse zones only sharpens these divisions, sparking fear, nationalism, and militarized borders in the North, and periodic xenophobic violence within the cities of the Global South.

Erosion of trust is the defining feature. Urban dwellers expect more from governments and receive less, and even basic hopes for upward mobility are focused on gaining entry—however fleeting—into the world’s shrinking islands of stability and privilege. The result is the central paradox of the 2030s: in the most densely networked, information-rich century in history, billions of city dwellers feel more isolated, vulnerable, and cynical than ever before.​​

Permanent Crisis and the Patchwork Planet

Crisis as Equilibrium

The “Permanent Crisis” of the 2030s is now the default operating condition of the planet, a structural reality as consequential as the global order that followed World War II or the industrial revolution. The word “interregnum”—once used for a brief transitional chaos—no longer applies: humanity inhabits a permanent state of layering and competing crises, where expectations of lasting equilibrium have been extinguished.​

Survivalism and Adaptation

In this world, society oscillates between brief, localized moments of renewal and periods of profound collapse. The collapse of international norms—evident in the unraveling of treaties, the rise of mercenary warfare, and “might makes right” trade politics—has forced both nations and individuals to adopt a stance of constant adaptation, risk management, and survivalism. There is broad acceptance that large-scale progress is no longer inevitable and that the best outcomes may now be defined in starkly relative or even negative terms: avoiding collapse, staving off famine, slowing the pace of decline.​

The Patchwork of Inequality

This “patchwork” planet creates radically uneven daily realities. Technology and wealth allow some cities, regions, and enclaves to create small “islands of stability”—carbon-neutral eco-communities, resilient supply webs, and even cultural mini-renaissances. But there is no systemic reintegration. Most of the world’s population must navigate precarity, disorder, and eroding trust—hope and progress forced to compete with anxiety and status anxiety.

2035 Scenarios by Region

United States: The day-to-day reality is one of constant “triage governance.” Elite-protected zones thrive with private security, gated supply lines, and fully digitized citizenship, while vast swathes of exurban and rural America fade into managed neglect. Civil unrest—and separatist or “autonomy” rhetoric from states—flares episodically. The continuity of the union is maintained more by digital surveillance and economic dependency than by shared civic purpose.​

China: Though the Communist Party asserts stability, the background is roiling: water riots in the north, worker and ethnic protests in the west, and renewed tensions in Hong Kong and with Taiwan. Large internal migrations outpace the state’s ability to plan. The “social credit” system, once an instrument of discipline, now breeds subtle resistance, and digital workarounds. Belt and Road projects abroad have become leverage points for new forms of debt peonage and regional backlash.​

European Union: The EU’s borders are “soft” for the rich and “hard” for the desperate. Schengen collapses periodically under pressure from megadroughts and failed states on the periphery; military walls and surveillance zones proliferate in the Mediterranean and Balkans. The ongoing viability of the euro depends on regular bailouts, forced migration quotas, and fractious summitry, as right-nationalist parties score wins by exploiting the cycle of chaos and fear. Mediterranean summers regularly claim thousands of lives from heat alone.

Africa: Nearly 800 million people under age 25 scramble for work, water, and stability. Some growth hubs leverage renewable energy and digital services, creating pockets of prosperity, yet conflict and mass displacement are routine. Interstate boundaries matter less; power and security often devolve to armed factions, resource consortiums, or faith-based movements. Africa’s urban revolutions are both celebrated (in creative economies, fintech, and pan-African organizing) and feared (in flash-mob riots, slumlord-sponsored violence, and porous borders for trafficking).

South Asia: Here, the “perfect storm” of demographic, water, and heat crises drives continuous humanitarian emergencies. The Indian subcontinent experiences annual internal displacements of tens of millions, with flood and drought cycles punctuated by border clashes. Political polarization becomes radicalized by algorithm and AI-driven media, accelerating sectarianism. Shadow governance by organized crime, insurgent populists, or multinational firms recasts what “sovereignty” means for hundreds of millions.

The Fragmentation of Conflict—Warfare in the Age of Permanent Crisis

The Rise of Revolutionary Chieftains

These revolutionary chieftains are not only military warlords, but also charismatic populists, cyber leaders, and even corporate oligarchs whose main legitimacy comes from providing security, survival, or social “goods” amid systemic collapse or deepening state illegitimacy. Their power is as much digital as territorial—ranging from local water mafias and resource militias to online movement leaders with loyal flash mobs and access to drone swarms.

Proxy Wars and the Blurring of Boundaries

Proxy wars—ostensibly fought for national or ideological objectives—are increasingly indistinguishable from battles over resources such as lithium, cobalt, and water, or from large-scale criminal operations like cyber-extortion, ransomware, or control of food and fuel supply. As armed groups seize territory and control infrastructure, “governance” becomes a service for hire rather than a shared social contract.​

The New Military Terrain: Tech and Disruption

At the same time, great-power rivalries (US-China, India-China, Russia-Europe) remain acutely dangerous, especially as military technologies have proliferated to weak and failing states, and warfare now extends to space, cyberspace, and even commercial supply networks. Drones, AI-driven decision systems, and cyberattacks reconfigure the battlefield, making it possible for even small actors to paralyze entire cities—or for rival superpowers to threaten global catastrophe almost instantaneously.

Chronic, Decentralized Violence

Perhaps most destabilizing, violence itself is now chronic, low-intensity, and decentralized—manifesting as paramilitary policing, gang warfare, ethnic cleansing, cyber-assault, and algorithmic control more often than as outright traditional war. No population—whether in Lagos, Lviv, Los Angeles, or Lahore—is entirely immune from the friction of unpredictably shifting alliances and the sudden rise of new armed “security entrepreneurs.”

Technological Acceleration and Social Unrest

Algorithms, Surveillance, and the New Social Divide

By 2035, the fusion of AI, automation, and pervasive surveillance has become the scaffolding of most societies—enabling both unprecedented technocratic power and profound social dislocation. From the public sphere to daily domestic life, predictive algorithms and real-time monitoring shape opportunities, behavior, and even perceptions of reality. The gap between “insider” and “outsider” is enforced by digital means: the privileged enjoy frictionless access, personalized services, and algorithmic advantage, while outsiders face opaque scoring, employment exclusion, and algorithmic policing.​

The Psychic Toll of Automation

Mass unemployment, or permanent underemployment, is now a structural feature in many economies. Whole professions vanish in a single policy cycle; retraining cannot keep pace, and universal basic income schemes, where they exist, serve more to pacify than empower. As a result, the psychic toll—alienation, status anxiety, resentment—becomes a potent source of unrest.​

Misinformation, Flash Protest, and Automated Repression

Digital technologies intensify polarization and mistrust. AI-generated mis/disinformation, deepfakes, and hyper-personalized propaganda saturate both public discourse and private lives, eroding even basic agreement on facts or moral legitimacy. “Flash mob democracy” emerges, with protest coordinated through encrypted messaging or viral memes—only to be quickly fragmented by automated, preemptive policing and digital containment. In authoritarian settings, AI-based surveillance is so granular—tracking biometrics, movement, and digital interactions—that the very possibility of anonymous dissent is quashed before it can take root.​

Cyberspace as Battlefield

Cyberspace is a contested, multipolar warzone: states, insurgent groups, criminal syndicates, and global firms all use “cyber weapons” ranging from ransomware and blackmail to manipulation of supply chains and infrastructure. As AI systems play a larger role in national security and politics, questions of accountability, transparency, and bias reach existential levels, yet legal and democratic oversight fails to keep pace. Many people’s only recourse is to withdraw—turning to privacy countermeasures, analog subcultures, or intentional ignorance, deepening the cycle of social arrest and fragmentation.

Patchwork Resilience and Local Renaissance

City-State Innovation and Place-Based Solutions

Even in a world steered by uncertainty and fragmentation, renewal takes root in local and adaptive initiatives that defy the old logic of top-down governance. Across the globe, city-states and distinctive regions—especially those in Scandinavia, East Asia, and Central America—lead the transition toward resilient, place-based experimentation. These societies emphasize circular economies, risk-aware planning, and public participation; in China, for example, dozens of pilot cities now act as laboratories for comprehensive climate adaption, combining digital innovation with ecological restoration and community mobilization.​

Grassroots Adaptation and Community Networks

The most dynamic forms of renewal emerge at the grassroots. Where state order has receded, mutual-aid networks organize everything from food banks to neighborhood security to underground medical care. Polycentric technology collectives and open-source innovation hubs—often operating beneath official notice—recombine skills and resources to make communities more self-sufficient and information more resilient to censorship. Local journalism and independent digital platforms flourish in “failed” states or abandoned zones, providing vital transparency and narrative amid state propaganda or silence.

Episodic Global Coordination, Persistent Localism

Though global efforts at coordination falter, necessity sparks episodic bursts of effective collective action: consortia of nations, corporations, and NGOs do at times marshal the resources to confront pandemics, hacktivist campaigns, cyberattacks, or climate-fueled disasters. These moments of partial unity tend to arrive late, last briefly, and leave uneven legacies—but they prove that global cooperation, while fragile, is not extinct.

The Mosaic Planet—Uneven Resilience as the New Hope

Most critically, the pattern of resilience is patchwork, not uniform. The “mosaic planet” of city-scale resilience and regional adaptation, not universal reform, defines hope in the 2030s. Ordinary people—facing what once would have been insuperable crises—are catalyzing new forms of survival and flourishing, often out of sight of the world’s remaining “big systems.”

Comprehensive Reference List:

Introduction / Permanent Crisis

The New Authoritarian Normal

Environmental Havoc and Resource Wars

Planetary Megaslums and Urban Fragmentation

Permanent Crisis and the Patchwork Planet

Regional 2035 Scenarios

The Fragmentation of Conflict

Technological Acceleration and Social Unrest

Patchwork Resilience and Local Renaissance

When Headlights Fade

Tags

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

The headlights carved her dying scream,
Through shattered glass and twisted chrome,
Each night revives our fractured dream,
Where memory feeds a catacomb.

The crash site lingers in rust and rain,
Each bloodstain weeps with her ghost’s embrace,
Her laughter cracks the windowpane,
As the wreckage recalls her missing face.

Her presence haunts the driver’s seat,
Her murmur leaks from cracked veneer,
And though fate claimed her story incomplete,
She rides beside me, always near.

At every turn, the shadows lean,
Her hand still meets my restless own,
The night rewinds what day has seen,
And claims the road as love’s headstone.

Last week I found her shattered ring,
It pulsed with heat when I drew near,
And in the dusk’s pale beckoning,
Her ghost reached out and tried to steer.

She spoke in static, faint and slow,
“Let go the dawn, forget the pain,”
But love’s a wreck that won’t let go—
It circles back through smoke and flame.

I drive the stretch where silence grew,
Where tires once wailed our tragic part,
Forever the headlights burn as two—
Like souls entwined beyond the dark.

So if you see me roam the bend,
With radio set to static tune,
Just know I ride where memories send—
And trace her spirit’s enduring rune.

The Witches’ Benediction

Tags

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

Beneath the moon’s unholy, ghost-lit glow,
Three witches knelt where curling vapors massed;
Their voices rose through midnight’s breath of woe,
To snare the soul of one who wandered past.

A traveler came with slow and weary tread,
His lantern wan, its trembling light grown thin;
He shivered ‘neath the dreams that terror bred,
Yet dared to gaze upon their ancient sin.

“Old hags,” he cried, “what arcane elixirs brew,
What whispered rites corrode this hallowed hill?”
They grinned as spectral airs about them blew,
Their eyes aflame with prophecy and will.

“We stir the grief that haunted years have made,
And bind the lies that fester deep inside;
For long ago, by broken vows betrayed,
Our mortal hearts in endless torment died.”

They bade him taste the cauldron’s lurid green,
He laughed and drank the strange, forbidden wine;
The stars fell silent above the haunted scene,
His words grew dim within the veil of cruel design.

The eldest witch grew thin and slowly decayed,
Her withered hands lost form in spectral mist;
Within his trembling heart, the final price was weighed,
A soul exchanged, his former world dismissed.

The traveler shrieked, transformed in the old hag’s guise,
His once-fair features gnarled and twisted by lament;
She strode away, now gleaming with his stolen eyes,
And vanished down the moonlit road where once his youth was spent.

And so their haunting song persists as pale dawn slowly breaks,
Three twisted shadows wandering, long bereft of earthly grace;
They lure the vain, whose harsher judgment makes
A mockery of beauty’s fragile face, now marked by time’s embrace.

The Quiet Collapse: Institutional Decay, Elite Consolidation, and the Erosion of American Democracy

Tags

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

Introduction

The United States today stands at an unprecedented and perilous historical juncture, witnessing a profound and rapid transformation under President Donald Trump’s reign—one that carries the unmistakable hallmarks of a creeping authoritarian state coupled with rampant lawlessness. What might once have been dismissed by some as mere political dysfunction or policy miscalculation is now undeniably a systematic and strategic dismantling of the very pillars upon which American democracy and constitutional governance have long stood.

Trump’s second term is revealing a chilling blueprint of authoritarian consolidation: an executive branch aggressively dismantling democratic institutions, subverting the rule of law, weaponizing government apparatuses, and destabilizing economic foundations, all with ruthless precision. This is not random chaos born of incompetence but a coordinated project to concentrate power narrowly and unaccountably, placing the presidency and its oligarchic beneficiaries above legal and democratic scrutiny.

The ramifications are both far-reaching and deeply unsettling. Fundamental rights—freedom of speech, assembly, impartial justice—are eroding beneath an unprecedented assault from within. The social contract that binds citizen to state frays as trust in government evaporates. Economic upheaval, exacerbated by deliberate sabotage of labor markets and global trade ties, fuels widespread misery and desperation ripe for authoritarian exploitation.

At the heart of this report is a synthesis of extensive and corroborative evidence. It brings together the findings of exhaustive legal investigations that expose a culture of contempt and defiance for judicial authority; congressional records documenting vocal protests against lawlessness; nuanced economic analyses uncovering intentional infliction of damage on the American workforce and markets; and exhaustive political commentaries detailing the calculated sidelining of democratic norms. The administration’s actions clearly demonstrate a deliberate strategy of economic sabotage used as a mechanism to consolidate control.

This report situates these elements in concert, providing a comprehensive and multidimensional indictment of a regime that has not only broken the law but has warped the very framework of democracy itself. The assembled evidence paints a disturbing portrait: America is not merely struggling with governance challenges but is actively being transformed into a lawless authoritarian regime—the full consequences of which threaten the liberties and lives of future generations.


Economic Sabotage: Foundations of Authoritarian Control

The initial and perhaps most insidious front in this lawless authoritarian project is the calculated sabotage of the U.S. economy, a weaponized assault intended to unravel social cohesion, obliterate public confidence, and pave the way for unchecked executive supremacy. Far from an unintended side effect, this economic destruction reflects a meticulously orchestrated five-step strategy that actively weaponizes labor, trade, finance, institutions, and wealth concentration to undermine American democratic resilience.

Shrinking the Labor Force: Engineering a National Crisis

The Trump administration’s uncompromising crackdown on immigration has manifested not only as harsh border policies but as a ruthless campaign targeting millions of undocumented workers vital to the functioning of critical industries. These workers, who historically make up roughly 50% of the agricultural labor force, construction crews, hospitality sectors, and essential services, have been subjected to mass deportations, aggressive workplace raids, heightened employer sanctions, and restrictive visa policies, including a prohibitive $100,000 one-time fee on H-1B visas. October 2025 investigative reports reveal this campaign has directly precipitated catastrophic labor shortages nationwide, with declining foreign-born workers leading to unharvested crops, slowed construction, and record staffing crises in hospitality and other sectors. The Labor Department has officially acknowledged that these policies risk a severe labor shortage exacerbated by the near total cessation of illegal immigration inflows, while studies project the U.S. workforce will shrink by 6.8 million by 2028 and 15.7 million by 2035 due to combined effects of reduced legal immigration, increased deportations, and visa restrictions. These disruptions trigger food insecurity, inflation of prices, and supply chain chaos disproportionately impacting working families, heightening societal anxiety and economic precariousness.​

Trade Isolationism: Severing America’s Global Lifelines

The administration’s retreat from internationalism compounds economic destruction in dramatic and unprecedented ways. Unilateral tariffs imposed on critical partners such as China, the European Union, Mexico, and Canada obliterate decades-long, carefully negotiated trade alliances and provoke retaliatory tariffs that severely cripple American exporters. In 2025, the Trump administration enacted tariffs at levels not seen since the Great Depression, including a baseline 10 percent import tariff on all countries plus reciprocal tariffs initially set at 34 percent on Chinese goods, which were quickly escalated to over 125 percent amid retaliatory rounds. These punitive tariffs have devastated industries ranging from automotive and steel manufacturing to agriculture, especially soybean farmers who have lost vital export markets due to China’s retaliatory tariff hikes. Many American firms face insolvency or are forced to offshore production to avoid tariff burdens, undermining domestic manufacturing capacity and jobs.​

Equally damaging is the administration’s abandonment of multilateral trade frameworks such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The withdrawal from such agreements alienates traditional allies and accelerates their shift toward China-led blocs like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), eroding America’s historical position as the “indispensable nation” in global commerce and geopolitics. This pivot to isolationism debilitates both export-driven sectors and broader economic growth, fueling investor uncertainty and worsening economic pain for working-class Americans who depend on stable manufacturing and trade-linked jobs.​

These aggressive trade policies, marked by retaliatory spirals and strategic disengagement, stoke fears of sustained economic decline and geopolitical marginalization, underscoring a central pillar of the authoritarian economic sabotage blueprint.

Financial and Monetary Destabilization: Eroding the Bedrock

Destabilizing the financial system is a cornerstone in the authoritarian blueprint observed in the Trump administration’s tactics. This campaign attacks the very foundation of American economic stability and global financial hegemony, with dangerous consequences for millions of citizens.

The administration has repeatedly undermined the Federal Reserve’s independence—a long-established pillar of economic governance—by publicly attacking and seeking to remove key Fed officials who resist politically motivated calls for interest rate cuts and stimulative policies. Economist Lisa Cook, appointed by President Biden to the Fed Board of Governors, faced unsubstantiated allegations and an unprecedented removal attempt by Trump, which she is legally challenging. This blatant political interference threatens to weaponize monetary policy, making it subject to short-term political whims rather than long-term economic stability.​

The shadow of a U.S. debt default looms large amidst political brinkmanship, as Trump uses refusal to raise the debt ceiling as a coercive tool in an ongoing power struggle. The potential default risks immediate global financial chaos, since the U.S. dollar underpins the international monetary system. Capital flight and rising borrowing costs are already observable trends as investors question the country’s fiscal prudence and political stability.​

Domestically, millions of American households face the erosion of their retirement security as inflation soars and real interest rates fluctuate unpredictably. Deregulation of banking, the rapid growth of unregulated cryptocurrency markets, and removal of safeguards have magnified systemic financial vulnerabilities, making devastating market crashes more likely. These factors collectively drive profound uncertainty through all levels of the economy.​

This financial erosion, far from incidental, is a calculated move to destabilize public faith in governance and economic institutions. It paves the way for the imposition of extraordinary emergency powers, justified by the need to “restore order” amid crisis. The undermining of central bank independence is not unique globally, but the outsized significance of the Federal Reserve’s role means that these assaults carry risks well beyond American borders.​

Weakening and Partisan Control of Institutions: Sabotage from Within

The collapse of democratic governance under the current administration is deeply rooted in the systematic weakening and politicization of America’s institutions—a shadowy sabotage that parallels the visible economic and political decay. Federal agencies once responsible for enforcing economic fairness, protecting workers, and negotiating fair trade have been weakened through sustained budget cuts, orchestrated staffing purges, and the placement of ideologically motivated appointees whose primary loyalty lies with the executive rather than the law.​​

Key regulatory institutions have experienced capture by commercial and political interests, transforming from impartial watchdogs into tools of partisan enrichment and ideological control. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has been stripped of its enforcement powers while rolling back decades of pollution and climate regulations, directly threatening public health and the environment. Similarly, labor protections are undermined by appointing industry-aligned officials who actively obstruct union organizing and worker safety initiatives.​

Agricultural support agencies, critical for sustaining family farms and rural economies, have failed to provide assistance amid escalating labor shortages and trade conflicts, forcing many farms into financial distress or bankruptcy. The Department of Commerce’s evisceration through budget cuts and leadership changes has handicapped the administration’s ability to negotiate meaningful trade deals, exacerbating ongoing trade wars and creating policy incoherence harmful to American exporters and consumers alike.​​

Furthermore, the judiciary and law enforcement agencies have become increasingly politicized. Courts face relentless pressure to align rulings with executive interests, prosecutors have weaponized charges against political opponents, and law enforcement agencies prioritize political loyalty over public safety and impartial justice. This corrosive politicization erodes public trust in essential institutions, fostering cynicism and disengagement among the citizenry.​​

Compounding these institutional failures, intrusive regulatory rollbacks imperil essential consumer protections across sectors from finance to food safety, leaving Americans vulnerable to corporate malfeasance and systemic neglect. With institutional checks disabled and civil society delegitimized, the United States is increasingly incapable of meaningfully responding to economic crises, social inequalities, or public health emergencies.​

This governance vacuum, cannibalizing itself from within, leaves the executive branch as the sole remaining functional pillar of state power. The consolidation of authority thus becomes a self-fulfilling cycle—weak institutions force more centralization, which further weakens the broader democratic ecosystem, paving the way for entrenched authoritarianism.

Consolidation of Wealth and Political Power: Oligarchic Authoritarianism

In the chaotic economic landscape wrought by the Trump administration’s policies, an alarming concentration of wealth and political influence has accelerated among a narrow oligarchic elite, many with direct and personal ties to the regime. This consolidation acts both as a consequence and a catalyst for the autocratic transformation underway.

Tax policies enacted over the past two years have disproportionately favored billionaires and multinational corporations, instituting sweeping permanent tax cuts that decimated state revenue streams and reduced funding for public services essential to social stability. These fiscal policies were deliberately designed to funnel wealth upwards amid greater societal deprivation, exacerbating inequality and social polarization.​​

Deregulation has played a key role in enabling these oligarchs to accrue assets at distressed or artificially undervalued prices amid market collapses and economic dislocation. Wall Street deregulation, coupled with weakened antitrust enforcement, has facilitated a wave of mergers and acquisitions concentrating economic power within a handful of financial and industrial conglomerates closely aligned with Trump’s inner circle. This consolidation mimics patterns observed in hybrid authoritarian states where political insiders exploit crises to entrench economic control.​

Moreover, the administration’s systemic economic sabotage—through labor shortages, trade isolation, financial destabilization, and institutional weakening—is not random but serves the self-interest of this oligarchic class. Economic destruction compels policy shifts favoring austerity, deregulation, and privatization that entrench elite privilege, effectively insulating the ruling class from democratic accountability. This self-serving economic architecture subsidizes political repression by underwriting security apparatuses used to suppress worker and citizen dissent.​

The result is a hybrid authoritarian political economy—a permanently embedded oligarchy wielding state power for private gain while dismantling the pluralistic checks essential to democracy. This consolidation is not merely economic but political, as these elites gain disproportionate influence over policymaking via direct channels to executive offices, lobbying, and regulatory capture. This system structurally marginalizes ordinary citizens, rendering democratic processes nominal and hollow.

This orchestration of wealth concentration sustained through authoritarian means presents a grave challenge to social justice, political renewal, and the foundational ideals of America’s constitutional democracy. The permanence of such an oligarchic state threatens to foreclose future political alternatives and heralds an era of entrenched autocratic rule masked by electoral facades.

Judicial Accountability: An Overwhelming Record of Contempt

The lawlessness of the Trump administration unravels most starkly in the courts, where an unprecedented series of judicial findings reveal a pattern of blatant disregard for lawful authority and constitutional order. The exhaustive report, “The Presumption of Regularity in Trump Administration Litigation,” documents this era-defining assault on American judicial norms in chilling detail, underscoring the depths to which the executive branch has sunk.

Willful Disregard of Judicial Orders

At least 20 documented cases involve explicit, willful defiance of court mandates. The administration has repeatedly ignored injunctions, refused to halt illegal deportations, and failed to deliver court-ordered documents or testimony. Among the most stark examples is the case overseen by Judge James E. Boasberg, who found probable cause to hold administration officials in criminal contempt for covertly deporting dozens of Venezuelan migrants to detention in El Salvador, despite clear judicial orders prohibiting such actions. The judge lamented the administration’s “deliberate or reckless disregard” of binding commands and open defiance that threatens the very integrity of the judiciary.​​

Other critical cases include the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which led to a unanimous Supreme Court ruling mandating his return and expedited testimony from government officials under oath. Federal courts have also repeatedly enjoined unlawful political interference in university research funding, collective bargaining, and agency conduct—actions routinely ignored or delayed by the executive branch.​

This sustained refusal to comply undermines the foundational principle that no branch of government stands above the law. Legal scholars warn the nation teeters on a constitutional crisis as executive disobedience erodes judicial authority at an unprecedented scale.​

Misleading and False Government Representations

More than 40 cases reveal disturbing patterns of the administration submitting false, misleading, or deliberately obfuscatory information to courts to evade accountability. Judges have scathingly dismissed affidavits as “disingenuous,” “patently incredible,” or worse, leaving courts skeptical of virtually every factual claim from executive counsel. The administration has employed elaborate legal smokescreens, mischaracterizations of precedents, and assertion of state secrets as pretexts to avoid transparency.​​

Examples include attempts to withhold evidence related to migrant deportations, inconsistent sworn declarations undermining litigation integrity, and egregiously misleading testimony on the scope and rationale of politically motivated enforcement actions. The use of legal process itself is weaponized to mislead courts and forestall justice.​

Arbitrary and Retaliatory Administrative Actions

At least 50 rulings expose administrative conduct as arbitrary, capricious, or retaliatory in defiance of law. These include executive orders targeting specific law firms and universities, punitive suspensions and cancellations of federal grants without due process, and rollbacks of labor protections enforced without statutory authority. Courts have repeatedly enjoined such actions, finding them intended not to serve policy goals but to punish critics and consolidate power.​​

The consequences extend beyond immediate litigants, undermining entire sectors of civil society, hampering scientific research, and weakening democratic governance itself. The judiciary’s condemnation signals that these are not aberrations but a sustained pattern of authoritarian governance through executive fiat.​

Profound Constitutional Crisis

Altogether, this torrent of judicial findings represents a constitutional crisis of historic proportions. The executive’s persistent contempt for orders and courts threatens to dismantle the balance of powers so carefully designed to protect freedoms and legal recourse. Judges themselves have faced harassment and threats, politically charged defamation, and assaults on judicial independence, reflecting the toxic environment cultivated by the regime’s disregard for the rule of law.​

Legal experts warn that continued erosion of judicial authority places the entire constitutional order at risk, potentially inaugurating a state where executive rule is unchecked by laws or courts—a hallmark of authoritarian regimes.​


Weaponization of State Power: Political Repression and Civil Rights Erosion

The authoritarian surge under President Donald Trump is most palpably witnessed in its ruthless weaponization of state power to suppress dissent and erode civil rights. Senator Jeff Merkley’s stirring Senate floor protest captures this human cost, but the situation on the ground paints an even more harrowing picture of a regime remaking the United States into a militarized, repressive state.

Militarized Federal Agents: Policing Through Intimidation and Force

Across major cities such as Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Trump’s administration has deployed heavily armed, masked federal agents operating with alarming impunity and often lacking clear legal authority. In Portland, the federalization of 200 members of the Oregon National Guard followed inflammatory presidential rhetoric painting the city as “war ravaged” and “under siege,” despite weeks of largely peaceful protests.​

These federal forces have engaged in raw displays of force, including throwing tear gas and firing pepper balls at peaceful demonstrators and journalists, targeting people who attempt to record their actions, and staging provocative “false flag”-style operations purporting to quell riots that independent observers say never occurred. Notably, the administration pushed to permanently bypass court orders restraining military deployments, increasingly militarizing urban spaces and eroding traditional policing boundaries.​​

In Chicago, federal agents equipped with rifles patrol tourist districts and black neighborhoods alike, arresting individuals without warrants, including US citizens, and creating a climate of fear and intimidation that chills both protest and ordinary life. Governors of states like California, Oregon, and Illinois have vocally criticized and legally challenged these deployments as illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits military forces’ use for civilian law enforcement but have faced aggressive federal pushback.​

Political Repression Through Legal Mechanisms

Beyond brute force, the Trump administration weaponizes a panoply of government agencies to quash political dissent and academic freedom. The Department of Justice pursues politically motivated prosecutions of activists, journalists, and opponents. Broadcasting regulators and communications authorities leverage licensing power to manipulate media content, suppressing narratives critical of the administration.​​

Grant-giving agencies and federal research bodies suspend or cancel funding to universities and nonprofit organizations that engage in critiques of the regime. These punitive moves are often executed via form letters citing vague justifications without due process, fostering a culture of fear and self-censorship across civil society sectors and academic institutions.​​

Together, these tactics create a chilling environment where free expression, assembly, and the ability to challenge power—a triad central to democratic participation—are systematically stifled under the guise of legal authority or public safety. The state’s monopoly on coercive power increasingly serves narrow political interests rather than justice or the common good.​​

This weaponization of state power signals a grim trajectory not only for democracy but for civil society’s very capacity to exist without fear. Militarization, political prosecutions, media control, and funding retaliation combine into a repressive toolkit aimed at extinguishing dissent and consolidating a starkly authoritarian state.

Predictions: America at the End of the Trump Presidency

If left unimpeded, the trajectory under President Donald Trump threatens to culminate in the transformation of the United States into a hybrid autocracy—a state where ostensibly democratic institutions remain but are hollowed out, subordinated, and manipulated to serve entrenched authoritarian rule. The following grim outcomes are likely as this trajectory deepens:

Entrenched Executive Dominance Erasing Electoral Fairness and Checks/Balances

Trump’s administration pursues an extreme concentration of presidential power that eclipses traditional separation of powers. Through weakened accountability mechanisms, politicization of independent agencies, and targeted purges in the civil service, presidential authority becomes supreme within the executive branch itself. The administration has systematically sought to dominate the judicial and legislative branches, as well as state governments, creating a national political apparatus with scant meaningful checks.​

This executive dominance plays out most perilously in electoral processes. Voting rights are aggressively curtailed through restrictive policies, disinformation campaigns, and politicized administration of voting infrastructure. The administration’s actions—including demands for proof-of-citizenship requirements, manipulative redistricting to undermine opposition districts, and rollback of election protection mechanisms—weaponize executive power to disenfranchise millions and erode the integrity of the vote.​

Weakened or Co-opted Judiciary Yielding Nominal Legal Oversight

The judiciary, already strained by backlogged dockets and political pressures, risks becoming a ceremonial rubber stamp rather than an effective forum for redress. With strategic appointments favoring loyalists, attacks on judges who defy administration interests, and persistent flouting of court orders, judicial independence deteriorates. The erosion of judicial oversight paves the way for unchecked executive actions, undermining the legal safeguards essential for democratic governance.​​

Systematic Suppression of Dissent with Militarized Policing and Curtailed Free Speech

The deployment of militarized federal agents broadly across American cities under spurious claims of “law and order” has ushered in a new era of domestic repression. Peaceful protests are reclassified as violent uprisings to legitimize paramilitary intervention, while heavy-handed tactics—tear gas, kinetic munitions, warrantless arrests—punish lawful dissent.​

Free expression, assembly, and the press are increasingly restricted through legal harassment, funding cuts to academic and civic institutions, and regulatory manipulation. This suppression creates a political climate steeped in fear and self-censorship, diminishing fundamental freedoms foundational to democracy.​​

Economic Stratification with Oligarchic Elites Controlling Key Sectors

Economic policies further insulate wealth and power among an elite oligarchy closely aligned with the regime. Deregulation, market manipulation, and monopolization create barriers to competition while rolling back labor, environmental, and consumer protections. This oligarchic consolidation not only deepens inequality but forms the economic underpinning of the authoritarian state, where economic revanchism bolsters political control.​​

Persistent Social Unrest Met with State Violence but Lacking Institutional Redress

As inequality amplifies and political freedoms contract, social unrest is likely to increase. However, the state’s increased reliance on militarized policing and legal repression ensures that protest movements will meet heightened violence and criminalization, while traditional mechanisms of accountability and social redress remain weak or absent. This cycle threatens to exacerbate social polarization and fracture national cohesion.​


This dystopian forecast, drawn from detailed analysis and comparative political science perspectives, reveals that the foundations of American constitutional democracy and the rule-based international order it anchors are at severe risk of collapse. Experts widely consider this trajectory a transition towards competitive authoritarianism, echoing the political erosion seen in other democracies that have yielded to autocratic leaders.​

Despite this dire outlook, scholars and democracy advocates also emphasize the importance of resilience within American institutions and civil society, which can, through sustained engagement and collective action, stem and eventually reverse authoritarian tides. Preventing this worst-case scenario will require broad coalitions dedicated to defending democratic norms, judicial independence, voting rights, and political freedoms.

Reference List:

The Ruinous Trespass

Tags

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

I slipped beyond sleep’s fragile veil,
Where forgotten phantoms and nightbirds wail.
The mattress split, the floor beneath me yawned,
A dark void opened where nightmares are spawned.

The stars bled ash, a storm of searing flame,
Each tree bent low and hissed my name.
A moon hung low, its visage cracked,
Its grin froze time—no turning back.

Shaped from shadows of forsaken things,
A demon unfurled its tattered wings.
Eyes like embers, seething, burning slow,
Concealing secrets no mortal dares know.

The demon turned with dreadful calm intent,
Its gaze a nightmarish, mournful lament.
A rasp escaped, a rift of broken tone,
My blood ran cold, to marrow and bone.

It spoke: “Why seek the rot where silence feeds?
Where sorrow coils through venomed reeds?
The knowledge hungers—gnaws, decays—
It drags the soul through endless maze.”

I asked the demon, “What price is hope?
In endless night, how does one cope?
When darkness swallows our final breath,
What solace lingers past the edge of death?”

It laughed—the echo of splintering glass:
“Hope is a void, a ruinous trespass.
It shines no light, it burns no path—
It only mocks with hollow wrath.”

You flee from truth as senses start to slip:
Condemned to dwell in denial’s vice-like grip.
No savior comes, no dawn ascends—
Only darkness that never ends.

So now I walk the dreamer’s grave,
A soul once free, now death’s own slave.
The secret held, the truth hard won—
Is that the nightmare’s never done.

Each night I spread these ragged wings,
And guard the dark where silence sings.
For I have become the haunting part—
A demon born within my heart.

The Dead’s Patient Call

Tags

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

I see the dead—they linger, silent and still,
Their faces curl like dark tendrils, clutching my will;
They whisper of realms where the torments cease,
And vow my suffering shall softly melt to peace.

At first, I resisted—locked every door tight,
Prayed to the heavens, shunned the deepening night;
But night after night, their haunting calls would enthrall,
With patience unyielding, awaiting my final fall.

They showed me the river that winds through the void,
Where memories drown and hope is destroyed;
Its waters run black with regret and despair,
As souls drift like leaves on cold, stagnant air.

I watched as they crossed with sorrowful grace,
Each spirit a shadow time cannot erase;
They turned and beckoned with skeletal hands,
Inviting me down to those shadowed lands.

One night I grew weary—the living seemed strange,
Their laughter too loud, their voices deranged;
The dead felt like kinfolk, their stillness a balm,
So I grasped their pale hand and drank deep of their calm.

We crossed the threshold where breathing must cease,
Where anguish dissolves into endless peace;
The netherworld opened—a kingdom cloaked in decay,
Where yesterday ravenously devours today.

I joined their procession, I learned their cold song,
I wandered dim corridors, silent and long;
Then—understanding struck like a razor-sharp knife—
I’d always been dead; I’d forgotten the bonds of life.

Now when I see the living—they shudder and stare,
They bolt their windows, whisper a prayer;
I plead, cry aloud, and call out their names—
But they flee from my shadow and fate’s cruel games.

I was once flesh and blood, with fears and dreams,
Bound by regrets and life’s unraveling seams;
Now a whisper lost in the endless gray,
A shadow adrift in twilight’s merciless sway.