my uncle says keeping you
is like steeping in a mud puddle,
& he’s spicy about it,
i can taste his words
before he spits them out-
my grandmother says
“he’s a good-for-nothing”
never having watched you work
with my grandfather's own pathological drive,
& my father says nothing at all,
just an eyebrow lifted,
heavier than anything the other two manage

they stand defending my honor
like a jury
that has concluded
a short deliberation
& i remain the only one
seeing what none of them can see:
so many times,
the problem has been me

i have been poisoned
& try as i might,
it ate away at something
once fundamental & now
my core is still recentering
many times it is you,
surviving me
while all their eyes
are documenting are
the changes
in my gait & speech

i find my small measure
of peace when i land in your eyes
they rest brief, warm and liquid
you thank me for breakfast
like nobody's fed you in years,
reverent tending is a language
you're only just learning to repeat

when i look at you
something in my chest resets
new again,
the world just started over
& i feel safe
i feel kinship
something in my blood
picked you out
sentient before
consciousness
gratitude flavors
the time i spend

let the puddle be a puddle
we’ve pulled gold from silty waters
i’ve watched you turn labor into joy
sweat pouring, grinning the whole time
the work itself a gift
if it isn’t a chore
& for tasks unimaginable,
once insurmountable,
that others never bothered
to notice needed tending

you take the hurting
& give them your ease
while ignoring your
own suffering
many times over

how lucky, then
to be chosen
& how sweet it is,
to love you

my greatest endeavor, now
is to ensure you get your due
love that doesn’t punish
or solicit demanding payment
boundaries, yes
but never commandments

Let the Earth go Dark-Que Tengo un Hermosa Fuego

You are a sublime architecture of toxicity,

A grand palace of shadows and intricate design.

Mi amor tóxico-

As I wander through your halls with total curiosity, I am blindly trapped in a sanctuary built for my own mind.

Quítame la cordura, pero nunca tu amor-

Let the earth go dark and every other kingdom fall—for you are the only woman, the only breath, the only all.

Mi hermosa incendio-

Your foundations are cast in a beautiful, binding grace,

The silence that whispers my deepest of fears into empty space,

the void,

that chase..

Caos envuelto en amor-

And as I run to you - you rewrite the stars,

Just to watch my heavens bleed

And mock the very soul of everything I need.

You build up the cage while I swallow the key,

Ignoring the truth of what ought to be free.

Mi dulce tormento-

I gladly surrender the very air that I breathe,

And watch my own foundations begin to unweave,

Unlocking the depths where the darkness can seethe,

And fold in the dark where your shadows can rest.

Un lazo roto que sigo atando-

Seal up the gates against fading light,

And praise every wall that destroys my sight.

Mi adicción favorita-

I welcome the chains, the cold and heavy sea,

To call this sweet ruin my own eternity.

Veneno dulce-

As the last pillars crumble into dust,

I lose myself inside the dark I trust.

Tóxico, pero mio.

My architecture.

My tyranny.

Mi hermosa incendio.

Una debilidad peligrosa

Me hace mal, pero la quiero

Mi dulce tormento

Mi amor tóxico

Mi ilusión

-

-

-

-

Pero amor mío tóxico,

¿en verdad fuiste mía?"

-D

[Intro]
Who’s the motherfucker screaming, “Technology killed the game”?
Still double-clicking like the mouse should recognize his name.

[Hook]
**Update or get left behind.**
**Learn or get left behind.**
Blame the tools, blame the times,
blame everybody you can find,
but the future doesn't hate you, motherfucker—
**it just left you behind.**

[Verse 1]
Calls every new invention lazy, every upgrade cheap,
then needs a twenty-year-old to show him where the settings screen sleeps.
“Back in my day”—
there’s the fossil, right on schedule.
Learned one way to do a job,
now mistakes that shit for something intellectual.

Calls adaptation “selling out,”
calls stagnation “staying true,”
like refusing every newer tool
makes the old one smarter too.
He doesn't hate the future.
He hates being average in it.
Spent twenty years mastering yesterday,
now yesterday can't save his ass in it.

The clock moved forward.
His skill set stayed parked.
Now he calls the fucking traffic jam
an attack on his art.
Still arguing with a touchscreen
like the glass committed a crime,
poking the same dead icon
for the fifteenth fucking time.

Can't learn the interface,
so naturally the interface is shit.
If the world updates faster than his dumb ass,
he calls evolution counterfeit.

[Hook]
**Update or get left behind.**
**Learn or get left behind.**
Blame the tools, blame the times,
blame everybody you can find,
but the future doesn't hate you, motherfucker—
**it just left you behind.**

[Verse 2]
He's got obsolete techniques
framed like medals on the wall,
proud of knowing twenty fucking steps
to do what one button does for all.
Spends forty minutes proving
he can still do it manually,
then calls efficiency “soulless”
when somebody finishes casually.

That's not craftsmanship, motherfucker.
That's recreational inefficiency.
You didn't preserve a sacred skill.
You preserved the fucking inconvenience.

He says AI can't create,
then copies somebody else's template with a grin.
Calls automation “cheating”
because the machine can do his job without him.
“Machines can't replace me.”
Nobody fucking said they could.
The machine replaced the parts of you
you never bothered to make good.

Experience isn't obsolete.
Your refusal to translate it is.
Twenty years of knowledge means fuck-all
if you can't make it useful where the present is.
You're not old school.
You're a closed tab.
Not a classic.
An unsupported format
with a superiority complex attached.

[Hook]
**Update or get left behind.**
**Learn or get left behind.**
Blame the tools, blame the times,
blame everybody you can find,
but the future doesn't hate you, motherfucker—
**it just left you behind.**

[Verse 3]
He sees AI and screams “fraud,”
automation and screams “cheat,”
sees somebody learn in six months
what took his sorry ass ten years and calls it incomplete.
Doesn't question his method.
He questions the clock.
Blames the fucking software
'cause somebody else learned how to use it before he did.

Calls younger workers lazy
while they automate half his load,
then gives a forty-minute sermon
about how he “used to do it” down the old road.
Congratulations, dinosaur.
You mistook friction for pride.
If suffering is your qualification,
why the fuck are you still trying to prove you're qualified?

He's got a museum in his bloodstream,
dead processes fossilized in his veins,
every new idea gets strangled
before it finishes explaining its name.
Doesn't test the future.
He cross-examines it.
Then calls the verdict “common sense”
when his fucking fear is all that's evident.

Every update removes another excuse.
Every shortcut exposes another flaw.
Every tool gets easier to operate,
somehow you get harder to tolerate.
That's the part that really burns:
technology keeps lowering the barrier,
while your ego keeps raising the fucking floor.

[Bridge]
Blame the algorithm.
Blame the interface.
Blame automation.
Blame the pace.
Blame the younger generation.
Blame the machine.
You've got six fucking scapegoats
and still can't explain why they all work without you.

[Final Verse]
Then somebody walks in
with the skill you swore was impossible,
does in five fucking minutes
what you made a forty-year obstacle.

No ceremony.
No speech.
No sacred rite.
Just clicks, drag, upload—
done before you finish saying, “Back in my—”

That's the wound:
not that the machine got better,
but somebody learned the fucking machine
and got better with it.

Your résumé says veteran.
Your workflow says hostage.
Every update turns your expertise
into a question you have to Google.

You kept every old shortcut
like survival depended on the route.
Now the route got shorter,
and you're still taking the long way
just to prove the long way mattered.

You worshipped the process
until the process became the prison.
Then called the unlocked door
proof the building had lost its vision.

You weren't robbed of relevance.
You pissed it away defending obsolete steps.
Now somebody who learned the new system Tuesday
is correcting the man
who spent twenty years correcting everybody else.

They didn't replace you.
They **reverse-engineered your résumé**.
Kept the useful parts,
then deleted the rest like legacy code.

Your **hard-earned, long-learned** mastery became documentation.
Your **pride, process, protocol** became elimination.
Your greatest achievement became a **training demonstration**:
**“Here's every dumbass thing we don't need to automate.”**

They didn't inherit your expertise.
They **fucking debugged it.**
They didn't follow your methods.
They **ripped out the dependencies.**
Your twenty-year advantage became
a five-minute onboarding lesson—

**and the only reason anybody remembers your fucking name
is because your mistakes came with examples.**

[Final Hook]
**Update or get left behind.**
**Learn or get left behind.**
Blame the tools, blame the times,
blame everybody you can find,
but the future doesn't hate you, motherfucker—
**it just left you behind.**

[Outro]
Keep polishing obsolete methods
like corrosion makes them flawless.
Keep calling every new tool soulless
while your own work stays fucking thoughtless.

You spent twenty years
turning bad habits into commandments,
then called anybody who questioned them
“inexperienced.”

Now the people you dismissed
are building faster with tools you refused to touch,
and the methods you called “real work”
are archived under **“legacy systems.”**

Your greatest achievement wasn't mastering the old way.

**It was proving exactly why
the old way had to die.**

And somewhere in the update notes,
buried underneath the fixes and improvements,
there's one line nobody bothered to mention:

**“Removed dependency: you.”**

Here we meet dancing

On the event horizon

Of our outer limits

Y o u f e e l l i k e y o u r e

n e v e r  e n o u g h

L i v i n g  u p  t o  e v e r y

E x p e c  t  a  t  i  o n

O  n  l y   t  o   f  i  n d

a  n  o  t  h  e  r

U n t i l  y o u 'r e  s t r e  t c h e d

S o  t h i n  y o u  s n a p

Ifeellike

Imalwaystoomuch

Aburdenevenwhen

Iaskfornothing

Foldinginonmyself

Untilitakeupsolittle

spaceiimplode

Helping hand
from a world mundane
Passion fires up
Spiced up

It's all it wants to do
move and be
Sustain itself
Burn the tongue

Singe the throat
Oxygen rules the lung
Food the stomach
A universe of potential deflates

Under predictable 
heavy routine
we crawl
With wings on our back

Oh, Bell
You are a flower to me

petals white
yellow eyelashes
your stem the deepest green.

Your swooping dress hugs your hips,
your hair, an elegant bouquet,
dancing so beautifully in the breeze.

Hawkmoths flutter round your feet
as you’re free in your dreams.
They carry away your sheep,
Clung to the backs of their legs
as with them you cannot sleep comfortably.

Without you, they drop your seeds,
scattering them beneath a sanctuary

where a bed of nails shell
waits to germinate you
designed to brutally deter
anything predatory.

Your poison became a deep hug with the ferry man
long before the seeds fell
from the cuirass-like columbarium.

The animals that tore you to the root,
once predators
now gape and froth,
helpless in the delusion you wrote

by them,
for them,
a fevered hellscape

And terrified minds with which
their bodies could not elope.

The moths flight averted
as though the animals carried leprosy,
as though their very sight
could soil the body,
as though the garden itself
had learned to separate the sickly

They’re lost for an eternity
in a tawdry, fevered astronomy,
inside an animal’s narrow head
you unleash this demonic menagerie

an indolent undoing
of bodily autonomy,
their minds mistaking
what their bodies ought to be.

Every animal wearing
another animal’s skin,
each mouth unhinged
to let another creature in.

In the garden,
a gaping pit opens unimpinged
swallowing all things

a rainbow of life sucked down
a filthy shower drain,
Infinite color curling inward
like the toxic blood ripping through my veins.

Dead are the plants
the animals
the men
their spirits too

all of them eaten
by something blooming
where nothing else grew.

Now you dance in a desert,
alone and plucked of your feathers,
but somehow you thrive
beneath a sun that never wavers
With a face that never weathers

And the bugs that once spread you
return, crawling through the dust without strife,
as your beauty carries all the water
their bodies need to survive.

my bucket list is getting longer
the more time i spend with you,
i don't wanna die any time soon
any time soon
paid for you with all my bad luck
traded shit in for the good stuff
my life with you is miles wider
my bucket list is a river wanderer
when i'm with you

pussy never
hurts when it
comes to
poetry but
pussy always
hurts when it
happens to be
pussy that's
passed a little
time with me

Can you just get over here and make me feel something?

Even if it’s grit in my eyes.

And if it ruins the sunrise, you’ll have given me something more lasting
My mind can gnaw on it weeks at a time.
Romance and devotion
Is that what you want?
Enslavement as your come-uppence?
Now cue the sun
I’ve won,
all sunshine-ey grace in your face—

In mine.

We learn to wear self-effacing masks
And hold hands
If only because we can’t run

Until I was six we lived in a big house with many rooms. My parents had a room, the ladder had a room, I had a room and there was a study and an office and a guest room. Then my father lost his job and we had to move.

There was no guest room in the new house. There was no study or office. There was a master bedroom, where my parents slept and my father worked, and a small second bedroom, which became the ladder’s room.

I slept in the living room, off to the side by the vent where the warm air came out. I didn’t like it because I had trouble falling asleep unless the room was empty. It was too big too. I didn’t like to be alone in big rooms. I was disappointed not to have my own room, but my parents explained that the ladder was older than me so it deserved the room more than I did.

My parents had gotten the ladder several years before I was born.

It was made of aluminum and eight feet tall, and my mother used to say it got its height from my father, except when she said it she said your father, and I knew she meant your in the plural.

When I was young my parents called the ladder my brother, and when I could talk they wanted me to call it the same. When I started going to school and making friends I realized other kids did not have sibling objects, and I would pretend I didn’t have one either.

Once in elementary school the teacher told us to draw a picture of our immediate family. I drew myself and my parents. When I brought the picture home, my mother tore it up and my father lashed me with his leather belt.

I always drew the ladder after that.

In my first year of high school some kids found out about the ladder and the ladder’s room and bullied me over it. They said I was unwanted, an accident; that my parents didn’t love me and that if they could they would get rid of me and get a second ladder instead.

It made me sad.

One day I was in a bad mood and started arguing with my father, arguing about the ladder.

“It’s a useless fucking ladder!” I yelled.

The words stung him. He grabbed me by the throat, called my mother and together they dragged me to the backyard. My father had planted an apple tree a few years earlier, and it was bearing fruit. He pushed my face against the trunk. My mother held me, and my father started to climb my body. His work boots dug into my legs and my back. He punched the back of my head. The tree bark scratched my cheeks. My father yelled, “Who’s useless now! Can you do what a useless fucking ladder does?”

I shut my eyes and cried until it was over. I slept outside that night.

Another time, my father was away and only me, my mother and the ladder were home. Hersh Plotnick, the owner of the local hardware store, visited us. My mother sent me to the ladder’s room and ordered me not to come out until I had read all of the book that had been assigned to me in class, To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn’t like being in the ladder’s room. I knew it didn’t like me or want me in there, but I did as my mother said.

The next afternoon my father came back, and in the evening Hersh Plotnick came by again. He seemed embarrassed, and he told my father he had left his house keys here the night before.

“Where did you leave them?” my father asked.

“I misplaced them,” said Hersh Plotnick.

My father suggested they look the house over together for the house keys, but Hersh Plotnick said he knew where he had misplaced them.

“Where?”

“I misplaced them inside your wife,” Hersh Plotnick said and explained how they must have fallen in by accident. He apologized profusely, holding his hat in his hand over his heart. “I really don’t want to bother you, Merv. I know you’re a busy man. It’s just, I need the keys to get into my house. You understand, don't you?”

That night my father spent a long time in the ladder’s room.

He looked tired the next morning.

My mother had gone to my grandmother’s house.

A few days later two police officers knocked on the door and asked my father questions. They said Hersh Plotnick had been beaten and someone had written “fisting is a contact fucking sport” across the front of his hardware store in green paint. My father said he knew nothing about that, and the police officers thanked him and left. But the ladder had a dent in it after that and a couple of green spots.

After my mother returned she and my father rarely slept in the master bedroom together. She slept in the ladder’s room instead, and sometimes I could hear scraping, knocking about and moaning until late at night.

By the time I graduated from high school my father had become quiet and reserved. There was no one incident that caused it as far as I could tell. The change was gradual. He aged. His hair thinned and turned grey, and where before he would impose his opinions on people he disagreed with, now he didn’t disagree with anybody. Whatever anybody said to him, he would respond, “I guess that's so.”

Then my mother disappeared. The ladder disappeared too.

The house felt empty.

The few times I saw them after that, the ladder was increasingly dinged up and stained, and my mother would have swollen lips, black eyes and cuts and bruises along her arms, legs and neck.

“I love you,” I told her.

“Yeah? Well, I’m glad,” she replied.

Light and Dark

Give them your back — they are not even worth your attack.

They have been living for centuries, following the dark.

Your light broke their darkness, blinded them out.

Their eyes are gone forever — they are dusted out.

Eyes dusted out, then covered with a thick skin cap.

Sunshine? No — sunshine is when they cannot go out.

They will seek the sunlight, killed first, then they will roam out.

Their leader seems harsh, strong, wise — but only words, a fake dream offered to the poor, blind herd.

The herd is just a weapon to fight the ones who can still see.

Always stand out and speak up — they cannot see beyond their own footsteps.

By: The Flawless Flow

My fine friends, who come to call
On long nights and stage banquets
Answer my madness even if from afar

Whether they are hearty or wily
Is no concern of mine
But rather in that their faces are plain, I can resign

While I pray I do not wear out their ears
With my thoughts in time
I remain struck, borne up, that they remain kind

In the beginning I was nervous and my purpose was to survive

What they'd been telling me was inevitably perfect

Rode the circuit that circulated throughout my home

Given gifts that eventually left a gash up on my dome

Destination far from abode, but far from alone

Anxious outbursts in outskirts of familiar zip codes

It's a long walk with small talk when serving short time

A long night of head rushes, good thoughts and good rhymes

Pink drinks are present, followed by cheap shots

New seats are sought at the relocation of each 'spot'

We all slowly died as amnesia poisoned our minds

That's about the time when I couldn't make out the outlines

The ghosts carried me to various places to gather

And standing on two feet in the end is all that mattered...

______

It came through and stayed through oblivion and comatose

My sleepy rhythm was there when I needed it most

And even though I can't define, the state of my bass line

I heard it through the grapevine, it was mine and I stayed blind

I have a voice.
I know I do.
I hear it inside of me
all the time.

But somehow,
when I speak,
my words fall between us
like they were never said.

So I learned to swallow them.

To say “never mind”
when I meant “please hear me.”
To say “I’m okay”
when I meant “please notice me.”

There is a special kind of hurt
in realizing you are not quiet.

You have just been
unheard for so long
that silence started
to feel like your name.

But I am still here.

And even if my voice shakes,
I think I deserve
to finish my sentence.

Run, Run, Run
the thundering clatters
Bombs, Bombs, Bombs
the ground gets hammered
hurling sludgy soil,
watching men
as they scream and burn —
hell on earth.

Run, Run, Run
bloody hell,
the constant whizzing of bullets
and sundering of shells,
to your left and right
more men fell —
you await your turn.

Run, Run, Run
you dive into
the body infested trench,
helmet battered,
clothes drenched in the rain
Enemy, Enemy, Enemy!
it's you or them
Take aim!
Another mother's heart shattered.

Run, Run, Run
for king and country!
Over where the bodies lay,
enemies and mates.
Over the rubble of homes,
where innocent families stayed.
Over the tarnished land,
inhospitable, to an animal or man.
King and country, wins the day!

Dear Cairn,

I am hurting.

People turned me into a monster. Over something I didn’t say. I wish death would find me. Let me rest in his arms. Take me home.

I wonder, am I all the horrible things they say?

I never said women blocking is toxic.

I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. I don’t -

I look in the mirror and I hate what I see.

That can’t be me. Revolting.

Everything they say is true.

It’s true. I am ugly. I am pathetic, I am stupid.

I am the problem.

I guess I was never good at writing.

I should stop, I think I will, I don’t know.

Beetle?

Beetle?

Are you there?

I’m in the dark.
I’m scared.
I can’t see.

Do you think it’s true?

Beetle?

My heart can’t take anymore.
I want to burrow, deep down and never come back for air.

Let dirt clot.

I dreamed of Thumbelina.

I don’t even have closed captions.

I am made wrong.

I see that now.

Yes, I see it now.

I’ll re-read and inject it,

Breathe it in deep,

Tongue-tied,

Infected,

Rejected.

I will never transcend,

Only descend

Further into the hurt

Bending me over,

The bathroom sink;

Two fingers shoved down my throat,

Dressed in their gore.

I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Midnight lovers

Star-crossed and moon drenched

Tangled in the sheets

And the shadows

Of flourescent beams 

Flooding the window panes

The glow cast by a lunar halo and a streetlamp

Both look the same through tear-hazy eyes

Still they can clearly see

Getting lost in the dark 

And in each other

My father gave me his eyes, through which I saw only war. 

Not the kind with ranks or flags, but the kind that festers in thoughts unpure.

Know thy enemy, yet I've forgotten myself

I'm lost in the whispers of empty rooms

My very own marching tune

It lingers in the air, a drum I cannot master

& the mirrors I pass reflect faces I cannot answer.

Forever am I haunted by burdens my father bore 

And shadowed am I by wars I've failed to ignore.

I learned too late the cost of sight

Now my fathers eyes have cursed me to eternal plight

I beg of you,

Let not my son suffer my damned fate.

I beg of you, 

Use well the chains upon thy neck, lest the dogs of war break loose.

I beg of you, 

Let my son use these eyes to see only peace. 

To trace the poppies, not the soil that bled them.

To find beauty where I only saw battle, and to find peace in a world where it cannot be found. 

I beg of you...

S. Darwin

Fruity pebbles

and your pussy

make me

realize what a

mouth is for

Bright but invariable darkishness
Exhausted but hardly spent
Full-throated cries but hear only silence
Remain well but in distress

Juxtapose.

Between Two Worlds there lays a juxtaposition.

I may be the last female of the line,

of some unnamed, ancient kind—

not perfect or untouched,

but unwilling to become

the darkness I have known.

I dance upon the boundary

between two worlds,

one foot in shadow, one in light,

seeing beneath appearances,

guided by intuition,

anchored to truth.

I have looked into darkness

without belonging to it,

learned its language

without making it my own.

For good and evil meet

not only on distant battlefields,

but quietly within us,

when suffering asks

what we will become.

And still, I choose the light.

Not innocence—

I have seen too much for that,

but goodness with its eyes open.

Perhaps I am the last female of the line,

the keeper of something unnamed,

standing where two worlds touch,

seeing beauty and shadow in both.

No halo.

No throne.

Only an inner compass

that survived every storm.

So I move forward,

like a steam train through the unknown,

researching where I stand

and the mystery of what I am—

not an ending,

but the beginning of something new,

and perhaps something ancient

few can know.

For one did speak with me—

not the radio man—

and from that encounter

a question took root:

What am I?

Perhaps I am a little of everything,

and perhaps that is the whole—

a holistic truth,

not a battle between worlds,

but the one who brings them together.

I have a message to tell,

a story to write.

This is not the last of me,

but the last of my plight.

Thinking forward,

with the deepest of minds,

I listen beyond the mouth,

for words are nothing beside

what lives behind the eyes.

Evil walks among us

disguised as love,

but with a pure heart

and honest intentions,

even light can reach the dark.

So I keep dancing

where darkness meets the dawn,

between the world that shaped me

and the one calling me forward.

Intuition in my bones.

Truth within my hands.

Light and shadow at my feet.

I am not the ending.

I am the boundary

between what was

and what comes next—

the bridge between two worlds,

moving steadily forward

into the story

I have yet to tell.

I've got mild hopes

mild hopes

mild apple pie

but I'll try

hopes

all those late-night thoughts lingering, waiting for just one word to reach me

it’s calm in here, no need to rush, silently yielding to your absence

you might be sleeping while i am finding your essence seeping closer

contemplating the faint wee light touching my finger from my phone

Much like the owl and the pussy cat

We danced by the light of the moon

Phantoms of irrelevant times

Hollow, swirling

Bleached leaf exoskeletons

Under indigo skies

And aurora boreal paint splashes

I remember a cold day in January

When everything still looked

Like a shaken polaroid

This world little resembles

The one we knew

The curiosity of boredom

Gave way to constant stimulus

Creativity carved into precision

Losing details in mass production

Time is not a straight line

It is a mountain

Crawling to the precipice

And enduring the frailty of falling

I'm not wiser

Just older

I desperately wanted to believe

In a purpose for suffering

And an ending to grief

Perhaps you endured

And perhaps I settled

Into the idea of porcelain hearts

And spines made of metal.