Lessons From the Smokehouse
Lessons from the smokehouse
ain’t gentle.
They come at you hot,
sting your eyes,
make your throat burn
before you even know
you’re learning something.
In there, the air is thick
with sweat and oak and old men
who don’t waste breath
on soft talk.
They teach with their backs,
in the way they lift,
the way they never flinch
when the fire snaps too close.
You learn quick
that silence is a tool
sharper than any knife,
heavy as grief.
Men talk with their hands here,
with the scrape of steel,
with the grunt that means
“keep going”
even when your arms shake.
The walls are black,
seasoned by every man
who ever stood in that heat
proving he belonged.
You feel them watching,
n... |
Where the Men Don’t Cry Out Loud
Where the men don’t cry out loud,
the hurt learns to move different;
quiet as a shadow,
faithful as a scar,
following them from room to room
like a name they never asked for.
In that place,
grief wears work boots
and a straight back,
keeps its hands busy
so its heart won’t tremble.
The boys grow into men
by swallowing storms whole,
learning early, his tears are a language
nobody taught him to speak.
Sounds pulled from the ribs,
from history, from weight that lives
between breath and bone.
Where the men don’t cry out loud,
love shows up sideways
a fixed car,
a paid bill,
a hand on the shoulder
that lingers one second longer
than pride allows.
... |
The Last Chord Burning
The last chord burning is the one you didn’t mean to play the note that slipped out when your guard was down, when your hands remembered what your mouth refused to say.
It hangs in the air, a thin line of smoke curling toward the ceiling, carrying every truth you tried to swallow whole.
Some fires don’t roar. Some just glow slow, stubborn, refusing to die even after the song ends.
And maybe that’s the real blues: not the breaking, but the after the ember that stays lit long after the world thinks you’ve gone quiet.
So you let it burn. Let it warm the parts of you that winter tried to claim. Let it light the road back to the man you almost forgot you were allowed to be.
Because the last chord still burning isn’t an ending. It’s a promise a low, steady flame waiting for you to breathe it into song again.
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The Spark of Madness
Given a spark of madness is the madness of insisting that all is, when all are miserable.
Difficult to free fools from chains they revere. When seeking revenge, dig two graves; one for madness, one for yourself.
Madness occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction never changes.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of life as it is and not as it should be, for momentary madness is only rest.
For the madness… the burden of the past shall be the madness of the future.
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Burning down the Wickerman
Burning down the Wickerman
holds like setting fire
to myself, I built to survive.
Every dry limb,
a lie carried,
every hollow rib, the fear I fed,
the woven smile,
a mask worn .
Flames whisper
as they rise,
a language I remember,
a truth I feared.
The last ember falls,
the night is quiet.
And in silence,
I realize the thing I burned
was already dead.
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These are my damn words
These are my damn words
not softened,
not sanded down,
not dressed up
to make anyone comfortable.
They rise raw,
refuses to whisper,
refuses to apologize
for being loud.
If they burn,
let them burn.
These are my damn words
the ones held back
for years,
the ones that trembled
in my throat,
waiting for permission
They come slow,
they come honest,
Saying them
isn’t rebellion.
These are my damn words.
|
The Eruption
There’s a riot breaking... fists, fire,
A storm of everything
Walls shake,
Truth cracks,
the quiet splinters like glass.
The uprising
of souls
tired of being contained.
The chaos is destruction.
It’s release.
Inside a city built from memory,
shadow,
and grit.
The streets crack open
from rage,
from the weight
of unspoken stories
pushing to the surface.
The breaking
is chaotic transformation
rebuilding from the inside.
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STOP, just STOP
STOP, just Stop.
I’m done swallowing storms
to keep the peace.
I’m done carrying weight
that was never mine
to lift.
This is the moment
the world hears my boundary
loud and clear.
STOP
before you burn yourself
STOP, just STOP
The noise,
the demands,
the endless reaching
for pieces of me
I no longer offer.
I need a pause
long enough to hear
my own heartbeat again.
Silence ! |
Angry Reflective
Angry, reflective....
two flames in the same glass,
one burning hot,
one burning slow.
I stare at myself
and see the truth
I tried to outrun:
the anger isn’t wild,
it’s wounded.
And the reflection
isn’t shame,
it’s clarity
the moment I finally admit
what hurt me
and what I won’t carry anymore.
I sit with the heat
instead of throwing it.
I let it talk.
I let it show me
every boundary I ignored,
every silence I swallowed,
every time I said “it’s fine”
when it wasn’t.
The anger isn’t the enemy.
It’s the teacher
I breathe through the blaze,
letting the smoke clear
before I speak.
In the quiet,
I see the shape of my own truth,
sharp but sacred,
painful but necessary.
Some storms
d... |
DAMN
DAMN—
that’s the only word
big enough
to hold the weight
of what just broke open.
The truth landed hard,
no warning,
no mercy,
no time to brace.
But here I stand,
breath sharp,
heart steady,
ready to rise
from the impact.
DAMN—
sometimes that’s all
a soul can manage
when the world shifts
in one heartbeat.
It’s the exhale
after the shock,
the whisper
after the storm,
the word that carries
everything you can’t say yet.
DAMN—
the word ... |
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