The Other Shadow

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...