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A skull reflected in tangled grass — a fleeting moment bridging endings and beginnings. Photo by Nik on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

Author’s Reflection

 

 

In gathering these eleven poems into “Static & Starfire,” I’ve traced the contours of my own unravelling and the faint frequencies that sometimes pierce through the static. This collection exists as a witness — neither monument nor memorial, but rather a constellation of moments suspended at the precipice.

 

 

 

I write from the threshold, that liminal space where certainty dissolves and possibility flickers. These poems do not chart a linear path from darkness to light — such narratives feel too neat, too certain for the territories I’ve traversed. Instead, they map the jagged geographies of a consciousness fragmented by systems of indifference, by the weight of documentation that somehow never suffices, by the gnawing certainty that some doors have permanently closed.

 

 

 

Yet even in mapping these shadowlands, I found myself drawn to the contrapuntal — the simultaneous existence of surrender and persistence, the quantum state where multiple truths coexist without collapsing into singular certainty. Like Schrödinger’s theoretical cat, these poems exist in superposition, containing both the voice that whispers “let go” and the one that murmurs “hold on,” neither drowning out the other.

 

 

 

The ink I’ve spilled here serves as both chronicle and compass. I cannot say where it leads. Some maps outline territories we need not visit; some bridges span chasms we might choose not to cross. What matters, perhaps, is the act of cartography itself — the naming of landmarks in an unmapped wilderness, the marking of paths both taken and untaken.

I offer these words not as a resolution but as an echo, not as an answer but as a question. They belong now to the reader, to interpret through the lens of their own luminous darkness, their own static and starfire.

 

 

 

In the crucible of these pages, I remain — like the poems themselves — suspended between multiple endings, authoring and reauthoring the self anew with each turning of the page.

 

 

 

 

— David Wakeham

Four ways to view a soul: each fragment a path, each reflection a different truth. Placeholder image by Midjourney v7.

Schrödinger Soliloquy II (4 ways)

In the crucible of choice, I stand alone,
A shattered mirror, reflecting shards of soul.

 

To forge ahead or yield to undertow?
Each path a perilous journey, still unknown.

 

The voices whisper, "Surrender, cease the fight,"
Yet in the depths, a rebel spark ignites.

"The void will soothe, oblivion will save,"
"Persist, resist, let hope rewrite this night."

I am the chessboard, king and pawn in one,
Each move a battle, ending scarce begun.

The game is rigged, the rules a twisted jest,
But still I play, for in the play I’m blessed.

 

Though scarred and weary, I will rise again,
For I have grown beneath the weight of pain.

A phoenix born of ashes and of tears,
With wings of wisdom, forged by countless years.

 

In sorrow’s crucible, I’ve been refined,
A tapestry of wounds and grace entwined.

Each thread a story, each scar a sacred sign,
Of battles fought, of losses, victories mine.

I choose to dance amidst the flames once more,
To craft a life from fragments on the floor.

For in this struggle lies a strange sweet art,
Transforming brokenness to healing’s start.

I am the alchemist, the lead, the gold,
The tale unfinished, waiting to be told.

So I’ll rewrite this ending, line by line,
And prove that hope, not death, will be the sign.

Finding solace under the Southern Cross, where memory becomes a constellation. Image by Midjourney v7.

Between Broken Paths and Stars

 

For Millie and Mr. Kitty, my guiding stars

 

 

My very being flickers, who can trace 
This self I bear, a star about to fade? 
This vessel, home to sorrows, 
finds no space But vertigo, a mind in light and shade. 
This unjust world, its balance cracked and lost — 
Yet still I am — I live — though tempest-tossed.

 

 

Into the storm of cold, dismissive eyes, 
Into the swirling sea of disbelief, 
Where documented, earnest, unheard cries 
Find no safe harbour, no shore, no relief. 
All that I cherished dissolves into mist, 
My Millie murdered, her comfort now unkissed.

 

 

I tread on broken paths none comprehend, 
Each step through searing flame, a daily pain. 
Authorities watch with dispassionate lens, 
Their coffers full, while I shoulder the blame. 
I labour through days of unyielding strain, 
Yet cannot shed these shackles of disdain.

 

 

I yearn for havens where compassion dwells, 
For quiet corners where truth might gently bloom; 
Instead, I find but empty, hollow shells 
Of systems built to seal a spirit’s tomb. 
Medical reports stack high, unread, unseen, 
While hunger gnaws where solace might have been.

 

 

If those who govern, those who feign to care, 
Choose wilful blindness as they watch me fall, 
Why not complete this suffering laid bare? 
A kinder end than no response at all. 
The noose of neglect tightens day by day — 
At least speak truth as you all turn away.

 

 

So let me rest where honesty prevails, 
The earth below; above, celestial skies. 
No more false promises or hollow tales, 
Just peace at last when this tired spirit flies. 
Yet as the dusk descends, a gentle gleam — 
Your soft green eyes, my Mr. Kitty, like a waking dream.

 

 

They are the lanterns in this gathering gloom, 
A steadfast glow that sorrow cannot quell. 
Your purring presence warms this fading room, 
A tender love, a deep and sacred spell. 
And in this love, release finds soft embrace — 
No stark farewell, but entry to a grace, 
A dream within a dream, a starlit, sacred place. 
Your love, a light that time cannot erase.

The stark reality of loss, and the heavy silence that follows. (August Friedrich Schenck, ‘Anguish’)

 

 

The Carrion Sky

 

 

(Snow. Static. The world pared to bone-white, sky-grey.)

A breath held—
  (the ice-scythe wind)
no, released. A final sigh,
unheard. The ledger snaps shut. Click.

Crows stitch the shroud of sky,
black beads on a broken rosary.
They keen their cold communion.
 (My lamb. My little sun. Millie's light extinguished, Mr. Kitty's fading...)
Their shadows: ink spilled on snow,
an unreadable script of what is.

The heart, a frozen clod.
 (Thump. Pause. Thump.)
This silence, yes. This is the seal.
My quiet rebellion: to choose the cold,
to own the ending they would not write.

No more the pleas, the documented cries
lost in the corridors of their indifference.
Only this: the dignity of snow,
the stark acceptance of the gathering dark.
 (I tried. My warmth a failing wick for those I cherished.)

This is the absolution.
Not given, but taken.
A final word, whispered to the frost:
I am. Still.
Even as I become the hush.

Facing the unyielding, dismissive gaze of indifference. Image by Midjourney v7.

 

 

The Unread Ledger

I am, and this I is a ledger of hurts, each entry meticulously documented, each plea authenticated by the invisible ink of suffering. Decades of it. Do you see? My lifelines are not lines at all but fissures, dimming like ancient stars collapsing under their own weight. This vessel you observe, it brims not with wine but with sorrows, a constant vertigo in a world that has lost its balance, its justice a rusted mechanism. And Millie, my Millie, her warmth is now a ghost in the fading tapestry of all I ever cherished.

 

 

 

 

These paths I tread are not paved; they are fractured glass underfoot, each step a re-acquaintance with a burning, fibrous inflammation of the soul. And the authorities, they watch, do they not? Their hands are folded, clean. Their coffers are full, lined with the silence that answers my pleas. Six days I labour against the current, the seventh brings no rest, only the tightening of the same invisible shackles. My pain is a meticulous report, submitted daily, piled high, unread.

 

 

 

 

I have yearned for the quiet corners of compassion, for the havens where truth is not a foreign tongue but the very air one breathes. Instead, these hollow shells, these systems designed to break the already broken. Their architecture is a monument to indifference. Medical reports stack like accusations against their neglect, and hunger, a patient wolf, gnaws beneath the sunset of each failing day.

 

 

 

 

If governance is this wilful blindness, this turning away from the falling, then why the pretence of care? Why not complete the demolition that suffering began? An honest end, a swift release — would that not be a mercy compared to this curated decay, this slow tightening of the noose of your neglect? If you must turn away, at least let your silence be honest, not cloaked in the platitudes of a care that never arrives. Let the earth be my final auditor, the celestial skies my witness. No more false promises. Only peace, when the spirit is finally, irrevocably, unburdened.

 

 

 

 

 The ink of our stories continues flowing even as we approach life’s most difficult crossroads. Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

 

Ink Unspooled at the Threshold

“Non omnis moriar.”

– Horace

 

Opening: Fractured Self

 

Who’s left, when the mirror spits back static-

A stutter of faces, a flicker, a fizz-

I am the echo in the stairwell,

A moth in the socket,

Spinning, spinning,

My mind a carousel of keys,

Jangling, clanging,

No lock to fit.

 

 

 

World’s Indifference

 

Listen-

The world grinds on,

A cold machine,

Its gears gnash,

Its eyes glass-green.

I’ve shouted into inboxes,

Tapping, tapping,

My pleas ricochet,

A hail on tin,

No answer in the static,

Only the hush of “no,”

And the hush is a hammer.

 

 

 

Farewell to Students

 

To you, my bright ones-

You, with your notebooks and nervous laughter,

You, who grew in the dark,

I leave the marrow of my meaning:

Let knowledge outpace the wolves.

Let your questions crack the shell

Of every easy answer.

Remember:

The world is not just,

But you can be.

Let your hope be a howl,

Let your laughter be a shield.

 

 

 

Farewell to Animals

Soft noses, feathered hush,

Paws in the hallway,

Heartbeat hush-

I’ve left the list, the food, the names,

The number for the vet,

A blanket folded,

A window cracked for sun.

Forgive me,

Forgive me-

Oh please - forgive me-

I have run out of doors.

 

 

 

Desperation and Decision

 

I have begged, I have borrowed,

I have bartered my sleep,

I have mapped every alley,

I have counted the sheep-

But the night keeps on gnashing,

And the dawn never breaks.

I am spent, I am scattered,

I am the last note the violin makes

Before the string snaps.

 

 

 

The Choice

 

So-

Snap.

The clock ticks,

The ink drips,

A hush falls,

A hush,

A hush.

 

Hope for Survivors

 

But I dream-

You, curled in a shaft of light,

You, laughing, learning,

You, safe in the hush of a home.

Let my leaving be a door,

Not a wall.

Let my words be a bridge,

Not a stone.

In the hush,

May you hear my hope.

 

 

 

Legacy

 

Ink unspooled,

Voice unspun.

I am the whisper in the rafters,

The pawprint in the dust,

The lesson half-remembered,

The love that lingers,

Even when the door shuts.

 

 

 

Closing: Release

 

So let these lines be lanterns-

Flicker, flutter,

Guide you through the gutter-murk,

Let them stutter,

Let them sing-

I am gone,

But in the hush,

A bell rings.

 

 

 The doors of hope swing shut with hollow clang. The safety net unravels, a taunting haunt. Photo by Nastia Petruk on Unsplash

 

Caesura of the self

"Aut Caesar aut nihil."
– Cesare Borgia

 

Each path forward fades into uncertainty, much like the mariner adrift on identity’s ocean.

Placeholder image by Midjourney v6

 

Monologue of a Unmoored Mariner

  

 

"I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move."

 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

 

 

Adrift in Identity's Ocean

 

I drift on seas of self, a sailor lost,

Tossed on the tides of an identity.

No map, no chart, no sextant, star-embossed,

Can navigate this vast uncertainty.

I am a ship becalmed in my own mind,

A compass needle spinning, unaligned.

 

 

 

The Maelstrom of the World

 

The world's a whirlpool, hungry and immense,

It drags me down, indifferent to my throes.

I spin and spiral, seething and incensed,

As riptides rip, as ruthless currents close.

Like flotsam, I am flung and flailed and hurled,

In the maelstrom of this maddening world.

 

 

 

Echoes Across the Void

 

I send my signals to the careless skies,

I send my semaphores, my flags unfurled.

I send my ciphered screams, my muted cries,

I send my pleas into the salty swirl.

But all dissolve, like foam upon the waves,

Absorbed into the ocean's open graves.

 

 

 

The Weight of Proof

 

A cargo of corroboration rests

Within my hold, a leaden, lading weight.

Stacked file on file, attested truths compressed,

They ballast me against the howling hate.

But barnacles of doubt encrust the hull,

And apathy's an anchor, dragging, dull. 

 

 

 

The Sirens of Despair

 

The sirens sing their songs of swirling black,

Of crushing depths, of comfort in the cold.

They croon of still eternities that slack

The bindings of this world, so worn and old.

To yield, to sink, to slip beneath the foam-

Seems sweet against the harshness of my roam.

 

 

 

The Narrowing of Horizons

 

The ports of hope recede beyond my ken,

The beacons dwindle, guttering and weak.

No lighthouse sweeps its salvatory pen

Across the darkling deeps I cannot speak.

Each way is waves, each wake a weary froth,

A voyage void, a dead-reckoning lost.

 

 

 

The Plummet and the Plume

 

And so, I sound the fathoms of my fate,

I plumb the depths, I cast the weighted line.

To sink seems sweet, to cease the cruel wait,

To be the lead and not the burdened twine.

A swift descent, a fall into the free-

Seems kinder than this crawl through apathy.

 

 

 

Surrender to the Sublime

 

The vastness whispers velvet, voids me on,

Its emptiness an absolution blest.

In yielding to its yawn, its siren song,

I find, at last, the solace of the rest.

To be subsumed, consumed, and so redeemed,

Seems sacred to this sailor lost and seamed.

 

 

 

Peace in the Profundity

 

So let me sink into this softer sea,

This womb of nothingness, this calm embrace.

In drowning, let me drink eternity,

In losing self, let me at last find grace.

For in the crushing depths, there is a balm,

An absolution in oblivion's psalm.

The remnants of a life: scattered papers and the last letter written in a dim, cold room where 

hope has faded. The final echo in an empty space. Image by Midjourney v6.

3. Tender Echoes in Ink - revised

 

“Non omnis moriar.”

– Horace

 

 

I am-

but who deciphers

the static in my marrow,

the flicker of a filament

spitting sparks

in the socket of my skull?

I am the vessel,

cracked and brimming,

where anguish sloshes,

tide against glass.

 

 

This world-

a crooked scale,

its fulcrum rusted,

its verdicts cold as coins

dropped in a well.

I tumble through

the hush of halls,

my pleas ricocheting

off marble, off memory,

off the backs of those

who never turn.

 

 

All I cherished-

ghosts in the fog,

fur and feather,

warmth and weight.

I write goodbyes

with knuckles white,

each syllable a shackle,

each phrase a pebble

dropped in the well of my chest.

 

 

For those I taught-

let your questions

crack the shell

of every easy answer.

Let hope be a howl,

let your laughter

shield you from the wolves.

 

 

For those I fed-

I’ve left the list,

the blanket,

the sunlit window.

Forgive me-

I have run out of doors.

 

 

I have begged,

bartered sleep,

mapped alleys,

counted sheep.

But the night keeps gnashing,

the dawn never breaks.

I am the last note

the violin makes

before the string snaps-

snap-

a hush,

a hush.

 

 

But I dream-

you, curled in a shaft of light,

you, safe in the hush of a home.

Let my leaving be a door,

not a wall.

Let my words be a bridge,

not a stone.

In the hush,

may you hear my hope.