K. Stan Tinos

Our pulse isn't broken; it's charge
no words dare explain:
Jagged thoughts like live wires, thunderous, unbarred,
a primal cry in dawn's cold flame
or midnight's hum. We dive, we plunge
through searing highs and crushing lows,
where feeling drowns what reason chose,
that cautious voice, a measured lunge.

Not "sadness." Not quite "joy" expressed.
Like neon rain on streets unblest,
a mind aflame with stars confessed,
where clock-hands stutter, halt, arrest.
Some days we're maelstroms, fierce and wild,
Some days mere embers, cooled, unlit.
No measured metronomes are we,
we fracture, bend, remake the script.

So feel it raw, that voltage surge
through synapse-storms in rogue design:
Minds that race, then crash and purge,
senses that scream, unconfined.
Not unhinged, but tuned to soul
that thrums beneath the surface calm:
A chaos ancient, bold, and whole,
our difference is the lightning's psalm.

No cure required. No "fix" to find,
just hands to hold when darkness slips.
We ride the swell, unbound, maligned,
while the world sleeps with sealed lips.
For every mind that veers off-grid,
a cosmos logic never kissed.
We're a storm forged through mortal flood,
Humming: We exist.

I wander lonely where the trees
Stand tall with hearts of stone; their shadows creep
Across the dampened earth. My weary knees
Bear weight of years, each step etches deep
Swoons upon the grass, through twilight halls,
Like cathedral aisles, I move without reprieve.
The mockingbird from barren branches calls,
While skylarks sing their hymn to darkened skies.
Though spring returns, hope's voice to silence falls;
A hollow pleading wind that moans and dies.
Where summer light once drenched the meadow's face,
Now poppies weep, and leafless forests sigh.
My voice, a shattered chalice, spills its grace
Of bitter prayers the wind will never hear.
"O lovers lost at mercy's gate,
O robin, sing! Hope, persevere!"
I call, yet the hollowness won't abate.
No solace warms from winter's hearth; its chill,
A deceptive flicker, bewails the blighted ground,
The sterile dream-seeds in the frozen field.
Fate, by what bleak star? What forfeit has been found?
What invisible chain holds this soul bound?
What potion, oath, what storm that cast its die?
No whisper of forgiveness stirs this stagnant pond.
No gentle breezes stir the unyielding sky;
Only these arms that, empty, grasp the air,
Embracing shades that only memory claimed,
The ghost of warmth, the form once cherished there,
A touch now ash... irreparably maimed.

The nymph once danced in golden air,
A whirl that swept through autumn's glade;
She wove her joy with fleeting care,
Through fern-lit haze and twilight shade.
The meadow sighed--its hush laid bare,
By hymns she spun in soft ballet.

In every swirl, both shade and sun
Entwined above with trembling grace;
Her mirth and grief became as one,
A dream no time could yet erase.
She danced of springs not yet begun--
I watched, spellbound, her fleeting trace.

The heart makes gold from tender rain,
From petals kissed by dawn's embrace;
Now she glides through the woods again,
Her presence warms the misted place--
Her dance unbinds each buried chain;
Today, I tread where echoes race.

And--even our brightest hours gleam
With ghosts of bliss too bright to last.
Her dance, now but a fading dream,
Resounds across the haunted past.
Her spirit bends--a willow tree--
Weaving new life where brooklight casts.

In every twirl, the moon and sun
Entwined above in trembling skies.
All mirth and grief were forged as one;
All ache dissolved in sweet disguise.
She danced of love not yet begun--
And I, spellbound, traced her rise.

The heart spins gold from balmy rain
And blooms in May's profuse array.
Now she glides through the woods again,
Her celestial form ignites the day--
Her dance unbinds each buried chain;
Today, I weep where shadows sway.

Yet still--the brightest hours gleam
With ghosts of bliss too bright to last.
Her dance, now but a fading dream,
Becomes an echo from a haunted past.
Her spirit bends--a willow tree--
Weaving new life where brooklight streams.

Too veiled, O Lord, Thy shadowed path,
To guard my soul from life's cruel form--
Thorns enflamed by Heaven's wrath,
Crush blooms beneath Your raging storm.

Each lantern's wane, a ghostly breath,
Reveals the shades' relentless dance:
Lost lovers bound to twilight's death,
Their vows devoured by the void's expanse.

The lilacs bleed to spectral mist,
Where willows bow and softly weep,
While maples dye the clouds' gray twist--
Torment's crest no grace may keep.

In wars where mortal cries are cleaved,
And maidens shrouded in ashen plight--
No saints arise, no heavens grieve;
Souls condemned to endless night.

Too dim, O King, Thy distant grace,
To quell this spirit's fevered trance--
This road erodes the sacred trace,
As specters weave their grim romance.

"Flee!" I plead, yet dread their state,
For flesh bears sin's eternal stain.
"Cold shades--too frail, too lost, too late
To cross the void toward Hell's domain!"

Descend, O King, through soot and pyre,
Where doubt rends faith's unraveled seam--
Though empires fall and screams conspire,
I clutch the oath, Your burning gleam.

Bodies caged where freedom's hymn once thrummed--
not iron, but the venomous rasp: you do not belong.
What marrow lingers when tenderness is rationed to crumbs,
and brothers gnaw tongues to gorge on dust?

A mother's breath shatters on midnight's teeth,
her labor a requiem--sons bartering joy for hollow steel.
Yet in the cracks, courage roots: fingers knotting fingers,
not in war-cries, but the silent liturgy of survival.

(Do you see it? The fault-line in the glass--
one tongue chants psalms, another croons the sea's lament.
Both veins bleed the same ancient river,
yet currents twist apart
as thunderheads loom, parched for rupture.)

Another mother cradles bruises like relics,
her lullaby the creak of deadbolts, the rasp of keys.
Love, once a hearth, now ash pressed into concrete--
a father's smoke-choked dreams stain the ceiling,
while children tally scars like stars,
charting galaxies of want.

They say a boy sprinted through Eden's ghost,
his sneakers pounding a dirge into dawn's throat.
Bullets outran his pulse--
another anthem gutted by sirens.

This soil remembers the first tongue it silenced.
Still, we till seeds into its gashes. Look--
the elders stitch wounds into wisdom:
survival is a dialect.
Mourn not the fallen,
but the fists clenched so long
they've forgotten how to cup a cheek,
how to breathe: you are mine.

Streets seethe with poison.
Syringes christen cribs.
A mother's howl dissolves in static.
But here, in the wreckage, a sapling claws through:
To love in this scorched world--
is to riot.

(Can you hear it? The hum beneath the havoc--
a thousand voices thrumming: we are still here.
Beneath hatred's eclipse,
the sun is a stubborn verb.
Clutch your kin. Even shadows
are born from light.)