Joseph

The Truth in Fruit

If the fruit pleases the eye,
it is already a feast.

Press your teeth,
let the flesh confess
its honeyed psalm,
let juice run like a promise
kept.

The truth does not hide,
it ripens in the sun,
round and fragrant,
ready to be held.

Tend the soul like an orchard.
See past the peel,
look deeper than skin,
further than the horizon’s thin line.

Love with both hands,
and without gloves.
Reach,
and know your own hands
are made of mercy,
your spine a stem
that sways but does not break.
Touch,
and trust the weight
of your own grace,
the kindness that bends your branches,
the sorrow that roots you
deeper into earth.

Believe in the pulp,
the seed,
the inevitable bloom.
The Language of Imagination

Everything is a language
not spoken, not bound by tongues..
A logical song humming
from the womb of possibilities,
a picture painted
without brush or hand.

Vision is the echo
of imagination’s polarity
its mirror, its opposite charge
light bending where thought begins,
where silence writes in sparks.

Everything is nothingness.
No explosion, no beginning
only a portal that flickers
for the span of a heartbeat.
A spark, brief as breath,
dissolving into the next,
and the next,
and the next…

We are the witnesses,
standing at the edge
of an infinite horizon.
Each word—a world,
a new universe unfolding.
Your belief—your reality.
Your gaze—a kindling.
We are the dream,
and the dreamer,
and the space between.

To observe is to birth light.
Light reveals an event
yet the irony of its magic
is that we only see the shadow,
the negative of the film.

The true picture
is not for eyes alone.
It is the hum beneath the skin,
the echo after the note,
the shape of the amorphous
between the stars.
The Grace Room

You can whisper faith
into anyone,
into anything.

Step outside your body
peel back the skin,
look deeper.

Not when, not what,
but how you spend your time
this is how you measure life.

Connecting.
Disconnecting.
An endless loop.

Your purpose?
To fall out of it,
into the portal.

To feel its beauty,
dark, because it is deep.

When your senses align,
you will hear the language:
thoughts humming,
emotions pulsing,
questions spiraling,
occurrences folding
into experience.

You choose to live divergent,
but as whom?

We resist,
because we know:
the photograph was taken
long ago.

We are the ghosts here.

Death is the grace room.
We become
the culprit,
the witness,
the judge.

Our verdict,
a compass
for the journey.
The Algorithmic Calf

Google
a warehouse with locked doors,
a library where every book
bears a barcode.

They sell what they steal.
You are the product,
and the payment is you.

Then came Facebook,
the serpent with a smile.
It does not hunt
it lets you slither
into its jaws.

You open your veins willingly,
perceiving the whisper of an algorithm
as a genuine call from a friend.

Musk, Thiel, the new high priests,
clothed with garments of progress,
feeding us dreams
made of ones and zeroes.

We drink them down,
starving for connection
in a world where touch
has been replaced by pixels.

Our sin? Erasure.
The people beside us
fade into ghosts.
We label them,
judge them,
bury them beneath
the weight of our scrolling.

The oligarchs have forged
a kingdom of glass and gold,
and we kneel
before their altars.

Behold the Oval Office
its god is not hidden.
It gleams,
hard and yellow,
worshipped without shame.

Turn away from the cross
if you must.
Embrace the calf,
its hollow shine.
But remember:

Every gilded empire
digs its own grave.
Ziya Through the Fire

The smell of death lingers,
a memory that refuses to fade,
a guest that never leaves,
sorrow draped over the soul’s threshold
like a tattered shroud.

Ziya grows up with war as his cradle—
watches coffins, small as his own shadow,
lowered into the earth.
Three paths stretch before him,
each a different kind of hunger.

A ghost chained to old screams,
gnawing on the bones of the past.
A grayhound sprinting in hell’s loop,
Every night, the same bombs fall.
Every morning, the same blood stains his hands.
Same hands clutching at shadows.

Eyes fixed on a horizon
that retreats with every step.
He runs toward tomorrow,
but tomorrow is a feast never served.
He builds castles in the air,
stacks dreams like stones,
but the horizon always steps back.
One day, he will turn,
and find his pockets full of dust.

He learns to live in the crackle of now,
to survive today,
not in sunlight, but in ember-glow,
digging for joy like a miracle in the ashes,
buried just beneath the skin.
It is not happiness,
it is the quiet before the siren,
the breath between gunshots.
A hard choice.
A different kind of burning.

Ziya is made of war.
An accent, an immigrant,
a muted tongue,
a face that forgot how to smile.
Grew up poor,
a body bruised by hands and words,
an undiagnosed mind
wired for a world that did not speak his language.
This infinite fire is not his doing,
but it is his to carry.

Still,
his mind runs wild,
a stallion kicking free of fences,
galloping through fields
of boundless imagination.
Reality sits in the audience,
watching the theater of his thoughts, untamed.

Free will? Yes,
but every road is lined with walls.
His certainty is destined to become
food for the flames.
What the fire burns,
that, at least, is his.
He alone decides:
light or ruin.

Stars burn.
Their fire is light.
Some shine.
Some swallow whole.
Destruction is a recognized familiar face,
trusted by the world.
Light is always questioned and must always prove itself.

How does the beauty inside
ever bloom outward
when even his own breath
feels like a risk?
when the fear of being seen
echoes,
in solitude,
in crowds,
like a whisper no one claims?

Where is the host?
Who stood at the door
and said, Welcome?
Who opened their arms
and did not flinch
at the scent of smoke?
Who let him in
without counting the burns?
Of Mirrors and Embers

Vanity is a gilded cage,
each bar polished to a blinding sheen,
your reflection distorted in its golden grasp,
a prisoner of your own making.

It tells you, You are more,
while the world shrinks into a mirror,
and every face becomes an adversary,
every word a threat or flattery.

You preen, you pose, you hunger,
until the hunger gnaws you hollow,
for what is vanity but a feast of air,
a banquet where you starve alone?

And anger-oh, anger is the fire
that licks your bones clean of reason,
that turns your hands into fists,
your tongue into a blade.

It does not burn away the wrong;
it burns you, leaves you charred
and trembling in the aftermath,
ash in your mouth, regret in your chest.

Shatter the mirror.
Let the cracks show you
how light passes through
even the broken things.

Kneel by the river,
wash your face in its cold truth,
see yourself as water does,
without flattery, without fury.

When anger comes,
do not feed it your breath.
Hold it like a live coal
until it cools in your palm.

Breathe.
The world is wider
than your reflection,
deeper than your rage.

Step into the current.
Let go.
Be lighter.
Fool’s Errand

Only a fool, they say,
pries frozen earth for figs in winter,
expecting summer’s gold-green sweetness
from a skeleton of branches.

Just as foolish, then,
to dream the wicked
will shed their wickedness
like a worn coat,
to wait for the cruel to soften,
for the wolf to shed its teeth,
for the storm to apologize
for its rough hands.

Do we stand in the downpour,
arms wide, begging the sky
to unlearn its nature?
Do we plant seeds in stone
and whisper grow?

No, wisdom is not bitterness,
but clear-eyed seeing:
the thorn guards its vine,
the river follows its old grooves,
and fire never bows
to the moth’s pleading wings.

Stand, then, with eyes wide open,
not shut in some wishful haze.
Walk without illusion,
meet the world as it is,
ready for the day’s true colors,
prepared for the ways of people.
Keep your hands open, yes,
but your footsteps steady,
your gaze unclouded.

People are what they are.
To ask otherwise
is to hunt figs in snow,
to wait for winter
to kneel and repent.
Wings and Currents

A sudden urge,
a whisper in the mind’s ear,
to seize it at once.
Flourishing freely,
without effort.
No thought,
no foolish preparation.

A breath of fresh air,
a burst of sun,
a leap without looking
but feeling the wind carry you.

Open wings.

A flash of lightning,
a sky exploding with color.
Must have. Must do.
To fill a void.

Drawn by an illusion, bright desire,
and the fleeting shadow
if you don’t.

A sudden excitement,
a habitual order
that rises within.
A sense of something missed
if the moment fades.

A slavery pull.

The tightening in the chest,
the thought that drills and drills.
A denial of what is,
possessed by what is not.

A deceiving command
that isn’t your own,
a fear of what might happen
if the ritual breaks.

A tightening chain.

One frees.
One erupts.
One traps.
But what of the space between?
Whose Steps Trail Yours?

Sifting through shadows,
the phantom touch
of what could be,
you yearn for the intertwined fingers,
the rhythm of two souls,
marching in tandem.

But there is this dance,
that is an ancient truth,
if it starts within.
Are you joined in warmth,
or just chasing illusions?
Tethered to presence,
or drifting in dreams?
Can’t walk hand in hand,
if you aren’t walking hand in hand.

Thirty thousand sunrises,
give or take a few thousand sunsets,
the average span
of a human dream,
each with its own ache,
its own wonder.
Whose steps trail yours?
Whose whispers do you hear?
Chosen partner,
or the shadow you cast alone?

This trip,
this never-ending scroll
of awe and unknown,
we name it life.
And you,
at the helm or riding shotgun,
have your compass
in the palm of your hand.

How do you reach out?
On what wavelength
does your heart send?