“what can I say
what can I do?
hate myself?”
I refuse myself
consume myself
— to find
the place I belong
wherever you say
is alright
and silence
is not the way
(heaven’s on the way)
so sleep
good night
watching authority
melt all night
but silence
is not right
we need to talk
about it.
:: 12.25.2025 ::
In the cracked marrow of old winters,
a single green blade dares the frost—
not rebirth, not resurrection,
but renovatio:
the slow, deliberate rewriting of ruin.
I have seen cities burn their own names
and rise again wearing stranger faces.
I have watched a black cat
sit in the empty apartment of a dead man
and claim the silence as his own kingdom.
So too the heart,
that stubborn architect,
takes the rubble of its former cathedrals
and builds smaller, truer chapels
where mercy can fit through the door.
Phillip, you who turn rage into pigment,
who date your poems into tomorrows
we have not yet earned—
you know this craft.
You tear the canvas,
spill the blood-reds,
then stitch light back into the wound
until the painting breathes.
Renovatio is not gentle.
It is the knife that removes the rot.
It is the fire that remembers
it was once a hearth.
And when the last ash settles,
something moves beneath it—
a pulse, a purr, a leap
like Chai across the midnight floor.
Old world, die cleanly.
New world, begin imperfectly.
We have time enough
for the slow miracle
of becoming
:: 12.23.2025 ::
[Consumer salvation failing its own messiah]
The messiah is an archetype humans hold mostly as God:
a final receipt, a lifetime warranty,
a being who will, for the low price of belief,
absolve the cart, empty the wish list,
deliver next-day peace.
So they dressed Him in limited-edition skin,
wrapped the cross in shrink-wrap,
turned the nails into loyalty points
that never quite redeem.
He stands now in the cathedral of the mall,
halo replaced by LED ring light,
hands raised not in blessing
but in that universal gesture:
Do you want fries with that?
The sermon streams in 4K:
Suffer now, pay later.
Your brokenness is trending.
Your pain is pre-approved.
He tries to speak in parables
but the algorithm keeps cutting
Him off at 60 seconds.
He tries to multiply loaves
but the bakery sues for copyright infringement.
He tries to heal the leper
security escorts Him out for not wearing shoes.
On Black Friday He is crucified again
between two flat-screen TVs,
crown of thorns rebranded
as a seasonal fashion statement,
marked down 70%.
His final words are lost
under doorbuster announcements
and the soft mechanical voice repeating:
Your call is important to us.
Please stay on the line.
The tomb is a storage unit
in a suburb that used to be a garden.
On the third day
the stone rolls back by itself
because the rental fee bounced.
He walks out empty-handed,
no merchandise, no rewards card,
no receipt to prove He ever belonged to them.
The messiah is an archetype humans hold mostly as God
until the return window closes.
Then He is just a man
with holes in His pockets
and nowhere left to spend or go.
:: 12.12.2025 ::
Time is fathomless, yes—but it is not a grave.
It is a river that remembers every footstep
that ever touched its banks. Names fade, forms loosen,
voices thin to echoes, yet meaning endures the way
stone endures weather: altered, never erased.
:: 12.12.2025 ::
He walked down Seventh Avenue
in a suit the color of storm-light,
Armani stitching holding together
what the world once nailed apart.
No halo—
only the low ember of a man
who has watched every century
try to erase him.
People stared
the way sheep stare at thunder,
uncertain whether to scatter
or kneel.
He did not speak.
He did not lift a hand
to bless or curse or gather.
He only walked—
sandals traded for leather,
robe traded for silk,
the same heart beating beneath.
As he passed
the glass cathedrals of want,
mannequins bowed
in their frozen hunger,
mirrors shivered,
recognizing their own reflection
in his quiet contempt.
A woman selling roses
felt her breath snag
on an old wound.
She offered one,
thorned and trembling.
He took it
the way only the ancient take anything—
with sorrow enough
to swallow empires
and mercy enough
to refuse the feast.
Some said model.
Some said ghost.
Some said madman
too expensive to ignore.
But the air bent around him
like light around a wound,
and the city—
dressed in its bright, glittering sins—
did what cities do:
it looked,
it lingered,
it forgot.
No sermon.
No miracle.
Just a man in Armani asking, without asking,
“Have you learned nothing?”
:: 12.11.2025 ::
I wished this poem would become
a flake of ice called snow—
one trembling shard of heaven,
pure enough to vanish on a warm palm,
yet brave enough to fall.
So the wind, ancient in its counsel,
took my whisper and lifted it
into the high blue chambers
where winter forges its silver truths.
There, among the quiet anvils of cold,
my words stiffened into crystal
each line folding upon itself,
each syllable narrowing into frost.
By dusk it was ready.
And the sky released it
my poem, now a single snowflake,
descending through the stillness
as though time itself held its breath.
The village did not notice.
Children continued their play,
the church bell tolled its tired hour,
and travelers hurried toward their shelter.
But one old woman at her window
saw it glint, and smiled
the way only memory can.
She held out her hand.
The flake landed gently,
melted instantly—
yet in that soft collapse
my poem entered her,
warm as a forgotten kindness,
light as forgiveness.
And the elders say
this is the true labor of snow:
to arrive without demand,
to bless without witness,
to vanish—
yet leave the world quieter
than it found it.
So let this poem fall again and again—
each time a new crystal,
each time a new grace
until your heart, Phillip,
is a field where winter’s silence
rests like a benediction.
:: 12.07.2025 ::
Love,
I have walked through the ruins of myself
just to reach the place
where your shadow begins.
I have carried the smoke of old sorrows
in the folds of my coat,
and yet, before you,
the smoke lifts—
as though even grief
bows its head
when a gentler truth arrives.
If I could touch your hand,
I would do so the way dawn touches windows:
quietly,
as though afraid
to break the dream you’re still inside.
My heart, unruly as a wounded bird,
beats its golden wings
against the cage of ribs,
whispering your name
the way a prayer whispers God’s.
And love—
if the world denies us,
if the night drags its tired curtain
across our small bright hour,
still I would walk toward you
through barbershops of ghosts,
past houses that have forgotten light,
past the bones that beg for release—
I would walk
until the soles of my shoes
remember the shape
of your footsteps.
For you are the single geranium
in the cracked window of my days,
red as a vow spoken once
and never betrayed.
You are the room I have not entered,
but already know by scent alone.
If fate is cruel,
let it be cruel.
If time is short,
let it be short.
If love is a knife,
then let it cut—
for even bleeding,
I would choose you.
And should the city burn,
should the night rip itself apart,
I will hold the torch and the tear
and walk toward you still.
For love—
my love—
when I reach the fire,
I will step into it willingly,
and the fire will be beautiful
because you are standing there.
:: 12.03.2025 ::
I held a glass eye’s fragile gleam
an avenue for sightless souls
and felt its silent judgment
reach my very marrow.
I knew that ancient thirst to find
what lies beyond all seeing,
where mortal vision falters
and even hope must bow.
Yet Spring, with all her tender breath,
rose round me—flowers whispering,
bees humming their patient hymns
a chorus born of memory.
And in that mingled scent
of love and death entwined,
a quiet truth rang clear:
they are the ones who wrote
the Score of Eternity.
:: 12.02.2025 ::
Deep in the soil I heard Earth sigh—
a long, low tremor through the bone;
and I pressed my face into the cold, wet loam
to borrow strength from roots unknown.
I cried for light—
for the sky that flees when sorrow bends the knee—
yet the ground, patient as a mother,
held its silence over me.
Then high above, a single bird
stirred the dawn with feathered grace;
her tiny claws, like hymns of morning,
woke the numbness from my face.
She built her nest with threadbare treasures—
twig and straw, and faith, and pain;
a little artist in the branches,
laboring for life again.
And in her work I felt my heart—
the lonely part that keeps its vow,
that loves the world despite its wildness,
and breaks, yet rises somehow.
For this is a wild world, beloved—
men cut it open, women bleed it,
and sorrow climbs both stem and stone;
yet even in the wounds of living,
we find the seeds of love are sown.
O world so fierce, so torn, so tender—
you bruise us, yes—but teach us too:
to kneel to Earth with humbled spirit,
and rise to sky with vision new.
:: REV 11.30.2025 ::
 | EPRobles on OWL MILK AND INDIGO SMOKE |
 | Adam Fisher on OWL MILK AND INDIGO SMOKE |
| EPRobles on ECSTASIES OF THE REPULSIV… |
 | R. Marshall on ECSTASIES OF THE REPULSIV… |
 | Stefan on ECSTASIES OF THE REPULSIV… |
E.P. Robles | Poetry 
You must be logged in to post a comment.