Algebra

 The Math Ain’t Mathing, Eddy

The constant is gone
The love you could rely on
The love that did not fade
That took your flaws
Your frailties
And valued you
Just the same
In a world full of the
Superficial
You feared the depth
Of what I gave
Offered freely
So you cheapened it
Played it with your game
Your hardened heart
Was black as night
But you know the truth
And so do I
My love was a spark that
Kept you warm
Your inconsistency doused
My flame
A constant is
The Ultimate Truth
A fixed point
Forever unchanged
You factored me in as static
Trusted fact, immutable
Yet you, you were not the same
I found your love a variable
Algebra was certainly
Not your thing
Me, I liked solving problems
But forgot the math of decay
Order requires energy
Your negativity degrades
Entropy, system failure
The breakdown is
Yours, your shame
Variable constant
I became the “k” in your equation
A placeholder,
A number you never truly knew
The only way
For me to solve my own
Equation
Was to walk away from you

1/3/26 - Processing the unmitigated joy of freedom

 

Burning the Ship

The smell of salt and burning cedar

Is rising from the shore

Smoke is a shroud 

Obscuring

All that has gone before

I sailed away from your wasteland

I harrowed your stormy seas

I thought that I could tame them

But it was they that harrowed me

The waves they rocked and tossed me

My feet knew no solid ground

The rudder was but a stubborn fin

Tracing circles, round and round

And so from you I wrest the wheel

To run this ship aground

When first I burnt that rudder

Your lying tongue was stopped

Stilled by the taste of the flames

Stifled by the salt

The hand on the wheel had never been mine

The boat slid in the stillness wrought

Borne onward with the tide

Oh, that torch of cedar shone

Showed me a coast where refuge lay

Keel met stone with a violent groan

A derelict was made

And there on the strand

I burned the past 

Claimed this land my own

Another match, the hull to ash

Found my footing in the heat of the blaze

On that funeral pyre, as its fury licked higher

The sum of us now null in that burning 

Till in smoking lull “we” lay

The smoke in the air

Was my freedom fare

Purchasing my future by the death of our past

No longer tempest tossed

My land legs new bought

Eyes to the green

To hell with the sea

To hell with you

Forward, it’s me

1/2/26 - still working on rough rhythms