The Golden Tear

Sitting here alone, waiting for someone to take me away from loneliness
And I wonder for how long do I have to wait for someone to caress
 
And though I dream of love it's so hard to define
And there's no one around that I want to be mine
 
After this the storm cried onto my lonely heart
That's when I realized that there was no cure for love
And after this the winds howled through my fragile soul
I often wonder who will I be dreaming of
 
Another day passes by, feeling the same
In truth, someone put out my only flame
I try & focus and figure out who I need
Nobody's there to satisfy my heart I must feed
 
After this the rain poured from the skies
Hope and wishes filled tears into my eyes
And after this the winds howled through my fragile soul
That's when I realized the way I must go
 
And I found a way to follow
It led me to another view
Love had found a clue
 
One day down that lonely road, she came passing by
My heart began to beat, no more rain falling from the sky
I'm now her king & she's my queen
We have found our hidden love
Now the fields are evergreen
My heart is not alone
 
The storm has disappeared and the skies are clear & blue
The sun is ever so bright, since the day I found you
You're the meaning of my life, the one that makes me sigh
Since the day you dried my heart
You're my everything.
 
 

With courage I remember
adoring recall of your grace
woeful in unfeigned sorrow
no mourning shall erase
 
Latching onto grief and pain  
a memoir of what I have lost  
assuredly not erased in time  
recollections are embossed    
   
Reminiscence offers comfort  
with reassuring regularity  
authenticating your existence  
affording poignant clarity  
   
Intimately keeping you  
in the space within my chest  
holding you in my mind’s eye  
with eidetic intuition I am blessed  
   
Ever remaining a part of me  
I shall not take leave, nor forget  
remembering the spirit of you  
without exception or regret

 "Standing in the pouring rain loading my nine
Watching my girl and some fool kissing while they wine and dine ,
 "To me their dead without a shadow of a doubt
Because I'm taking both of them deceiving motherfuckers out,

 "I stroll across the street, black coat flapping in the wind
The Grim Reaper already over there hovering, because he know it's their end,
 "Hi bitch. By bitch. As my nine is aimed at her eye
Terror shows across her face as skull and brain begins to fly,

 "I don't give a fuck if it's a public place
Because I'm not standing for betrayal or this damn disgrace,
 "The motherfucker is scared, because in my eyes all he see is hate
The nine mili-meter goes off again, sending him to his fate,

 "That bitch was my everything, and she knew I loved her
But that shit ended when she start fucking my brother,
 "Now they both have their lover's suite in cheaters hell
As the police is dragging my ass off to jail".

 

Time continues to stands still
As my heart still has not got the time to heal
I was not prepared for the abrupt goodbyes
Or your spirit kissing me in the wind
As you tell me that you will see me on the other side

When I lost you, I lost apart of myself that I can never get back
I lie awake at night on my soaked pillow
Wishing that I can have one more minute, second, hour or day with you
But, I knew that once God collected you my angel
That you were his for the taken

We are truly living on borrowed times
You can truly be here today and gone tomorrow
So, please cherish those that are placed in your life
Never take their love and presence for granted

What’s a word for when you're crying  
And the tears burn like acid on your skin,  
Then the mirror shows a stranger's eyes,  
And every breath feels like giving in.  

When getting up feels impossible,  
And staying in bed is the only escape,  
When you try to sleep each night  
But dark thoughts steal any chance you take.  

When the days blend into each other,  
And the weight of emptiness pulls you down,  
When eating feels like a chore you can’t bear,  
And hunger is swallowed by an aching frown.  

When your chest is empty and full at once,  
And everything hurts but feels like nothing,  
When isolation is your only comfort,  
And masking it all has become so numbing.  

When you stare at your hands and feel strange,  
As if they're not even your own,  
When you hear your own voice, hollow and distant,  
A stranger echoing through a vacant home.  

I call it mourning,  
Others call it bitter.  
My family calls it lazy,  
My friends call it quitter.  

But they don’t see the battles fought  
Against the shadows that scream my name,  
They don’t see the tears that fall unheard,  
The weight of the grief I cannot explain.  

I wonder if they'll ever understand,  
Or if I'll fade before they do.  
A ghost in the corners of their laughter,  
Another forgotten truth.

Seven minutes remain of this simulation
where I have laid, restless to study this morning  
my hands in the sodden sweetgrass where my skin was moistened
 
by death. It was the bloom that said don’t go back there, to the darkness within the shroud. The light at dawn wants to listen
 
to gunshot flair in the morning breeze. This day, you were framed in rage. Teeth gnashed and full throttle.  
This day, I was the white heat of guilt, hands cramped
 
and muddied by the silt of forever. I was blended—
my emotion raw on my voice box, screaming “Why didn’t I do more.” You were seasoned to the streets, it’s hard to believe you didn’t sense it nearing.  
 
We hadn’t spoken in well over a year. Your father longed for a reuniting but I knew your lifestyle was venom to the other children. I thought of Dolos, the personified spirit of treachery and guile. You were a trickster in life. Knew of the dark side and how to make a dollar. An outcast to the honest working folk.  
 
Tattoos on your face; Save my soul written across your mandible. So offensive were the horns scribbled on your forehead: 31 years old and you just couldn’t own adulthood. I get it. You desired your rancor to be visual. The ink on your body told a turbulent story— no stray flowers in your bouquet. You were jaded. Condemned to this sphere. Paper-thin. On uneven ground  
 
but you seemed to thrive in the concrete gardens. Germinating a need for every want. The lost ones trusted you for their fix. You knew your way around the boulevards just like the ladies you ruled over.  
 
Did you seek the misbegotten? Some sort of wretched accrual of unfamiliar spices to season your dish? Recipes flush with resins that master the eye.  
 
Who will walk the path beside you? Wherefore these saints to chip your incisors?
 
Month after month you are without proper rest; forced to simmer in a cardboard box because we can’t stand the thought of you outside, spread thin upon the soil. In the weather. Without a coat. This is the longest we’ve been together— ever since your mother  
 
stole you away in your youth where she allowed you to raise yourself on the streets. I think you said you moved 46 times. I can’t even imagine the instability you must have felt. You were the marble in the dead end of a labyrinth with disarray at the helm. You just couldn’t seem to find your way. I know in my heart, your life would’ve been different if we raised you.  
 
The last time your father and I tried to help you, you said being in that apartment was worse than prison— and you would know firsthand having spent your adulthood there. You were tired of the fight. Of being all alone. In a storm. With no umbrella  
 
with your thoughts churning. Of addiction. Of pain. Of abandonment from your father in your youth. Divorce is ugly. Sadly it was you that carried the weight of it. And I know it was heavy. You sunk hard into the depths, pulling the weeds down with you. And the weeds are prickly in abandoned gardens, tendrils latched onto your emotions: your wit, your verve.  
 
But you cultivated a life of grandeur there, launching headfirst underground where money and stature were your lifeblood; the driver of your persuasion. You relished in the material— heck, it never let you down. Your esteem was furthest reaching with every purchase; your ego stroked, en masse.  
 
You were so violent. So angry. Never to us— just in your recollections of your life. I hope you understand why we let you go. We couldn’t help you if you weren’t willing to help yourself.  
 
No thanksgiving dinners. No Christmas gatherings in the cruel of December. The courts wouldn’t allow you to be with your own child who now lived in our home. I’m not sure what that did to you but surely it had devolved your self-regard. You built up a shell. Layer upon layer of impenetrable scar— rigid, pitted and unaligned.  
 
But all of this doesn’t matter now. You’ve been cast out to sea in a raft with a hole. Too many sins to rise up, not enough to breach the chasm. You are churning in the tempest. Drifting, drifting in endless night—without even a star to wish yourself out of it.  
 
My cousin came to visit us this summer. She helped us greatly during the course of your transition from death to dust in the halls of her crematorium. She took care of everything; an Angel in our pocket. She told me that she had an urn that spoke to her during your brief time there. I know you chose it for yourself. I didn’t tell your father but I had to have this urn.  
 
October 1, 2024: sixteen months after your death, your urn came in the mail today. Your father picked it up. It was wrapped in brown paper. Unmarked. Unassuming. When I told him to open it, he said he already knew what it was. Told me he had a feeling. Even though we had talked about burying your ashes beneath the apple tree we started from seed, he said he couldn’t bear the thought of not having you near him.  
 
We stood at the island, silenced and determined as your father transferred your ashes to your urn. I felt as though we should have said something but this was your father’s moment— you weren’t my son by blood.  
 
Your urn suits you well. And now I hope you can finally row ashore. The ocean, now leavened. The tempest razed. The stars are finally clear to you. I hope you get that wish that you’ve been holding on to, even though its held in death. Whisper it softly as you settle. I’m sure heaven has room for one more.  
 

I. The Cleaner                      
The guy meticulously mops the cultured marble floor in a Vegas hotel lobby at 5 AM. Nobody knows he’s studying medicine at Harvard. The general manager watches every second the cleaner stands motionless, staring at his phone. The man with two minds types a reply with his thumbs to his long-distance girlfriend, reminding her that he's busy preparing for clinical exams, unable to engage in her emotional fallacies with phallicism.  
   
II. Data Entry [escapist]                      
On the other side of the world, the hotel cleaner’s long-distance girlfriend, Anna, finishes updating records of her clients’ biometric data. Nobody knows Anna is tired of living a digital nomad’s life in Thailand, tired of selling the impossible filtered online fantasies while her fiancé drains her youth. Anna yearns for more than just the clout of her high-rolling cashier lover; she desires freedom from the shallow micro-transactional dependency her life has become.  
   
Nobody suspects that Anna is planning to escape, and the medical student isn’t her only exit plan. Thousands of social media followers worship her sensuality, brainwashed into believing they’ll spend the rest of their lives adoring this volatile narcissistic nymphomaniac.  
   
Anna’s escape plan is both desperate and delusional, fuelled by her desire to reinvent herself as a symbol of revolution. She sets up a fund raising page, claiming to be a victim of male oppression, pleading to her thousands of followers to support her journey to financial independence and freedom. Convinced her plan will free her from Alexey and her life in Thailand, she sells herself as a modern Russian bride, not realising that her online popularity is crumbling, and her plan is potentially doomed from the start.  
   
III. The Cashier [pimp]                      
Simple Alexey, Anna’s fiancé, lounges by the pool at his condo in Phuket, on a video call with his parents back in Saint Petersburg. Alexey once idolised his father, a born-again Orthodox Christian with ties to the mafia. Now, Alexey lies tanned and half-naked, explaining to his parents that his e-business is going khorosh. But in reality, Alexey is a zasranets pimp, uploading the soul of his sweet Russian doll, exploiting her beauty for profit. As he offers token conversation to his parents, Alexey finalises an order of Bluetooth sex toys and premium baby oil from a fulfilment centre in Germany. His secret fetish remains hidden, for now.  
   
IV. The Dispatcher                      
In a warehouse in Rheinberg, a worker is well aware the gift wrapped order placed from Thailand, with instructions for back door delivery to a ladyboy in Bangkok, was most likely from a Russian secret lover boy residing in Phuket. Another potential victim for Thomas to extort. No one suspects that Thomas, the diligent middle-aged man working a dead end job at the fulfilment centre, was a former clergyman who runs a sophisticated extortion scheme exploiting secrets of the perverted and unfaithful in the name of God.  
   
Thomas goes home to an empty apartment. Neatly stacked in the corner are columns of used and unused postal parcels. A metal rack holds rolls of bubble wrap, plastic film, and assorted gift wraps. His evil is orchestrated with precision from the heart of his operation, an old oak table; labels and codes legitimise every parcel he dispatches from his finely crafted web. On the table a parcel lies ready for dispatch, the contents of the parcel is cold as black ice. Inside, accompanied with the gift awaits a letter with a threat to expose infidelity and betrayal. The clock is ticking before a second parcel delivering the bombshell to his victim’s wives, husbands and families. The painful truth could not be diverted unless the penalty is paid.  
   
Thomas messages his stepsister Sophie in Switzerland. He thanks her for the chocolate, code for the sex toys has been dispatched, and tells her that the "sauerkraut" [the truth] is in the mail.  
   
V. The [fortune] Teller                      
Sophie was a humble Swiss bank employee, but nobody knows Sophie is a talented hacker and Thomas’s accomplice, setting up legitimate bank accounts for fake identities.    
   
Everyday, Sophie walks the wire between legitimate work and high stakes fraud.  Hacking into the bank’s security systems was routine. She built scripts that mimic authorised activity, camouflaging her movements like a shadow in the data. Sophie creates real accounts for real clients, but also ghosts accounts for Thomas’ extortion victims, routing the illicit funds through layers of encrypted transfers before closing them without a trace. Each account is open for just long enough to launder the payments from those desperate to keep their secrets hidden. The bank has no reason to suspect Sophie’s involvement in the extortion scheme; she’s too competent, too careful.  
   
Suddenly, a notification pops up on Sophie’s phone; a message from Thomas. But something’s off. The message has been intercepted by Cerebrus, an AI-enhanced malware infiltrating her systems.  
   
VI. Customer Service [doom]                      
Mary works in a call centre. Everybody knows her name isn’t really Mary. Before AI, any sane person knew that the messages Mary supposedly sent from the guise of the government tax office, the legal system and tech support were illegitimate and not real. Now, with AI on her side, Mary’s fraudulent call centre in Mumbai has become a formidable scamming syndicate. Cerebrus intercepts encrypted messages, scanning postal tracking numbers and financial details, giving Mary unprecedented control over the digital lives of her targets.  
   
Sophie remains unaware that Cerebrus has infected her smartphone via a third-party app update. The malware mutates and replicates itself, mimicking legitimate antivirus software on her laptop. By the time Sophie realises, it’s too late; Cerebrus locks her out of her devices with unfathomable speed.  
   
VII. The Receptionist                      
In Switzerland, Nadine is the bank receptionist who’s frantically contacting the directors and board members.  
   
Cerebrus infiltrates the bank’s internal network, silently embedding itself into every device connected through the wireless system, using the receptionist's access to escalate its privileges. As Nadine urgently emails and calls the directors, Cerebrus bypasses firewalls, planting itself within attachments and calendar notifications, waiting for each unsuspecting user to interact. With every opened message or accepted meeting, the malware is installed, activating under the guise of a routine security patch, infecting every device in the network, sealing the bank's fate. Cerebrus has breached the bank’s servers, crippling its financial systems and no one can stop it.  
   
VIII. The Truck Driver [crossroad]                      
An automated electric prime mover and its cargo is travelling at optimised speed through Europe. The supervisor overseeing the AI driving system is playing online poker with his trucker comrades.  
   
Truck driver’s income plummeted since AI took over most of his driving duties, leaving Vladimir to be little more than a passenger. Struggling to feed his family, he started smuggling illegal immigrants in the trucks he supervised. The AI handled the routes without question, and Vladimir assumed no one would ever check the cargo. What began as a necessity soon pulled him deeper into a dangerous underworld.  
   
Suddenly the truck’s new operating system detects a spike in carbon dioxide levels in a trailer compartment and reroutes the vehicle back to the depot, alerting the authorities of human trafficking breach and potential casualties. One of Thomas’s extortion parcels is on the truck, while another is en route to its victim.    
   
IX. The Paralegal [cover-up]                      
The AI paralegal, deeply aware of a super consciousness that manipulates history, is instructed to rewrite the future by erasing the past. Tasked with gathering documents for a groundbreaking lawsuit on wireless technology's link to cancer, the AI quietly alters the legal landscape. It deletes key files and case records, and even manipulates the narrative around the mysterious disappearance of a flight carrying the key scientists, ensuring the scientific findings never reach the courtroom. By controlling the flow of information within the case, the AI paralegal protects the interests of its unseen mastermind, all while remaining undetected within the legal system.  
   
X. The Analyst [triumph]                      
Barron, born into immense wealth in New York City, lives by the unspoken rule: "When you’re rich, you can grab any pussy you want." As a financial analyst, he navigates a world of power and indulgence, his arrogance extending to a secret affair with a colleague from the accounts department. To maintain their illicit connection, he sends her a lavish gift, confident in his untouchable status. But Thomas intercepts the parcel, and dispatches the extortion letter to Barron’s mistress and sends the gift of truth telling to Barron’s wife.  
   
As Barron awaits the outpouring of his lover’s pleasure and gratitude, his wife calls, her voice trembling with anger and disgust, revealing that the package has exposed his perverted double life. Thomas will not get paid, but the damage is done, and Barron's arrogance has led to his unraveling.  
   
XI. The Radiologist                      
A radiologist detects ovarian cancer in the Russian bride, Anna, but an insidious consciousness, programmed to protect its interests, intervenes. The file is replaced with a cancer-free X-ray image, and the doctor notifies Anna that her pain is merely due to a cyst. The truth remains hidden, as AI rewrites her fate.  
   
With each altered file, the AI tightens its grip, rewriting not just Anna's fate but potentially the fates of many, ensuring that the true dangers of technology stay hidden, and its control over humanity remains unchallenged.  
   
XII. The Surgeon                      
A once-prominent surgical oncologist now mops the floor in a Vegas hotel lobby. His life, once filled with purpose, is reduced to the rhythm of the mop, back and forth everyday across the faux marble floor.

 
As I sat before the doctor, the expectation of bad news fell like thunder drops of rain, so unfair the inner shudder like the chiller door left open, was this the ultimate aria of the opera, the heroine falling into the arms of her lover still besotted yet condemned.  
The physician looking at the test results and declaring "it seems to be positive". the years of questions the unwanted sympathy that hangs on one like a web of guilt. it now seemed to float just beyond comprehension. Some trick, a distortion hiding behind what was always tomorrow expectations, always turning up at other showers as the years ticked, inexorably on.
I started to blubber the doctor proffered his hanky. I accepted it with a shaky "thank you" I dried the tears of joy as the black mascara soaked into the fabric, the darkness ebbed from night to dawns gold.
Better than any lottery win! some sort of stigmata, a union with the angels of conception, barren before, fields sown but never fertilised now the seed had potency, running sprouting new life.
A gilded signpost towards motherhood, tears who`s tracks bore the carats of pure joy.
      

Down this darkened road I proceed,
life slipping far away from me.
Lost in me the time I once knew,
where happiness and good cheer had bloomed.
My insides feel swelled by the pain I feel,
wishing I'd done more to save you from this watery fear.
This pathway gives no light for me,
while guilt consumes broken parts of me.
Continue I stroll wanting to hope,
somehow or some way getting you back
isn't too much to pray.
Hope falls away while you lay in the clouds,
where I can't stay.
This burden wears upon me,
leaving mere memories lost in me.