Restore Factory Settings
I dream of a button,
small and unassuming,
burrowed in the hollow of my chest.
Press it, and the whirring stops—
the noise of years, the clutter of choices,
the weight of roads not taken.
Let me be blank again,
a screen before the first flicker of light,
a page untouched by ink.
No scars, no scripts,
just the hum of potential,
waiting to be born.
But the button is a mirage,
and the factory is gone.
All I have is this:
the quiet act of beginning,
again and again,
with what remains.
Waiting for a New World to Dawn
The sky hums with unfinished promises,
a bruise of fading stars
as I sit on the edge of tomorrow,
feet dangling over the unknown.
The air tastes of unfinished promises and
I am a vessel of quiet ache,
filled with the weight of what could be,
hands cupped like empty bowls,
ready to catch the first drops of change.
Soon- soon, and so, I wait,
not for the world to end,
but for it to begin again,
for the dawn to break
not in the sky, but in us.
The Traveler (a story poem)
The old man sat in his threadbare armchair, the only piece of furniture in his cramped apartment that still held its shape. The walls, yellowed with age, peeled at the corners, and the air smelled faintly of dust and forgotten meals. His television, a bulky relic from the '80s, flickered with static, its colors bleeding into a gray haze. It hadn’t worked properly in years, but Henry didn’t mind. The real show was outside his window as he began his travels of the mind:
Sunset spills across the alley like champagne
over a city he will never walk.
Paris ignites beneath him,
a jeweled promise winking from thirty thousand feet.
His spotted hand follows the curve of the invisible horizon,
tracing rivers that were never his,
mountains that never asked his name.
The engines in his chest slow to a tender idle.
He smiles, soft as boarding music,
and speaks to no one and everyone:
“Next stop—everywhere.”
© Text by Carl Scharwath
