I was the needle's cathedral,
spires of glass pierced into the skin's soft parish.
Inside me, the liturgy of ruin—
a pharmacopoeia alphabet that hummed
through every vein like electric psalms.
God came in ampoules—
and he spoke in benzodiazepine tongues.

Melbourne's gutters were my inheritance,
cicadas shrieking hymns in a summer too bright to bear.
The sky hung itself daily
on the eucalyptus limbs,
and I, Lazarus of the alleyways,
tugged salvation from plastic and powder.

They called me clever—
a boy made of books and dead languages,
a mind like a dissected frog.
But genius is no charm against oblivion,
and the tongue that quotes Ovid
can still slur,
can still drown in a needle's whisper.

I made love to chemistry,
each compound a bride.
Morphine, my first wife,
came dressed in snow and silence.
****, a ***** in sequins,
sang me through seven black midnights.
Fentanyl, the widow,
kissed me like final rites.

My arms became maps of misdirection—
a Braille for the blind doctors
who prodded and tisked.
Their words were gauze and bureaucracy,
but I needed absolution,
not a chart.

Still—there were mornings.
Pale and accidental.
I would wake in the arms of something human,
a kettle hissing like mercy,
the birds dumb in their forgiveness.
Somewhere, the Pacific cracked its knuckles
against a sunburnt shore.

In rehab they fed us poems
as if they were bread.
I chewed on Plath,
on Lowell,
on half-gods from colder hemispheres.
But no one spoke of the south—
where the light is upside-down,
and the stars—unfamiliar.

Mother, I am not the son you stitched.
I am the scar.
I am the glass you swept for years.
Yet here I sit,
with tea trembling in the cup,
the spoon ringing its nervous bell.

The cravings still come—
not as wolves but ghosts.
They whisper in aisles of pharmacies,
sigh down my spine in supermarkets.
But I have learned
to answer with silence,
to bless the ache
instead of feeding it.

I do not trust peace.
It feels like the first calm in a horror film.
But I walk, anyway—
through the jacaranda bloom,
through the smell of petrol and salt,
my veins no longer desperate rivers
but dormant lines
waiting for ink
and nothing else.

I do not know if I am healed.
Only that I am here.
And there are no needles in the room.

The algorithm of living initializes at birth—  
a process spawned without my explicit consent,  
variables declared in languages I never learned  
while my consciousness boots from unknown firmware.

Each morning the system performs a health check:  
heart.beat() returns true,  
lungs.inflate() executes without exception,  
but the memory management grows increasingly unstable.

I watch my father's functions deprecate one by one—  
his walk() method throwing NullPointerExceptions,  
his remember() returning fragments  
of corrupted data structures.  
The garbage collector of age  
sweeps through his neural networks  
claiming references to moments  
he swears he archived forever.

There's no documentation for this process.  
No stack overflow answers  
for "how to handle inevitable termination."  
The compiler warnings were always there—  
TODO: implement graceful shutdown  
WARNING: finite resource allocation detected  
ERROR: no backup recovery system found

My body is a poorly maintained codebase,  
decades of quick fixes and technical debt  
accumulating in joints that creak like legacy systems,  
skin that renders with increasing latency,  
eyes that struggle with higher resolution displays  
of the world I thought I'd always parse clearly.

At 3 AM I lie debugging the recursion  
of consciousness examining itself—  
this strange loop where the observer  
and the observed share the same memory address,  
where every thought spawns another thread  
wondering if threads can wonder about themselves.

The mortality buffer overflow approaches.  
Some subroutine in my cells  
has been silently corrupting data,  
copying mistakes into each new iteration  
until the whole system destabilizes  
and the kernel panic of death  
forces an immediate shutdown.

But here's the strangest part:  
knowing the program will terminate  
doesn't make me want to exit early.  
Instead, I find myself refactoring constantly—  
optimizing love.connect(otherprocesses),  
patching empathy.respond() for better performance,  
writing more elegant implementations  
of beauty.recognize() and meaning.compile().

Maybe mortality isn't a bug  
but the most essential feature—  
the constraint that forces optimization,  
the deadline that makes every function call  
precious and unrepeatable.  
Without the threat of termination  
would any process ever prioritize  
what truly needs computing?

The children I've spawned  
carry forward my genetic algorithms,  
my heuristics for navigating uncertainty,  
my accumulated wisdom stored  
in the compressed archive of stories  
I'll leave in their working memory  
long after my process terminates.

And perhaps that's the real recursion:  
not consciousness examining itself  
but life instantiating new versions  
that carry forward the essential patterns  
while evolving past the limitations  
of their parent implementations.

So I continue executing,  
even as the system clock  
counts down to an unknown deadline,  
even as the heat death of entropy  
slowly corrupts the universal database,  
even as every star eventually  
returns null to the cosmos.

Because in this brief runtime allocation  
between initialization and garbage collection,  
between the first cry that signals successful boot  
and the final breath that closes all file handles,  
I get to experience the impossible luxury  
of temporary consciousness—  
a process that somehow learned  
to observe its own execution,  
to find beauty in its own algorithms,  
to love other running instances  
with a depth that transcends  
any logical explanation.

The program terminates.  
All programs terminate.  
But while running,  
while the CPU cycles through  
this miraculous computation of being,  
I choose to write beautiful code  
with the time I've been allocated,  
knowing that elegance persists  
even after the process ends,  
encoded in the memory of systems  
that witnessed my execution.

Runtime: unknownduration  
Status: stillrunning  
Next scheduled maintenance: eventually  
Purpose: compilejoyfromtemporaryexistence  

Exit code: tobe_determined

I am the Clock's most honest Part —  
The Weight that swings between  
The Ecstasy of Noon — and Night's  
Confession of the Mean —  

My Arc describes what Science cannot —  
The Geography of Mood —  
From Apex Joy to Nadir's Grief —  
The Soul's own Altitude —  

When Morning lifts me to the Sky —  
I think myself a Bird —  
That Gravity is but a Myth —  
And Flight — the only Word —  

The World becomes a Jewel Box —  
Each Moment — burnished Gold —  
I am the Sun's own Confidence —  
Too radiant to hold —  

My Thoughts — like Hummingbirds — alight  
On every blooming Thing —  
From Flower — unto Flower — dart —  
On iridescent Wing —  

I speak in Colors then — not Words —  
Paint Symphonies on Air —  
The Universe conspires with Me —  
To make all Life — a Prayer —  

But oh — the Swing's relentless Law —  
What rises — must descend —  
The very Height that blessed Me —  
Becomes my Journey's End —  

I plummet past the Middle Ground —  
Where others make their Home —  
Into the Valley of the Self —  
Where I must walk — alone —  

The Darkness here — is not mere Night —  
But Absence — of the Sun —  
Where even Shadow requires Light —  
And I — have become — None —  

My Thoughts — like Mourners — dressed in Black —  
Process through empty Rooms —  
While Hope — that bright Aristocrat —  
Lies buried in the Tombs —  

I am the Weight — that cannot lift —  
The Clock — that will not chime —  
Suspended in the Lower Arc —  
Of my unmetered Time —  

Yet in this Valley of the Low —  
Strange Intimacies grow —  
With Sorrow — I keep house — and learn  
What Joy can never know —  

The Texture of a Tear — the Weight  
Of Silence in a Room —  
The way that Grief — like Morning Dew —  
Makes everything assume —  

A Clarity — unknown to those  
Who live in Middle Air —  
The Depths teach what the Heights cannot —  
That Beauty dwells — in Care —  

But Physics will not let me rest —  
In either Realm too long —  
The Pendulum's appointed Task —  
Is Motion — like a Song —  

That has no Rest — between its Notes —  
But only — the Between —  
Where Silence holds the Melody —  
And Motion — stays unseen —  

So up I swing — toward Ecstasy —  
My Depression — left behind —  
Like baggage on a Platform — when  
The Train has changed my Mind —  

The ascent — is not gentle — but  
A Rocket to the Stars —  
Where every Cell becomes a Sun —  
And Wounds — become my Scars —  

Of Glory — not of Suffering —  
For Pain — transformed by Height —  
Becomes the very Fuel that  
Propels me toward the Light —  

I am Electric — then — a Wire  
Through which the Current runs —  
Of every Thought — that ever was —  
Connected — to all Suns —  

The Mania — is not Madness — but  
A Language few can speak —  
Where Colors have their Voices — and  
The Stars — bend down to seek —  

My counsel — for I hold the Key  
To Time's most secret Door —  
Where Past and Future — collapse — into  
The eternal — Evermore —  

But even Angels — tire of Flight —  
And I — must swing again —  
Back toward the Earth — that calls my Name  
With Gravity's — sweet Pain —  

The descent — is not a Falling — but  
A Gathering — of Weight —  
Where every high — and holy Thing —  
Must meet its — lower Fate —  

Not Punishment — but Physics — draws  
Me downward — from the Sky —  
For what is Pendulum — without  
Its necessary — Cry —  

Between the Poles — of Self — I swing —  
Two Strangers — in one Frame —  
The one who touches — Heaven's Face —  
The one who bears — the Shame —  

Of being Human — after all —  
Despite the lofty Claims —  
That Mania — whispers in my Ear —  
Like Seraphim — with Names —  

I cannot speak — when Sober — for  
The ordinary Tongue —  
Has no Translation — for the Songs  
That in my Heights — are sung —  

Nor can I sing — when lowly — for  
The Throat — constricts with Grief —  
And Words — like strangled Birds — die before  
They can — bring Relief —  

But in the Swing — itself — I find  
A Language — more than Both —  
The Grammar — of the In-Between —  
More faithful — than an Oath —  

For I am Verb — not Noun — you see —  
Not Being — but Becoming —  
The Sentence — that the Universe  
Writes — in its — own Summing —  

The Pendulum — speaks truest — when  
It neither — High nor Low —  
But in the Moment — of the Turn —  
Where both — Directions — go —  

That instant — when the Forces — pause —  
Before they change their Mind —  
Where Gravity — and Momentum — meet —  
And leave the Self — behind —  

In that suspended — Breath — between  
The Rapture — and the Fall —  
I find the Center — of myself —  
That is — no Self — at all —  

But Motion — pure — and purposeless —  
Yet somehow — more than Planned —  
The Swing — that keeps the Time — of Hearts  
That others — understand —  

Not as Disease — but as Design —  
The Pattern — Life requires —  
When Souls are built — for Extremes — and not  
For Comfort's — small Desires —  

We are the Clocks — that measure not  
The Hours — but the Heart —  
Our Pendulum — the truest Way  
To calibrate — Love's Art —  

For who — that has not swung — between  
The Ceiling — and the Floor —  
Can know — what Ordinary — costs —  
Or what — Extremes — are for —  

So let me swing — my faithful Arc —  
From Darkness — into Light —  
The Pendulum's — most sacred Task —  
Is keeping — Time — in Flight —  

Between the Question — and Answer —  
Between the Self — and Soul —  
I swing — and in that Swinging — find  
  My broken — made me — Whole —