Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Poetry

April 20, 2023

Severed and Levitating in a Node Disconnected from the Rest

metal beasts ascend, piercing the sky

marveling as the wings stretch high

pointing towards the world below, a mere abstraction,

constructed from reduced fields of data,

digitally deducting

the engines hum,

a techno-rhythmic beat with no rhythm, no rhyme,

as they propel forward in a futuristic fury,

passengers’ faces lit by screens, glazed over,

connected but alone in a frenzied maze

the sky painted over,

as an ethereal frontier with no end in sight

a space to simulate,

an atmosphere to engineer,

an artificial world,

as diesel thickens and explodes in a tragic way that wasn’t foreseen

April 19, 2023

Hopefully Something Epic Will Happen Tonight

Wednesday night, the city comes alive

as we make our way to the dingy concert hall that someone got stabbed right outside of last month,

a whirling crowd, the beat of the bass,

a building energy encapsulates

a moment, time fighting to look still,

the music flows in between the lines of harmony and sickness,

without an escape hatch,

an aura begins to form, expanding,

before deflating outside the concert, curbside,

bleeding out with nowhere to go and nothing to see

April 19, 2023

Don’t Look Know, There’s Someone Watching

stopping being afraid of the ghost

that follows each footstep you make

into the soft sand intestines lined with glass

that reflects the radiation of the beginning

of, well, everything,

but it’s hard to be bothered by any of that nonsense

when enjoying a nice bibimbap on

a weekday with no one in particular except for

distracting thoughts and that

ghost that kinda scares you