Introduction
Fractal Future was written during a period of grief and personal fragmentation, when thoughts arrived as overlapping images rather than complete sentences.
Intuitively written, rather than following a traditional narrative, the poem moves through repetition, rhythm, and layered symbolism, allowing emotion to emerge before explanation.
It captures the experience of a mind attempting to make sense of itself while everything familiar feels as though it is inverting, dissolving, and reforming at the same time.
Fractal Future
Poetry • October 5, 2023
Slivers of my spirit,
shutter slipping on silver film,
seeping, spilled, spanning, and folding in.
Slithering, serpentine moments,
Atonements binding will,
"Always runnin up that hill,"
pausing still, winding time on hold,
ever expanding its sharp cold.
Finding hues in burning space,
Remembering the look
upon your face,
smoke and cinder,
Hide you in my softest place,
Mind splintered,
Snuffed muse, existence refused,
The scent of rot so profuse,
hot sour spewed,
Faded, hated,
fated, obliterated.
Looming far, spit and spark,
booming scars, silent dark,
vapid ash, spreading rapid,
scattered stars shimmer,
golden is her glimmer.
Thundering, flickering smolder,
The safe scent of time spent
on your shoulder,
It meant no mold could form her,
no matter how sober,
no form of being could hold her.
Inner feud,
the choice to be,
was an interlude,
in my story
Stardust skin, heart sink,
spread thin, sea sick,
rip apart, rage spins, invisible,
Gemini twins, indivisible,
Searing sin, silent screams,
Tearing apart at the seams,
singing in reverse,
a prayer and a curse,
love and spite,
as if the left and right
had always been day and night.
Within a single frame, frozen still,
Spark flame,
from within the endless dark,
forever far,
spiraled spirit stretched,
snapping, scratching, sputtering,
spinning to the very core,
so fierce the storm,
and so incredibly warm,
Power pulsing blinding light,
searing, seething,
healing, reeling,
feeling rageful spite.
Wretch and flail,
adrift without a sail.
Fail or fight,
by tooth and nail,
by claw or bite,
Stalling at the height,
Swinging without sight,
Falling without flight.
Leaking cork,
fraction, fork,
fractal future.. .
bleed out, or grab the suture.
Behind the Work
Rather than outlining the poem beforehand, I wrote by following sound before meaning.
The heavy use of alliteration, internal rhyme, and repeated consonants became a way of carrying emotion without relying on a conventional narrative. Images surfaced intuitively, one leading naturally into the next, until patterns began to reveal themselves on their own.
Words and rhythm bubble up from my subconscious and only after the poem was finished did I recognize how consistently it returned to the same questions: identity, grief, memory, transformation, and the tension between breaking apart and becoming something new.
Craft & Analysis
Although written in free verse, the poem relies heavily on sound as a structural device. Repeated sibilance, internal rhyme, and layered consonance create a rhythmic current that moves beneath the imagery, giving the piece an almost spell-like, incantatory quality.
Its fragmented line breaks mirror the emotional state of the speaker. Rather than presenting a linear story, the poem unfolds through recurring motifs and sensory associations, allowing the reader to experience uncertainty instead of simply reading about it.
Several recurring symbols serve as anchors throughout the work:
Photography and film represent memory preserved through light, while also suggesting the inevitable fading of time.
Fire, ash, and smoke embody both destruction and transformation, reflecting grief's ability to consume while simultaneously clearing space for renewal.
Stardust, spirals, and cosmic imagery expand personal experience into something universal, reinforcing the poem's central metaphor of fractal patterns repeating across different timelines.
Dualities: love and spite, left and right, fail and fight, bleed and suture, illustrate the internal tension between collapse and healing.
The closing image, "bleed out, or grab the suture," becomes the poem's emotional fulcrum. After pages of fragmentation, it offers the first, and only, moment of conscious agency. The wound may remain, but the speaker is finally presented with a choice.
Reflection
I don't see Fractal Future as a poem that arrives at an answer.
Instead, it documents a moment when language became a way of navigating a kaleidoscope of uncertainty.
Looking back, I recognize many of the questions that continue to appear throughout my work today. Although my writing has become more deliberate over time, this piece remains an honest snapshot of a mind searching for structure within chaos.
Work Details
Written: October 5, 2023
Medium: Free-verse poetry
Primary Themes: Grief • Memory • Identity • Transformation • Duality
Literary Devices: Alliteration • Internal rhyme • Assonance • Symbolic imagery • Stream of consciousness
Related Works: Starfox, Sacred Navigator, Genesis of Gaia, Izzie’s Garden
This piece is one chapter in a much larger story.
Discover what came before, what followed, and how this work fits into the evolution of my artistic practice.
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