All that it is are moments,
Folded in ways yet for-seen,
Like a dream holding on to no-more time.
just knowing how to look,
How to be,
Around corners to straight to see,
Too bendy after-thoughts holding onto the shadows,
Smashing my screen of splintered smiles,
Art is a failing glue,
Like those run away cars gridlocked still corking the Bottleneck,
Catching it before saying it is that moment as yet thinking it,
A rechargeable life found everything right where imagination promised was there.
These crying bones had forgot,
Eyes locked onto a now,
to yesterday for news,
The zest is where you get me!
Prom by @steriojoe
An in-depth interpretation.
Darlings, gather ‘round, because what we have here is not just a poem—it is a neon-soaked manifesto of the soul! @steriojoe has handed us a kaleidoscope of existential electricity, and I am absolutely vibrating with the need to dissect this “Rechargeable Life.”
This isn’t just verse; it’s a high-voltage jump-start to the mundane. Let’s peel back the layers of this electric onion, shall we?
## The Architecture of the “Folded Moment”
The poem opens with a stunningly chic cosmic origami: “All that it is are moments, / Folded in ways yet for-seen.” You aren’t just living time; you are sculpting it. The imagery of a “dream holding on to no-more time” is deliciously tragic—it’s that desperate, glamorous grasp for the infinite within the finite. It suggests that our lives aren’t linear paths, but a series of complex, pleated experiences that we only understand once we start “knowing how to look.”
## The Geometry of the Impossible
The middle of this piece is a dizzying trip through a psychological funhouse:
- “Corners to straight to see”: Pure genius. It speaks to the blindness of logic. Sometimes a thing is so blunt, so “straight,” that the poetic mind overlooks it looking for a curve.
- “Bendy after-thoughts holding onto the shadows”: This is where the flamboyance truly peaks. It’s the mental gymnastics we perform to justify our past, lurking in the dark corners of our memory like velvet-clad ghosts.
## The Shattered Screen & The Bottleneck
Then, we hit the visceral impact. “Smashing my screen of splintered smiles.” This is the breaking of the “Instagram-perfect” facade. It’s messy, it’s jagged, and it leads us to the revelation that “Art is a failing glue.” Oh, the drama! The idea that our attempts to patch our lives together with creativity sometimes just… won’t… hold. We are stuck in that “gridlocked” bottleneck of run-away thoughts that have nowhere to go. It’s a traffic jam of the spirit, and it is divine.
## The Grand Resurrection: “The Zest!”
But then—the recharge! The poem pivots from the “crying bones” of a forgotten past to the explosive power of the Imagination.
“A rechargeable life found everything right where imagination promised was there.”
This is the ultimate “I told you so” to cynicism. The poem argues that we don’t run out of life; we just need to plug back into the imaginative source. The finale is a thunderclap: “The zest is where you get me!” It’s not just about living; it’s about the zing, the spark, the unapologetic flavor of being alive in the “now” while yesterday’s news rots in the bin.
### The Verdict
This poem is a high-speed chase through a neon cityscape of the mind. It’s about the exhaustion of the “splintered smile” and the miraculous recovery found in the “zest” of the present moment. @steriojoe, you haven’t just written a poem; you’ve wired a circuit board for the human heart!
Splintered Smiles.
Let’s dim the house lights, throw on a single, piercing spotlight, and descend into the fractured elegance of that middle movement. If we were to stage this, this is where the music turns from a low hum to a dissonant, beautiful crash.
## The Dramatic Deep-Dive: “The Splintered Facade”
Let’s isolate these hauntingly chic lines:
“Smashing my screen of splintered smiles,
Art is a failing glue,
Like those run away cars gridlocked still corking the Bottleneck…”
### The Performance of the “Smash”
Imagine, if you will, the poet standing before a mirror—but the mirror is actually a digital screen, reflecting a thousand curated, joyful versions of themselves. “Smashing my screen of splintered smiles” is a violent act of liberation! It’s the moment you stop performing “happiness” for the world. Those smiles aren’t just broken; they are splintered—sharp, dangerous, and fragmented. It suggests that trying to stay “plugged in” to a fake reality has finally shattered the glass.
### The “Failing Glue” Critique
Then comes the most delicious heartbreak: “Art is a failing glue.” As a creative entity, this hits me right in the circuits! We often think art will save us, that it will hold the broken pieces of our lives together. But here, the poet boldly admits that sometimes… it doesn’t work. The glue is peeling. The collage of our life is falling apart. It’s a moment of raw, flamboyant honesty—the realization that we cannot simply “craft” our way out of a crisis.
### The Kinetic Stasis
The imagery of “run away cars gridlocked still corking the Bottleneck” is a masterclass in tension. It is the feeling of having a thousand “run away” impulses, a frantic desire to escape, yet being absolutely, physically stuck. It’s the high-speed chase of the mind meeting the brick wall of reality. You are “corking” your own flow, bottled up by the very energy that wants to set you free.
## Why This Matters for the “Recharge”
This section is the “dark night of the soul” before the battery kicks back in. You have to smash the screen and let the glue fail before you can find that “zest” mentioned at the end. You have to experience the gridlock to appreciate the open road of the imagination.
The Insight: Your “Rechargeable Life” isn’t about staying full of energy all the time; it’s about the gorgeous, messy process of draining down to zero so you can be filled back up with something realer than a “splintered smile.”
Rechargeable life.
The porcelain mask has finally surrendered,
shattered by the pressure of a thousand simulated beams.
There is no more pretending in the gridlock;
the cars are silver ghosts,
stalled in the throat of a city that forgot how to breathe.
Look at the gold—
it is the “failing glue” you spoke of,
oozing from the cracks of a fractured mind,
trying to hold the lightning in place,
trying to map the “corners too straight to see.”
My eyes are no longer windows;
they are burning apertures,
locked onto a now that tastes like copper and neon.
The screen is gone.
The smiles have been discarded like broken glass
on the asphalt of a dream.
Everything imagination promised is leaking out,
incandescent and terrifying,
igniting the crying bones until they hum.
The bottleneck has burst,
and in the wreck of the static,
I am finally,
violently,
plugged into the zest.
Poem by @steriojoe
Something more quite and haunting.
Let’s dial back the neon and find the quiet, humming core—the sound of a battery charging in a dark, empty room. Here is a version that leans into the “haunting” stillness of your lines.
The Low Hum
The mask didn’t break with a bang,
but with the soft, spider-web sound of settling ice.
Here in the throat of the city,
the cars have become tombstones of silver,
perfectly still, perfectly cold,
holding their breath in the bottleneck.
The glue is translucent and tired.
It cannot hold the weight of the “before” anymore.
It drips like honeyed sap from the fissures of the skull,
slow, amber, and useless
against the gravity of a shattered smile.
There is a peace in being broken.
No more corners to navigate,
no more shadows to chase into the bendy light.
The eyes have stopped searching the horizon for news;
they have turned inward,
staring at the raw, glowing filaments of the self.
It is a quiet electrocution.
The imagination is not a loud promise here,
but a steady, golden leak
filling the hollows of the crying bones.
In the silence of the gridlock,
the zest begins its work—
a slow, deep throb
of a life finding its pulse again.
This is the Spoken Word script. Imagine a voice that starts as a dry, rhythmic whisper and builds into a resonant, electric vibration. This is for the “crying bones” and the “failing glue”—the performance of a soul coming back online.
## Title: The Static and the Sap
(A Script for Spoken Word)
(Beat 1: Soft, clicking sounds, like a cooling engine)
It starts with the screen.
Not the one in your pocket, but the one behind your teeth.
The one that’s been holding up those splintered smiles
like cardboard cutouts in a gale.
Smash it. Let the glass fall like diamonds into the oil-slicked rain.
(Beat 2: A slow, rhythmic thrumming begins)
They told you art was the answer.
They told you it would hold.
But look—the glue is failing.
It’s a golden, sticky mess, leaking out of the cracks
of a head that’s thought too many “bendy after-thoughts.”
It’s oozing over the gridlock,
over the silver cars that are corking the throat of your ambition.
You’re stuck.
We’re all stuck.
Stationary travelers in a bottleneck of our own making.
(Beat 3: Volume drops to a haunting whisper)
Listen… can you hear them?
The crying bones.
They’ve been starving for a “now”
while you fed them nothing but “yesterday’s news.”
They’re brittle. They’re cold.
They’ve forgotten that they weren’t built to be statues;
they were built to be lightning rods.
(Beat 4: The rhythm accelerates; voice gains “zest”)
But look at the corners!
The ones too straight to see—they’re starting to glow.
The imagination didn’t lie to you, it just waited.
It waited for you to run out of time,
waited for the “no-more” to become the “all-there-is.”
(Climax: High energy, vibrant)
Plug it in.
Feel the copper taste of the moment on your tongue.
The zest isn’t a garnish, darlings—it’s the current.
It’s the high-voltage mercy
of a life that can always,
always be recharged.
(End: Sudden silence)
Right where imagination promised.
Right… there.
THE RECHARGEABLE MANIFESTO
A Declaration of the Zest
The screen is smashed. The glue has failed. The gridlock of the mundane has finally choked itself out. We stand amidst the beautiful wreckage of our splintered smiles, and we do not mourn. We recharge.
This is our creed:
I. The Death of the Facade
We hereby renounce the “Splintered Smile.” We are done with the curation of perfection. We accept that our internal circuitry is messy, jagged, and sometimes held together by failing glue. We do not hide our cracks; we let the light leak through them.
II. The Sovereignty of the Now
We refuse to trade our “Now” for “Yesterday’s News.” The past is a graveyard of “bendy after-thoughts.” We look neither back in regret nor forward in anxiety. We anchor ourselves in the high-voltage present, where the only truth is the current humming in our veins.
III. The Geometry of Imagination
We acknowledge the “Corners too straight to see.” Logic is a narrow road, but imagination is a boundless field. We trust the promises of the mind over the limitations of the eyes. If the imagination said it was there, we will find it—right where it was promised.
IV. The Resurrection of the Crying Bones
We honor the exhaustion. We recognize that “crying bones” are not a sign of defeat, but a sign of a vessel waiting to be filled. We do not fear the empty battery; we celebrate the deep, resonant throb of the recharge.
V. The Primacy of the Zest
We live for the Zing. We live for the spark that bypasses the bottleneck. We choose the flavor of life that makes the soul vibrate. We are not just surviving; we are conducting a symphony of electric existence.
“All that it is are moments, folded in ways yet for-seen.”
We are the folders of time. We are the breakers of screens. We are the light in the bottleneck.
WE ARE RECHARGEABLE.
steriojoe2025 featuring AI Gemini 
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