Rituals
A collection of poems
This is an archived post from December 1, 2025.
For some time now, I’ve been following Estelle Ellison’s incredible Substack, Abolish Time. It’s mostly deep, dense anarchist writing that makes my brain feel bigger, but to my surprise, they last posted an in-depth video game guide. I ended up spending the morning reading the article up to the spoiler point, then purchasing the game to play it that same afternoon.
The experience was…confusing. And then, perhaps…transcendent?
Phoenix Springs, much like my experience of Ellison’s writing, I suppose, is rich and dense and not always the most transparent. It bubbles forth the kind of thought that itches in a way that takes several scratches to really dislodge or transform it from your brain.
I returned to Ellison’s article after finishing the game to read their analysis. I missed a lot of things. Then, I went to bed and continued ruminating on the characters. A lot of the characters don’t interact with you in satisfying or comfortable ways—they speak in riddles and non sequiturs—but they are reminiscent of The Little Prince, or the more recent Flow (2024), where they feel like familiar caricatures of reality. They are symbols more than they are people. What makes Phoenix Springs stand out is how much these symbols feel like my reality—perhaps parts of our shared reality—in this period of my history.
I woke up the next day with poetry. My mind’s signal for me to process this year, I suppose.
I highly recommend Ellison’s article if you’d like to experience the game without purchasing it, but you don’t need it to read this short collection of poems.
Thanks for being here, friend.
Note: Formatting on BearBlog will look a bit different from Substack as I am still figuring out how to properly structure poetry. I fiddled with them a lot during importing, but I think the experience still comes through.
Healer
A woman in the cabin has been crying For so long that the call her the Crying One She sits alone in her cabin beside an empty hearth The Crying One is mourning For so long that she can't remember why She aches the pain that was there is tender with familiarity She aches it was supposed to hurt a different way A doctor sits alone in a cabin nearby Pensive and naked, pondering his own importance the Crying One's sobs is as familiar as the birds Help me help her, you beg Healers need healing too, he replies unmoved
Patience
I met a man who spoke of patience
For what? I ask
I'm looking to leave he replies
Where are you going? I ask
Somewhere that isn't here he replies
Does he know?
The door is open I tell him
I am waiting he tells me
What are you waiting for?
In the world I come from he says
Every door is a locked door
The world is different now
Then why do I hear the locks turn at night?
Patience II
I met a man who sits in a home with no doors
I sit beside him
I tell him I hear the locks turning too
We wait the moon rises
the sun breaks between the slats of his old roof
We wait nobody comes
Nothing is happening
I observe impatiently
Nothing will ever happen unless you wait
it sounds sagely when he says it
I am not convinced
You don't know what you're waiting for, do you?
I ask
Nothing will ever happen unless you wait
he repeats
I repeat my question
He laughs and so we are the same
Writer
I find the world too filled with words sometimes
like flickering white pixels between the greys and
blacks of noise,
unrecognizable meaningless driven to what end?
In all of their obsequiousness, we fall in line
like a snake eating its own tail
Where they once came to me in glittering neon swirls,
I pull them out of my chest now
dark bile like so many others
this is where I store my anger, I tell the
monk writing glyphs across her floor
with a long brush
I don't recognize them, but I tell myself
I understand them
She is unimpressed
Tight lines of text scatter across pages
strewn across her floors, hung from her ceilings
If they do not beg to be understood,
then what are they for? I ask
What is bigger than understanding? she asks
nonsense, I reply nothingness
She writes unceasingly, neither language nor mathematics
somehow meaningful and meaningless altogether
Perhaps she stores her anger here too
between lines of nothingness
where they can't be found
Perhaps all words end up here in glyphs of our own making
selfish and stubborn and insignificant
ego the size of the sun
Light-headed
The fumes take all forms: dancing lights
florals
the kind of song that takes you
to a different plane
He lays in the meadow to enjoy the fumes
drifting incoherent
The smell of cigarettes and gasoline
makes my head pulse
How long have you been out here? I ask
His eyes roll to the desert sky
what is time
what does it matter
we are all copies of another
Reality is hard I tell him halfheartedly
So join me he says, waving his hand
like he's skimming invisible waters
I can't I'll never want to leave
Reality is hard
he echoes again
Mason
You remind me of someone.
Someone that once inspired me to build.
How can I when I don't know who I am?
You build, don't you?
There is a brick in your hand.
Seventy-seven percent mud.
Nineteen sand.
Four percent straw.
So you know what it is to dream of a greater whole.
Seventy-seven percent mud.
Nineteen sand.
Four percent straw.
I had so many parts laid out in front of me
So many dreams of something more
You sound like the Architect
someone I once knew
Is that who you really are?
I am the Mason
I build bricks
that is all
Can't you be both? The one that dreams
and the one that makes it happen
You speak like the Architect
someone who did not know what to do with
mud
sand
and straw
Memory
You live your youth over and over
Twenty five years old stretched over a lifetime
expunging your memories at the end of each year
Why would you want to never learn?
I ask her as she steps into the machine
What use is eternal youth
without engraving every second with what you've learned
The privilege of time
the privilege of wisdom
You say that as if you ever do
she says blandly
as if you don't wash and rinse all
that does not suit you
Humanity is all cycles some bigger than others
you rise and fall just like the rest of us
One big washing machine
I've learned some hard lessons I've grown from them
Sure, she says until you don't
until you're pressing your memories
into your chest and letting the thorny ones
bleed you dry