Featured Poet - Hunter Ryder Phoenix
… INTO THE ABYSS
I awaken in a daze,
Adrift in a sea of towering trees
As the rain begins to fall.
A voice inside—
A warning—
Beckons me forward.
Chaotic storms swirl
Through twisted branches
Beneath a moonlit sky.
Shadows dance across the grass,
Whispering forgotten secrets.
Thunder shatters the darkened sky,
Briefly revealing my path.
Rain blinds my face,
Veiling the tears beneath.
The forest whispers softly
In death’s haunting tone
Of drifting wanderers past.
A silent, panicked prayer
Moves across my lips—
“Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani!?”
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
From where did I wander,
And what now lies ahead
In this chaotic abyss … ?
THE DESCENT
Reality ruptures –
A fractured mirror
Reflecting my
Decaying existence.
Familiar faces fade –
Then rise again
As enemies resurrected
In infernal rebellion.
Exiles gather,
Forging an
Unholy alliance
In the poisoned wasteland
Of my past.
Behold the dark prophet,
Reborn beneath a bleeding sky.
Tortured voices
Call my name
From the depths of
A corrupted Eden.
Heretics preach rebellion
From cathedral ruins,
Eyes stitched shut
With barbed wire psalms.
A fissure forms
Along the sands of time,
Devouring distant memories.
Delusions weave
A threadbare web –
Jagged fragments
Of an unraveling mind.
I surrender
What remains
Of my humanity.
As I close my eyes,
I descend once more
Into oblivion.
DARK DREAMS
The voices, they play
Such insidious games,
On my knees, do I pray
As I burn in the flames
They suck like a leech,
They haunt like a ghost,
As demons that prey
On an unholy host.
The dead speak in whispers,
Of dark insurrection
As seditious insurgents
Spread like an infection
As shadows expand
Through the dark of the night
To envelope the sun
I still see morning light.
With no place to run,
I fight my way through—
And unearth a path
I hope remains true.
My future uncertain;
I head to the unknown.
The dead weave strange tales,
Yet I feel so alone.
A nightmare awakens
Into my existence
As familiar faces
Appear in the distance.
I make one lone request —
As I return to the start,
May these memories fade
‘lest they rip me apart.
FORGIVE YOURSELF
Each new chapter becomes
a quiet rebellion
against the story
of your past.
SELF-INFLICTED
Sometimes love just becomes
Another form of self-sabotage —
A joke at your expense
That you prolong
Just to feel the sting
Of the punchline
And a reminder that
You earned the pain.
SHADOWS
I sing into the darkness
To mask my deepest fears.
An existential crisis
Of all that I hold dear.
A summer's dream now ended
And what have I to show ... ?
A singular new purpose
To watch as shadows grow...
ABOUT HUNTER
Hunter is a poet and author from Oklahoma City, USA, whose work examines addiction, psychosis, trauma, and survival through confessional and surreal imagery. Writing under a pseudonym, Hunter draws from lived experience to explore the depths of an unraveling mind and the aftermath of profound psychological distress. His poems often move between moments of collapse and clarity, documenting the difficult terrain between self-destruction and self-forgiveness. Hunter’s work does not seek to sanitize suffering, but to give language to experiences often hidden behind stigma and silence.
