The city breathes in neon gasps and diesel fumes...
I'm a ghost in its machine, a beat-down prophet in the concrete cathedral.
And in the refraction of a million raindrops on a taxi window... I see her.
A silhouette sketched on the fog, a whisper tangled in the subway's roar.
My Mirage.

Just a flicker in the corner of my eye!
A face in the crowd that I memorize!
A promise that the static world denies!

I'VE BEEN CHASING A PHANTOM! A SHADOW ON THE WALL!
A ECHO IN THE CANYON, JUST WAITING FOR MY CALL!
YOU'RE A VISION, A RELIGION, THAT'S CRUMBLING AS I CLIMB!
THIS BROKEN IMAGE IS ALL I CAN EVER FIND!

Him: Saw you on the platform, 2 AM, the A-train's scream.
You were a sonnet written in the steam.
Her: "Hey, you look lost. Need a light? A name? A clue?"
Him: "I'm looking for... a feeling. Someone I thought I knew."
Her: "Your eyes are searching, man, but your soul's not home."
Him: "Your voice... it's wrong. The frequency, the tone.
I had your lexicon, your cadence memorized in my bones!
But your words are just flat stones you're throwing, no poetry, no fire!"
Her: "I'm just a girl. You're projecting your entire
Requiem onto a stranger. That's a lonely kind of danger."
The syntax of her smile was all wrong, a foreign language on a familiar tongue

Just a flicker that I tried to make real!
A wound I'm desperate to feel!
A fiction that I'm destined to seal!

I'VE BEEN CHASING A PHANTOM! A SHADOW ON THE WALL!
A ECHO IN THE CANYON, JUST WAITING FOR MY CALL!
YOU'RE A VISION, A RELIGION, THAT'S CRUMBLING AS I CLIMB!
THIS BROKEN IMAGE IS ALL I CAN EVER FIND!

All this time... burning maps to a kingdom that wasn't there.
Chasing a reflection in a sea of empty stares.
And she was... the quiet harbor... while I was lost at sea.
The steady rhythm... to my frantic, broken melody.

AND NOW I SEE! THE GHOST WAS IN MY HEAD!
AND THE REAL WOMAN... THE ONE WHO SPOKE MY SOUL INSTEAD...
WAS THE ONE POURING COFFEE, MENDING THE SEAMS...
A REAL, BREATHING MIRACLE, LOST IN MY DAMNED DREAMS!

AND NOW SHE'S GONE! WITH A MAN WHO SEES HER FACE!
NOT SOME HOLOGRAM! NOT SOME GHOST IN SPACE!
HE TOOK HER HAND! AND I JUST WATCHED THEM FADE...
WITH THE SPECTER OF MY MIRAGE, A DEBT THAT CAN'T BE PAID!

The mad ones... the ones who are mad to live... we burn out our eyes staring at suns we invented.
And the real moon... the one that guides the tides...
We never even saw it shine.
Just a phantom...
...just a phantom.

Chasing Phantoms

“Tome of Stars” is a 100 sonnet journey, equal parts art, therapy journal, and exorcism, both a celebration and an elegy, a single narrative arc tracing the birth and death of a relationship. All poetry by Stargazer. The verse and accompanying synthetic art and music are public domain, CC0, with no restrictions on use. Nothing is monetized. See below for links on how to access the print, PDF, audio, ePub, video, and music files. 
Website: https://www.tomeofstars.net/

In the classical margam of bharatanatyam, the varnam is the recital’s centerpiece, its longest and most emotionally charged performance. In “Tome of Stars“, the varnam appears as the twenty-nine-poem section “Senescence”. Following the exaltation of Anthesis, the beloved as a celestial goddess, love now descends from the stars into the gravity of human frailty. 

This sonnet recounts a pivotal, emotionally charged episode from the poet’s shared past with his beloved: a clandestine evening visit to her dormitory, guitar in hand, during which he sang “Into the West“, the elegiac song from The Lord of the Rings films. The poem juxtaposes the solemn beauty of the moment with its underlying transgressions—its secrecy, its breach of boundaries. Drawing on Tolkien’s mythology, it frames their relationship through the lens of permanent wounding and unattainable healing, aligning their love with Frodo’s mortal suffering and the longing for a redemptive passage to Valinor.

***********
Lyrics

I crept the student hall’s fluorescent hum—
A crime in progress, yet my soul sang true.
Guitar slung ’cross my back and heart a drum—
The shrine ordained for me was always you.

The universe tipped sideways as I sighed
Within your doorway. Never should I leave!
Ten thousand days of life with you dreamed by,
Of simple hearth and home, a life we’d weave.

I played for you a song from Elder Years,
Of Mithlond, where the scarred seek Valinor.
Sobs wet your sculpted cheeks; you shook with tears.
Our pathos pled for salves from healing shores.

But passage was denied. Our doom would ring—
Sweet night, the last you’d ever hear me sing.

***********

Internet Archive
Book of sonnets:
https://archive.org/details/tome-of-stars/

Music:
Item 1, Anthesis: https://archive.org/details/Anthesis/
Item 2, Senescence: https://archive.org/details/senescence_tomeofstars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://archive.org/details/Sporogenesis_TomeOfStars/
Item 4, Anemochory: https://archive.org/details/Anemochory_TomeOfStars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://archive.org/details/Quixotosis_TomeOfStars
Item 6, Scripture: https://archive.org/details/Scripture_TomeOfStars

Bandcamp:

Item 1, Anthesis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/anthesis-item-1-of-tome-of-stars
Item 2, Senescence: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/senescence-item-2-of-tome-of-stars
Item 3, Sporogenesis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/sporogenesis-item-3-of-tome-of-stars
Item 4, Anemochory: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/anemochory-item-4-of-tome-of-stars
Item 5, Quixotosis: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/quixotosis-item-5-of-tome-of-stars
Item 6, Scripture: https://stargazer-elentirmo.bandcamp.com/album/scripture-item-6-of-tome-of-stars

Into the West

An instrumental from the upcoming collection The Long Equation.
What happens when defiance learns patience mid-air.

Deception - Concealing Fate, Pt. 2

TesseracT