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When Your Hands Are Empty #poemofhope #faithpoetry #spokenwordpoetry

There will be a season when you have done all you know to do and still, nothing. No answer at the door. No sudden change. No sign in the sky telling you that tomorrow will be kinder. Just you, your unanswered prayer, and the strange silence that makes you question whether God is still listening. He is. Do not mistake silence for absence. Some of God's deepest work happens without making a sound. Roots grow in darkness. Healing happens beneath skin. Morning begins long before the window knows there is light. And somewhere beyond what you can see, your life is being moved by hands you cannot follow. So do not abandon your faith because you cannot trace God's footsteps. You were never promised a clear view. You were given enough light for the next step. Take it. Even if your knees shake. Even if your heart has questions your mouth is afraid to ask. Take it. Faith is not a life without uncertainty. It is waking up with uncertainty beside you and refusing to let it choose your direc...
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The Gospel of a Clever Mind #poem #freeverse

I did not call it evil when it began,
No, I named it order.
A necessary sharpening of the world,
A quiet correction
Of all that trembled, all that hesitated.

I stood where doubt once lived
And buried it beneath polished thoughts.
I said: to hesitate is weakness,
to feel is to fracture,
to question is to lose.

So I became certain.
Terribly, beautifully certain.

I carved my intentions into marble logic,
Cold, unyielding, admired.
Others saw a reflection,
I saw only angles,
Only outcomes bending to my will.

And when the first voice cracked beneath my hand,
I did not hear pain,
I heard proof.

Proof that I was right.

I told myself the world required pruning,
That softness was rot beneath the surface.
So I cut,
Quietly, precisely, without tremor.

Every act dressed in reason,
Every wound is explained in elegant language.
I spoke like a philosopher
While building like a tyrant.

But no one calls a tyrant evil
When he speaks beautifully enough.

I learned that early.

I learned that words could bleach blood,
That intellect could perfume decay.
I learned that if I smiled just right,
No one would notice the trembling behind me.

Or perhaps they did,
And feared me too much to speak.

I told myself fear was respect.
That silence meant agreement.
That distance was admiration.

How easily the mind rewrites the world
When it refuses to see itself.

I did not rage, I refined.
I did not destroy, I improved.
I did not break, I perfected.

Each lie more delicate than the last,
Each truth more distant, more buried, more faint.

And still, I called it wisdom.

I built a cathedral of cleverness,
Stone by stone, thought by thought.
Its pillars were logic,
Its ceiling, untouchable certainty.

But beneath,
Beneath the floor I dared not lift,
Something breathed.

Soft at first.
Then louder.

Not guilt, no, I denied that name.
Not regret, I was far too careful for regret.

It was something older.
Something patient.

A fracture.

A quiet splitting of self from soul.

Because somewhere between the first “necessary act.”
And the last “brilliant decision,”
I had lost the ability to feel the weight
Of what I had become.

And so I went further.

Because distance makes cruelty easier.
Because repetition makes darkness dull.
Because if you walk far enough into the night,
You forget there was ever light at all.

Until,

Until the silence changes.

Not the silence of fear.
Not the silence of obedience.

But the silence stares back.

The silence that does not move
When you command it.

The silence that does not bend
To your perfect reasoning.

And in that silence,
For the first time,
there is no one left to convince.

No audience.
No reflection.
No echo of your own brilliance.

Only you.

And the truth you buried beneath a thousand clever thoughts
Begins to rise,
Slowly, mercilessly,
Like something that never died.

You were never wise.

You were precise, yes.
Calculated. Admired, perhaps.

But wisdom does not require silence from others.
It does not sharpen itself on suffering.
It does not hide behind beautiful explanations.

What you built was not greatness,
It was a distance.

Distance from consequence.
Distance from truth.
Distance from yourself.

And now there is nothing left
But the architecture of your own making,
A hollow monument
To a mind that knew everything

Except how to be human.


© 2026 Gloria Penelope

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