Nomad of Shadows

In the gray dawn, claws from the mist,
Eyes hollow, vacant voids, world’s cruel jest,
A wanderer, sinews stretched taut,
Chasing horizons with cracked, bleeding hands.

Only heart, no hearth, no soil to bind,
Trudges on jagged paths of blistered pain,
Ghost, a wraith in cities unkind,
Forsaken child, soaked in acid rain.

Under foreign skies, beneath alien stars,
Grapples with shadows, faceless scars,
Echoes of distant, violent wars,
Reflected in the void of a shattered gaze.

In bustling streets where laughter cascades,
He drifts unseen, a phantom, thin,
Joy’s pulse, pain’s blade,
Tear at his soul, rip through his skin.

A passport of torment, stained and torn,
Stamps of sorrow, visas of despair,
Tongues of anguish, twisted and worn,
A polyglot of grief, choking on air.

Every step, a dance with desolation,
Every smile, a grimace of plea,
Balanced on the brink of annihilation,
A visible phantom in human sea.

Beneath the crushing weight of shattered dreams,
He builds his walls with bones and blood,
A fortress where hope dims, and silent screams
Echo in the shadowed flood.

Families pass, mirages in the heat,
Fathers, sons, mothers, daughters,
He watches, numb, feeling the beat,
Of love he’ll never know, slaughtered.

In his veins, the cold burn of exile,
Heart encased in iron, bound in dread,
Haunted by relentless, silent trial,
He walks the earth, among the dead.

Proving his worth to the indifferent wind,
Chasing wraiths that mock and evade,
A martyr to pride, flesh and spirit pinned,
To night’s abyss, day’s cruel blade.

He shuns the touch of would-be kin,
Their warmth, a brand upon his cold,
In their eyes, a truth too thin,
A reflection of a soul unsold.

In the end, he kneels at the ocean’s edge,
Watching waves devour, relentless, sure,
A man who vowed never to hedge,
Now sinking in the nevermore.

Stars above, indifferent eyes,
Gleam on tears he cannot spill,
In his heart, a thousand cries,
Silent in the void, forever still.

Why cast on this jagged path,
Why cursed in this cruel play,
A puppet, broken, in fate’s aftermath,
The vast expanse, lost in the fray.

In the silence, a whisper grows,
A flicker of hope, a fragile plea,
Perhaps in wandering, the soul knows,
The brutal truth of being free.

But until that dawn of merciful peace,
He’ll roam the world, a shadowed ghost,
A seeker of truths, yearning release,
Forever unclaimed, by life engrossed.