“Morning”
By: Joseph Brindley
Retraux Form
static compartmentalized, hollow face
remembering the past through rain
get out of bed today
find the right words to say
taut and torn
claustrophobic in a wide open space
another day to smile in vain
Poetry comes in all forms, from sonnets to free form, and something I’ve wanted to do to better express myself is create some new forms of poetry for others to use.
The Retraux
The Retraux is a 7-line stanzaic poetic form developed specifically for trauma literature and recovery-based poetry. Its shape enacts the recursive logic of survival: echo, rupture, and return. The form is closed and self-reflective, yet deliberately avoids neat symmetry – evoking the psychological tension between progress and relapse.
Stanza Length:
7 lines per stanza (may be used as a standalone or repeated modularly)
• A lines: Rhyme with each other
• B lines: Rhyme with each other
• C lines: Rhyme with each other and must begin with the same phrase
• X line: A short rupture line – emotionally or grammatically incomplete (1–3 syllables) – functions as a volta or psychological break
Recommended Syllable Counts:
• A: 10 syllables
• B: 8 syllables
• C: 6 syllables
• X: 1 – 3 syllables
• C-line repetition: Both C lines must begin with the same phrase or clause, creating an echo that highlights trauma imprinting
• X-line rupture: Functions like an emotional blink, dissociative pause, or sharp turn. Often enjambed or fragmented
• Backward return: The final A and B lines mirror earlier phrasing, emphasizing regression, self-surveillance, or cognitive looping
Ideal For:
• Trauma writing
• Abuse survivorship
• Recursive memory or grief
• Psychological dissociation or identity fracture
• Therapy-based narrative work
Tone Guidance:
• Avoid ornamental language
• Let tension arise from formal echo and compression
• Emphasize internal spirals over narrative arcs
“The Alchemy of Sunflowers”
By: Joseph Brindley
they called him broken –
as if a fractured mind
couldn’t still conjure sky.
they forget how he walked the fields
not to escape the noise
but to give it form.
his steps wrote hymns
into the soil,
even when no one stayed to read them.
he was never spared the pain.
it clawed into brushstroke,
not hidden,
but translated with redemption.
he did not paint to feel better.
he painted to speak louder.
this was not healing.
this was transcription –
a way to let sorrow be seen
without making it small.
they mistook the yellow for cheer.
they missed how his stars
bled out from the dark,
how he spilled ochre
until the hush flinched,
taught silence what it meant
to be seen.
he did not silence the storm –
he gathered it.
let the thunder strain into pigment.
let sorrow stretch his seeing
until the blaze became a threshold.
he did not chase light.
he became it.
and still they left.
friends. family.
his name curled from their mouths
like something better buried.
but the canvas stayed.
so he offered it
the only thing he had left: devotion that burned
through absence.
his hands outlived their forgetting.
his grief became exaltation.
his solitude, a cathedral.
his silence,
a sermon in color.
no gallery could frame
what he gave us.
he gifted us
the echo of awe,
the ache of a sky
that once pulsed through one man’s eyes.
you do not need to feel loved
to offer something lasting.
no one must choose you
for your light
to outlive them.
what he made
wasn’t escape –
it was a resurrection
of every moment
he refused to let the dark win.
he proved
that even if you are unchosen,
even if you are unseen,
even if the world
cannot hold you,
you can still
teach the stars
how to listen.
© 2025
My newest project is set to release thirty-one (31) days from now, and every day leading up to the release, a small sneak peek!
“No one prepared me
for how long survival looms –
how the days return without apology
and drag empty sunrises behind them.
I moved because stopping
felt like folded surrender,
and they never told me
what to do with the quiet,
when the screaming soured and stopped,
and nothing took its place.I’m what happens when dying takes too long –
a lifetime spent outliving myself.“Excerpt from “Black Butterflies”
More information coming soon.
There is a haunting dissonance you feel when writing about your personal trauma through the spyglass of a poem.
Nothing is as real as it should be. Nothing is as solid, or simple.
It’s like cutting a self-healing mat, over and over and over. It’s like brushing up against a wasp’s nest made of tacks and thorns, but never feeling the sting.
It’s like saying goodbye to someone long gone.
I don’t know if it helps me to process what has happened in my yesterdays, or if it just gives me some form of solace at the lectern of life. But it does something.
And that’s more than I was doing on my own.
Three years, this September, I will have been in therapy with a man just like me, while nothing at all like me. It’s a paradox of shouldn’ts, but it works, somehow. I try not to look too closely at why, in fear of unraveling the intrusive.
I have darkness in my rearview. A cloud of despair and desolation enumerates a sallow sorrow that only time could pretend to heal. And there has been time. Years. Decades. And the pain of betrayal’s sting is just as sweet and sour as it was all those mornings ago.
So I write.
I write to remember, and I write to forget.
I write.
Until it feels a little less wrong.
Well, today’s launch day didn’t go precisely as planned. But at least the website facelift is complete – for now, minus some minor changes.
Working on three different story universes and a dark poetry collection that I am hoping to release before the end of August, if I feel the time is right. One of the universes is for school, which will be with me for some time, and the other two are just in development for general writing usage. AE, EN, and SF. EN is the school one, so it’s the most likely to see some daylight.
A small excerpt from the rough draft:
From Chapter One: Cycle E-01
“He turned back to his console, a cable snaking up and out of his third hand, from the arm protruding near his hip, and latched into the port on the console, and a soft chime chirped from the station. His eye flecks flickered from green-blue to violet, and his facial mechanics shifted, almost relaxed. The trombone softly continued to play.”
Excited over the story, and will be working tonight on the next viewpoint character, who has already been introduced in passing. Here’s hoping it gets some eyes someday.
Also, I ordered more pens. Because I have a problem.
I said years ago I would never write another public blog.
Well, oops.
Talked myself out of this about six times already today, but it’s time. Not time for the world exactly, but time for me. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s nowhere near.
So, what is going to be here? Why should you bother coming back if you found this page somehow?
I’m a writer. And I think I’m a damn good one. And you may want in on that.
I’m also currently a Junior at Southern New Hampshire University, going for my Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. I think my sister would roll her eyes at that. Maybe I do too, honestly. But some things, we’re just made for.
I write poetry – some of it light, most of it dark and trauma-centric.
I write science fiction – some of it futuristic, some of it not.
I write fantasy – some with dragons, some with more dragons, some with needs-more-dragons.
I write essays on the writing process, and finding the right words when no one is listening.
But most important, I’m just a guy trying to hone his craft and talents into something that might be able to bring something better into the world. Something that will last and endure. Something less shit than most the other stuff that goes in and out day after day.
Hope you stick around. Or at least drop by when it’s the right time.