"The Geometry of Craters" by Scott Burton

 

The Geometry of Craters

The sky above,
has begun to stutter . . .

as if the stars
are trying to remember
how to fall.

Night used to be
a quiet witness.

Now it is a ledger
where someone keeps
writing the same equation:

metal + distance
= absence.

Missiles arrive
like unsigned letters
from a future
that has already decided
what will be missing.

Buildings open their ribs
to the wind.

The streets breathe dust
like an old library
where every book
is titled
before.

Somewhere
a child asks why thunder
has learned to aim.

Somewhere
a soldier watches the horizon
the way a man watches
a door
that will never open again.

The desert does not care
which flag burns.

It only records
the geometry of craters
the way a graveyard records
names
that no longer answer.

And history . . .

that patient astronomer . . .

is already charting
another constellation
made entirely
of smoke.

~

Scott Burton is a writer and artist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, whose work is rooted in raw honesty, emotional survival, and the haunting beauty of what lingers long after love or loss. A dreamer by nature and a romantic to a fault, his poetry spans decades and carries the weight of lived experience. Thousands of pieces that speak what couldn't be said out loud. His writing walks the tightrope between ruin and reverence, reaching into themes of longing, emotional vulnerability, missed chances, and the ache of memory. He writes in free verse, often in a stream-of-consciousness style, allowing the poem to breathe and break as a heart does—unpolished, unguarded, and always reaching.

Scott is the author of Forever Is Tomorrow, a deeply personal collection revisited in a newly expanded edition, and the currently releasing ten-volume Chaos series, which chronicles the emotional anatomy of being human. His work isn't interested in perfection—it's about truth, even when that truth hurts. His ongoing creative identity also lives under the moniker ks.bleeds.ink, where art and vulnerability continue to meet on the page. His writing remains a kind of devotion—to love, to memory, to all that lingers after the moment has passed but refuses to let go.

Website:  ScottBurtonAuthor.com
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