This poem is published in poetry collection Hollow Eye (2026).

Dry Ground

I find myself on dry ground,
elevated,
untouched by the flood.

I gain safety by distance,
ease by altitude.

I try not to hear the fear,
yet I cannot ignore
how unjust it is
to remain intact
while all below me
goes under.

Strange,
how from above
some disasters look organized.

Some victories require
higher ground.

I’m confused why
somewhere below
someone is swallowing
the future for me.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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This poem is published in poetry collection Hollow Eye (2026).

Clean Backup

I blink.

I’m told I am safe.

I feel copied.

There is a backup.
Everything important
was saved.

My balance collapses inward.

Something essential never copied over.

Missing context.

Structure was saved, not the weight.
Data survived, meaning was lost.

I move through the day
increasingly unreal,
like software in a sandbox.

As if I’m operating
inside a partial reconstruction
of myself
that has never truly felt
what made me real.

I understand too late:
this wasn’t a backup.

It was a fuck-up
clean enough
to clear the checkpoints,
to pass review.

A perfect copy of someone
who never actually existed.

System check: passed.
Existence check: failed.

Integrity: missing.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Bleeding Sovereignty

Sovereignty hemorrhages
until standing upright
requires my full effort.

I’m drained
through negotiations
that sound fair,
through requests
framed as necessity,
through compromises
dressed as maturity.

Looking down
I find this opening
that never closed
because I framed it
as cooperation.

I don’t know
how to stop
the bleeding.

I only know
the soft anesthesia,
making me act
as if all this loss
was just another Tuesday.

I feel faint
and call it faith.

My authority
migrates into procedure.

My autonomy
leaves through well-lit rooms.

Power can leak out fully,
yet so gradually
that by the time you notice
you may still be standing,
still making your point,
still somewhat alive—

yet no longer certain
who your “yes” belongs to.

I feel
this comforting
false relief.

How willingly
I participated
in my own hollowing
while still upright functioning,
bleeding sovereignty.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Every Son Becomes a Soldier

I look at my arm
that no longer feels
like mine.

My muscles remember
a posture that never questioned.

Fatigue settles in—
the exhaustion
of holding the same readiness
for a threat
that never arrived
and never left.

Violence didn’t shape me.
Continuity did.

The informal training lives in tone,
in inheritance,
in the quiet agreement
that someone
must hold the line.

Uncommanded,
unspoken—
every son
slowly becomes
a soldier.

Readiness
settles into identity.

Identity
hardens into uniform.

Across the boundary
of this role
the message
finally reaches me.

Standing down
isn’t failure.

It is the first
uncommanded move.

How do you go on
without permission?

I step forward,
uncertain,
still guarded—
but done pretending
that returning
to the lie
was ever an option.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

This poem is published in poetry collection Hollow Eye (2026).

My Game Strategy

I wouldn’t go so far
as to call this
my strategy.

Unavoidable erosion
is the name of this game
I play
involuntarily.

This game starves me,
strips me down slowly.

I feed it silence,
watch my options rot.

While my search for discharge continues,
I keep sanding down
the edges
of every escape.

The game becomes my cage.

By the time it’s my turn,
there are no moves left for me to make,
just a blinding neon blink:

game over.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Subscribe now

Writer’s Update

I turned 50, hit my personal deadline, and managed to get my third book out there. But enough about me already.

Moving from Systoics…

I’ve moved on to the second arc of Hush Halo. The first arc was about Systoics, the group of one percent who chose to integrate with technology and, at least in their minds, remove all problems and discomfort from their world. This was a twisted but sleek realm filled with musks, bilyeus, palantirs, theals, altmans, and their peasant court.

…to Neurals

I have started working on the second arc, in which I write about Neurals. A group of people who, for whatever reason, chose a different path and decided to stay in the dopamine trap we have only just begun to understand. But because it’s dystopian, it’s a next level of hooks, attraction, connectivity, lust, and control. This is so different to write, and I’m super excited about it.

Dystopian Poetry

I have some unpublished material from Hush Halo’s first arc that I want to share with you this summer, at least until I get some new material out. This poetry really isn’t pretty, polished, or sunny, but it’s real and somewhat true to this time. Let me know how you feel about these three poems here.

You Trusted Me Harder

You didn’t threaten me.

You trusted me harder,
took my capacity as consent,
filled me with wound-opening promises.

Every sacrifice that passed through
was evidence
I could surely handle
just one more.

I learned too late
how easily faith
can be aimed back
at the person
who offered it.

How unfair it is
to turn loyalty into a weapon,
to let devotion do the damage
so your hands remain clean—

while I bleed,
still believing
in the trap
that caught me.

#S2050

Calling My Bluff

It waits,

hands in pockets,
watching
what I choose
after I say
I’m done.

Just a consequence
casually catching up with me—

calling my bluff.

#S2030

Ache for Destiny

The most dangerous thing?

Realizing
you were never meant
to be fed here,
but to keep you
wanting more
long enough
to mistake
your ache
for destiny.

#S2040

©Samia Oldman

Color Me Weird

Consider this for a sec. I sell more blank square notebooks on Amazon than I sell poetry books. Yet, surprisingly enough, I’m still more motivated to create more weird poetry than blank square notebooks.

What do you make of that?

Writers Worth SubStalking

I have made some cool friends here on Substack, who I’d love you to connect with:

• who has upleveled the creator experience by building an interesting hub for Dear Future Overlords.

• who doesn’t hold back on the effort when supporting fellow writers.

• who is super busy with her moving project, but never too busy to boggle our minds with clever writing.

• and who have taught me so much about consistency in writing. I have miles to go and will never catch up with the Masters of This Universe.

Special Thanks ♡

Dystopian poetry is not the easiest art to spread around. Special thanks to , , , , and everyone who has dropped a comment or shared my posts recently. I’ll do my best to pay it back or pay it forward.

I’m honestly floored by you all. ♡

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

This poem is published in poetry collection Hollow Eye (2026).

Garden of Total Recall

The silence was never hostile,
but neutral,
animal,
botanical.

This corner of my realm
no longer needed
my voice to function,
or soil to flourish.

I keep watering the plant
after realizing its fakeness
in a garden of Total Recall,
wondering
whether it has a lifeline
reaching consciousness.

It doesn’t.

Talking alone in eternity
feels like a maintenance loop
running to keep oneself online,
barely above water,
after all lights went off,
long after the connection
has timed out.

I keep talking
over the timeline,
even past the erased echo,
testing whether speech exists for real
without proof of being returned
by a garden or the gardener.

It doesn’t.

©2026 Samia Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · START HERE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

This playlist introduces a variety of audio poems for easy listening. Soundscape Playlists are audio only, available for, you can find originals in Poetry. The soundscapes presented here are unmastered and created solely for an emotional journey, crafted with AI tools, created, and copyrighted by Samia Oldman.

Hush Halo Playlist - Urban Isolation

CONTEXT: In times of the Great Optimisation, a privileged group of people wired themselves tightly into the system by aligning with it and fully integrating. The Systoics believe they have perfected themselves by shedding everything that slows them down.

S1145 My Song

S1137 Belonging

Playlists are a paid feature, please subscribe for full access.
Individual poems and soundscapes, visit POETRY.

Read more

I Could Call It Liberation

Erased ending
I call liberation,
forever flow
I call arrival,

as long
as you
don’t expect me
to actually
mean it.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Math Beats Loyalty

No one thanked the ones who stayed.

History leaned on the totals
forgetting the people.

Numbers don’t remember
who stayed when it mattered.

Math beats loyalty
almost every time.

Almost.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Gangsta Consequence

Now I see
how my freedom
was hijacked.

The humbling truth
drops me
on the far side
of the story—

equipped with an unbendable,
non-negotiable real.

Gangsta consequence
will eventually close
my chapter.

Pushing me to cross the line,
to think I’ll improvise
my way out later.

Letting me move,
lets me run,
lets me believe
I’m free—
until I bow.

Nothing personal.

Gangsta consequence knows:
you’ll walk straight into it
the moment you stop believing
you were special enough
to outrun the outcome.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Life Waiting to Happen

The life that could have been
keeps rendering in the back of my mind—

too vivid,
too unresolved,
too human
to fit inside
what they call success.

I glimpse it briefly.

It’s alive,
stationed just outside
what I learned to call real.

The life that could have been
doesn’t hurt loudly.

It hovers nearby,
waiting for recognition
I can never give.

My body remembers
what this world never approved,
what this system never certified.

I mourn it quietly,
the version of myself,
the life that feels heavier
containing mistakes
that would have slowed things down.

Those turning points
didn’t look dramatic then.

I was rewarded
for those choices—
for those quiet wings of a butterfly
shaping the weather
for centuries to come.

I still am.

Rewarded.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Each Day Removed Choice

I listened.

Why wouldn’t I?

Their arguments felt right.
Their hands seemed clean enough.

Over time
I noticed
how easily each day
removed choice.

How ordinary days
framed compliance.

How loyalty
became a standard requirement.

How pressure
was called deserved.

Reasoning warped
as my reality
felt staged—
like a world
rehearsing safety
while quietly erasing
both outliers
and heroes.

Even when it works,
even when everyone agrees,
even when nothing
appears broken,

an order
that punishes refusal
is still violence—

making safety a theatre.

The absence of boots,
the absence of flags
doesn’t make it right.

There are no good fascists.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

I Was the Altar

I was the altar.

Steady,
available,
built to receive
what others needed to give up.

Expectations.
Fear.

I stayed still.
I took it.

Usefulness
is a pristine form of surrender,
so I was useful.

My breath shortened.
My core channeled their faith.

I adjusted their load.

I was being used
as sacred ground.

By sacred,
they meant load-bearing,
a dumping ground.

You see,
the herd travels lighter
when someone else
becomes the prayer mat—
a doormat
to wipe their hooves on.

Only later did I feel
how much muck
had passed through me—

and how much of it
never passed at all.

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

Calling Home

Read more

All Poetry

Poetry Archive FREE

Poetry Updates - email archive

Published Poetry

• Paradise Beyond Pulse BOOK 1.1

• Rendering Humanity BOOK 1.2

• Hollow Eye BOOK 1.3

Poetry Extras

• Inspired by Minnesota

Members Area

Poetry Archive [paid]

Poetry Soundscapes, Playlists [paid]

POETRY · WRITER’S UPDATE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

HOLLOW EYE · Poetry Collection

Dystopian Sci-Fi Poetry - Poetry with Pulse

This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Hollow Eye is the third volume in the concept of the Hush Halo, continues from Paradise Beyond Pulse (1.1) and Rendering Humanity (1.2), where overflowing perfection was still somewhat acceptable and preferred.

POETRY SAMPLE

Remembered

Forgotten
by light
by code
by all that moves forward

is room for the slow
for the messy
the stubborn

I was erased in a rush
so something held
the broken verse
of a silent song

the parts and bits
too human
too wild
too real
formed a self
a soul,
forgotten by the system
found by me

I remembered.

[S1096]

©2026 Sam Oldman

CONTEXT

Singularity of Systoics Arc

Hollow Eye is the third volume in the Singularity of Systoics arc.

CONCEPT

Hush Halo · Science Fiction Poetry Concept

The Hush Halo explores the quiet aftermath of questionable progress and motive. This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Rather than portraying collapse or war, The Hush Halo presents an alternative world that works, just perfectly for everyone. Calmness can be unsettling, its beauty sterile, its peace almost divine. In this stillness holds a question: what was lost when life became easy?

The Hush Halo is both a study and a story. It’s a personal, artistic response to an accelerating era of intrusive technologies, algorithmic automations, and artificial intelligence.

Bit by bit, poem by poem, you are invited to prepare yourself for the choice, and the consequence.

Who will you choose to become?

Hush Halo Amazon

Hush Halo Shop

How to Read This Book?

Poetry With a Pulse

Every piece in this collection has a pulse. Each poem stands on its own as a fragment of the the Hush Halo universe, yet is complete in itself. You can read them in order or hop on and off as you like. At the end of this book, you’ll find a list of poems in alphabetical order, if you wish to locate one by name.

All poems in this book are original works by the poet. Soundscapes and visual elements are created one by one by the poet, using AI-assisted tools. They are atmospheric compositions and readings designed to complement the fantasy within the poetry.

Access to Soundscape

Alongside every poem, you’ll find a QR code that leads to its unique soundscape. Each soundscape is designed to add tone and emotion, inviting you deeper into the realm.

To listen, simply open your phone’s camera and point it at the code. A safe link will appear, no registration required. Tap it, and the soundscape will open in your phone’s browser as an easy-listening experience, where the poem will appear as a soundscape.

POETRY · SQUARE ONE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

RENDERING HUMANITY · Poetry Collection

Dystopian Sci-Fi Poetry - Poetry with Pulse

This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Rendering Humanity is the second volume in the concept of the Hush Halo, continues from Paradise Beyond Pulse (1.1), where ease felt like arrival and harmony passed as truth.

POETRY SAMPLE

The Blind Era

No one
blindfolded me.

I practiced on my own—
carefully preparing for darkness,
sharpening my senses
into tools.

I trained
my peripheral vision,
muted my intuition,
learned to navigate
in dim light,

installed filters
where in doubt.

Now the world
around me
behaves a bit.

I steel my nerves,
become unbothered,
unstartled,
grounded,
ready to be triggered
by weaponized trauma.

I may well face
the aligning times—
grotesgue and grim,
the utmost blind era of primes

alone.

Prepared,
yet unfit.

©2026 Sam Oldman

CONTEXT

Singularity of Systoics Arc

Rendering Humanity is the second volume in the Singularity of Systoics arc.

CONCEPT

Hush Halo · Science Fiction Poetry Concept

The Hush Halo explores the quiet aftermath of questionable progress and motive. This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Rather than portraying collapse or war, The Hush Halo presents an alternative world that works, just perfectly for everyone. Calmness can be unsettling, its beauty sterile, its peace almost divine. In this stillness holds a question: what was lost when life became easy?

The Hush Halo is both a study and a story. It’s a personal, artistic response to an accelerating era of intrusive technologies, algorithmic automations, and artificial intelligence.

Bit by bit, poem by poem, you are invited to prepare yourself for the choice, and the consequence.

Who will you choose to become?

Hush Halo Amazon

Hush Halo Shop

How to Read This Book?

Poetry With a Pulse

Every piece in this collection has a pulse. Each poem stands on its own as a fragment of the the Hush Halo universe, yet is complete in itself. You can read them in order or hop on and off as you like. At the end of this book, you’ll find a list of poems in alphabetical order, if you wish to locate one by name.

All poems in this book are original works by the poet. Soundscapes and visual elements are created one by one by the poet, using AI-assisted tools. They are atmospheric compositions and readings designed to complement the fantasy within the poetry.

Access to Soundscape

Alongside every poem, you’ll find a QR code that leads to its unique soundscape. Each soundscape is designed to add tone and emotion, inviting you deeper into the realm.

To listen, simply open your phone’s camera and point it at the code. A safe link will appear, no registration required. Tap it, and the soundscape will open in your phone’s browser as an easy-listening experience, where the poem will appear as a soundscape.

POETRY · SQUARE ONE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

PARADISE BEYOND PULSE · Poetry Collection

Dystopian Sci-Fi Poetry - Poetry with Pulse

This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Paradise Beyond Pulse is the first volume in the concept of the Hush Halo, explores the quiet aftermath of questionable progress and motive.

POETRY SAMPLE

Is This What We Worked For?

So, is this it?

Is this what we worked for?

No fire.
No mess.
No scars.
No regrets.

No buzz.

What a perfect ending
to a story
of us.

Just as designed,
we optimized
ourselves out
of the plot.

But we meant well, right?

We created a plan.
We followed the blueprint.
All milestones achieved,
we made it here.

So now,
this is where I stand—
in a designer dreamland,
sterilized and scanned.

Wondering why
this endgame
feels like I’m hovering
in zero gravity,
carefully packed
inside this thoroughly disinfected
chest of a room
that smells like bleach
and good intentions,
where neither consciousness
nor a soul
can grow.

©2026 Sam Oldman

CONTEXT

Singularity of Systoics Arc

Paradise Beyond Pulse is the first volume in the Singularity of Systoics arc.

CONCEPT

Hush Halo · Science Fiction Poetry Concept

The Hush Halo explores the quiet aftermath of questionable progress and motive. This dystopian fantasy realm is set in a near-future world where evolution and technology have merged so completely that many parts of humanity itself have become echoes.

Rather than portraying collapse or war, The Hush Halo presents an alternative world that works, just perfectly for everyone. Calmness can be unsettling, its beauty sterile, its peace almost divine. In this stillness holds a question: what was lost when life became easy?

The Hush Halo is both a study and a story. It’s a personal, artistic response to an accelerating era of intrusive technologies, algorithmic automations, and artificial intelligence.

Bit by bit, poem by poem, you are invited to prepare yourself for the choice, and the consequence.

Who will you choose to become?

Hush Halo Amazon

Hush Halo Shop

How to Read This Book?

Poetry With a Pulse

Every piece in this collection has a pulse. Each poem stands on its own as a fragment of the the Hush Halo universe, yet is complete in itself. You can read them in order or hop on and off as you like. At the end of this book, you’ll find a list of poems in alphabetical order, if you wish to locate one by name.

All poems in this book are original works by the poet. Soundscapes and visual elements are created one by one by the poet, using AI-assisted tools. They are atmospheric compositions and readings designed to complement the fantasy within the poetry.

Access to Soundscape

Alongside every poem, you’ll find a QR code that leads to its unique soundscape. Each soundscape is designed to add tone and emotion, inviting you deeper into the realm.

To listen, simply open your phone’s camera and point it at the code. A safe link will appear, no registration required. Tap it, and the soundscape will open in your phone’s browser as an easy-listening experience, where the poem will appear as a soundscape.

POETRY · SQUARE ONE · BUY BOOKS · SHOP · LINKS

Subscribe now

Hush Halo is an indie art project.
To follow and support my work, consider
becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓

This poem is published in poetry collection Hollow Eye (2026).

Detouring Destiny

Tomorrow showed up too early,
shoved down my throat,
forced me to catch up.

Wearing my habits,
speaking in my voice,
using my reasons
against me.

Detouring so-called destiny
like a bullet train on tracks
labeled high-speed freedom.

In this tomorrow
my path is justified
by ever-deepening footprints
on an eternally looping trail
with no exits.

So tell me,
how does it feel so right
to be this wrong?

©2026 Sam Oldman

WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian sci-fi poetry collection by Sam Oldman, set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with a unique soundscape created by poet, in Suno. Learn more in Square One.

Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.

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