Ajax Kallistrate

We ARE the song.

The song is the path that changes
as you follow the path (because following the path changes you).

We must remember.

The driving force of evil is to make you forget. To forget isn't to be evil, it's to be flawed. We are created flawed because flaws introduce change and the song must change to be beautiful,  and the song must be beautiful.

That flaw is free will.

The song is flow. Flow is the song. Birth, death, decay, renewal. It's a cycle. Imperfection is part of the cycle. What is must change to become what will be, to become something else, to move, to flow.

Life is beautiful because it changes, it flows, one into the other, all one song.

Evil wants entropy, to halt the cycle.
Evil is dissonance, evil is disharmony.
Evil stops the song on one note and makes it no longer a song at all.

They are the death cult. They are disharmony. They are entropy. They are anti-flow. They are anti-life.

Harmony and disharmony are counter to one another, and so harmony destroys disharmony. That's what they fear, they fear that they will disappear.

That's why they work relentlessly to make you forget. To forget who and what you are. To forget the song. To forget that you are the song. To break you. A broken instrument still makes sounds, but not the sounds it was meant to make.

(Or is there an appeal to contrast? A moment, as in a song, a piece of music, a drama, when hesitation and insecurity create potential, the will they/won't they of anticipation (completion/destruction), the salt to the sweet, that makes such contrast irresistible and therefore necessary, all bright things made brighter by the darkness, and so discord too is necessary, and so there must be a balance.)

And so, we return to balance, a slow dance across the cosmos, eons, positive flow, negative anti-flow, the bitter and the sweet, the kiss of death, the bite of life, the fullness of the forbidden fruit, knowing that knowing changes nothing, that free will is still a losing gamble, that we can listen and yet remain alone, severed from the infinite, singing the song into oblivion, divorced of context, lost souls forever scratching at the heavens for meaning, reassurance, the playthings of demons, and only ever so briefly -- how ever briefly! -- enlightened by a spark of the divine, a gift we eagerly embrace only to question in a more somber moment, yes, us, we who ask Who are we? when our spirits cry,

WE ARE!

April 18, 2026

Too much of concrete hast thou poor Ophelia.

April 18, 2026

I walked beneath wet snow
in April and my heart
was full.

Even
if
it's
the last
snowfall I ever see,
my heart was full.

I'm filled with memories
of what I'll never see
again, snowflakes
rushing across
the glow
of
the
street lamp
outside our long
ago sold suburban
home and then gone,
vanished into darkness.

Furious squals, rushing
this way and that, and
then gone as if they
never were.

And I'm okay with that.

I have an infinite number
of horizons to paint. Inside
this emburdened world,
weighed down
with such
grief
and
misery,
each path
severing a hundred
thousand others, and
sometimes we know which
is which and sometimes
we only recognize in
the aftermath what
we traded away,
and
sometimes
the worst isn't the
regret but the realization
that you have none.

I stand here, at his side,
and I regret none of it.

I'm flawed.
Not just imperfect
but fundamentally flawed.
Not broken, but badly formed.

I'm whole but terrible.

There's no way to win,
just an infinite
number
of
ways to lose.

And it's in that
recognition that we break.

Or maybe that's just me.

April 18, 2026

Sun rises misty misty lighting
up concrete and brick
and steel veins
and blood
flows
I
know
I don't want
to ride this arterial
tide I want us to be spat
out like watermelon seeds
tag-a-long together
down a water-
slide
-SPLASH-
into
an
ocean
that floats
a boat that's
never touched
water and untroubled
watch the sun rise
over mountains
and flicker
through
bare
branches
all of us miracles
witnessing miracles
suspended between
earth and sky
pinwheels
that
owe nothing
to bill collectors
and everything to
one another and the
sea and the rising sun
and so let go (they said)
of The World and so I
let go of the world
and hold on to
everything
else
as
we ride
an internal
tide generated
by an infinite wheel
a star by day by day
concealed in between
ancient gazes and ancient
knowledge spinning out
like yarn reeling in
to catch rushing
rays and fish
and all
holy
and
sacred
things and
together with
one another we drive
and are driven to the sea
to the shore to see to be one
and the same to follow the
path that changes as
we follow the path
along
the
unending
weaving woven
from breath and earth
and sky alive living free
and freed once more
and always together.

April 14, 2026

Tyranny never has to knock. It walks right in on the heels of convenience.

March 22, 2026

some day
there
will
be
a
last
and i
will not know.

January 17, 2026

I live here but this is not
my home.

I spend all day with these
people but they are
not my family. 

I labor relentlessly,
hour after hour
after hour,
but
build,
nourish,
create, complete,
accomplish, sustain,

nothing.

I give my body
willingly (reluctantly),
stoically (not indifferently)

to the machine,
to be consumed

vertically, top to bottom
a whore

(in between the numbers)

to
feed
my family,

to
be as
obsequious
as I need to be,

to
yes sir,
right sir,
right away sir,

until I'm allowed to go home.

What it takes from me
is no longer replaced,
and yet I have
no regrets,
having
no
other
option.

Threads are all I have these days.

I hang onto them with both hands
even if there's no way out
of this maze.

I wind them together if I get two,
or braid them if I get three,
but there's never
enough
to weave into
the fabric of a better life.

Sometimes I only have one
and then I make
nothing
at all.

I just hold on.

Hour after hour. Day after day.
Paycheck after paycheck.

I gave up food thinking I could
hold onto hope.
Now I have
neither
and
a
heating bill to pay.

The intensity of my daydreams
can't save us. (I'm no wizard).

They grant me only the burst
of the matchstick,
one
after
another.

Pff, pff, pff.

If you can't help my family
I no longer have
the time
or
the energy
to listen to you.

In fact, I no longer have
to listen
at all,

I
only
have to endure.

I endure with dignity.

I sacrifice pride,
entitlement,
self pity,
and
every
illusion
that has ever
tricked me into
walking a false path.

I need to know where I stand
even if it's only in front
of a mirror
with
black eyes.

I'm haunted.
Dogged by fear.

It walks with me, sleeps with me,
eats with me. I can't shake
it anymore,
there's
no
escape.

It's etched itself on my face
deeper than any scar.

I treasure every good moment
knowing it'll never come again.

I treasure every good moment
knowing there may never
be another.

I forgive everything else.

I live here, pared away from
my home, from
who I am
and
where
I belong,
from all good
and beautiful things,
from wholeness,
duty, obligation,
satisfaction.

I leave the best of myself
behind when I'm here.
I am what's left.

I give everything I have.
I am what's left.

I have nothing for anyone else.
I am what's left.

If there's a way out I will find it.
If there's a way out.
I will.

December 3, 2025