Ajax Kallistrate

Is it a limitation
of the English language or of our own understanding that the active part of 'do as thou wilt' obscures the choice not to do?

Absence
is bounded space that can be filled as much by 'I may yet' or 'I will' as by 'I do' and takes no umbrage at 'I do not' or 'I will not' or 'I will never.'

The power of negation
can reverse reversal and so restore to a natural shape that which has been perverted, corrupted, or misaligned by devious agents.

'No' is an elixir of liberation.
'No' is a root in rotten soil.
'No' is a grain of sand in the track of the machine.

'Do as thou wilt'
and so, choose.

October 30, 2024

I can only be what I am,

a barren poet,
a mother of none,
an unknown know nothing,
a solitary sad sack, a fool
for optimism's despotic twin,
a gardener without a garden,
a pedant servant of liars,
a double bearer of
insufferable
substitute
smarts,
a

loser lost,
and the child
of ancestors so
disappointed in my
unconquerable weakness
that they turn their faces away
and petition the gods for redress,
for a redistribution of the accumulated
wealth that in a moment of over-
weening familial pride they
bequeathed to a daughter
so frail, so unused to
the weight of duty
and obligation,
that she let
slip

treasures
dearly bought
between knobby
knuckled fingers,
and only now, at the
setting of the sun cries
out at their melting gleaming
glow, and grants them only
a timid glance, too late
to be wistful, and
without saving
grace,

the only feature we share
is the angle at which
we bear our
shame.

October 30, 2024

As the liberty of my body contracts,
the liberty of my mind expands.

I restrain both to survive, here.

It is another form of madness.

October 26, 2024

age with grace, age with humility.
age like a writer, age like a poet.

October 21, 2024

Prosperity never follows on
the heels of servitude.

October 9, 2024

We are the sons and daughters
of the kings of the earth.

In the ruckus of the bluejay's croak
dwell the old gods.

In the swaying of stormy branches
dwell the old gods.

In the hoofprints left in a muddy field,
in the whirl of insects caught
in a shaft of sunlight,

in the reflection of autumn leaves
on still water, in the smell of
pine needles crushed
underfoot,

in the gaping mouth of a leaping
trout, in the scattering of
stars across the vast
firmament,

in the blood that sanctifies
the hunter's arrow, in the
blown bloom
of the dog
rose,

in the crash of the sea over
bladderwrack, in the
reverent silence
of new fallen
snow,

in the bright sweetness
of blackberries, in the
trembling flash of
an aspen
leaf,

in the shining globe of a grape,
in the billowing colossus
of a thunderhead
dwell the
old gods.

Their voices are our voices.
Their footfalls are our footfalls.

They walk with us, hoary mountain
men long dead and still full of mirth.

Titans crowned with thunderheads,
blanketed with cloaks of
new fallen snow,
their eyes
the
piercing stars,
and at their sides
the golden shafts of aspen.

Behold them.
Honor them.
Drink with them.

Avow our kinship.

For we are the sons and daughters
of the kings of the earth.

October 9, 2024

Bludgeoned by the hammer
and sickle, I yet look up
into that streaky
morning
sky
and wonder
at ancestors who
looked up in the dead
of winter and did not know
if they'd see the morrow
and yet felt neither
hunger nor
despair,
know-
ing
only
that they
were mortals in
the hands of
the gods.

October 1, 2024

We stumble over headless beasts,
ten stories tall, and tell each
other we walk among men
as noisome fog boils at
our feet, a putrid
miasma;
blind,
we stumble
and sink our hands
into bloody recesses
and greet them as friends,
our speech lost to the deafening
roar of headless animals,
their voices the scream
of the wind over open
wounds,
instruments of death;
knee deep in our own decay,
we yield to the instinct to flee;
weeping;
our throats raw
with the burden of emptied
skulls, we plead, deaf
and blind, stumbling
over the headless
remnants
of giants,
we
drown,
nameless
scaffolding for
a mass grave.
Unremembered.
Alone.

September 26, 2024

In the light of cool August, who knows what radiant September might bring to our foxglove people, tripping over stepping stones set in our path by horny handed beasts slavering in appetite for the flesh of infants?

Might we reach out to our nearest coz and lift him to his feet, lengthen his spine after so long bowed beneath the damning burden of the constricting serpent, the mother of lies, suckling the wealth of our blood from sixty five million wounds inflicted by sixty five million razor sharp tongues, an outpouring of purest fire once held aloft by calloused hands used only to the weight of the sword?

Might we stand together, woven into an immovable wall, a phalanx, a fortress of duty and obligation to kith and kin and race and nation and God?

Might we unite our long silenced voices and bellow a challenge to the savage interlopers whose whips have lathered the backs of too many generations to count, the youth of our men plowed under foreign soil, the labor of our women traded away for shaven coins, the brilliance of our children clouded by the poisoned well of electronic sloth?

Shall that September sun ignite the passion of our race for unchained liberty, for the planting of an ancient tree that will bear new fruit, for the sacrifice that lights the way for the twin gods of war and renewal?

Shall truth be our guide, however thorny and narrow the path?

Do we decide?

Or has that choice been made for us?

Inside our heads, lobotomized by inescapable torment?

Have we reached the end of that road, led like sheep to the end of that blade?

Are we docile now, colonized livestock for the tables of parasites?

Has this long winter frozen our ancestral blood?

They await us.
They await our hand raised in defiance or limp in despair.
They await our footfall on the necks of our enemies or onto our knees into an open grave.

The door closes.

It's time.

September 24, 2024

They cut away what matters,
scissors, grinders,
they cut you
free
of
what
matters,
their machine
wants nothing of
families, fresh air, futurity,
so they cut you out,
cut a shape out
of you, they
pull you
apart,
they
put
you back
together in a shape
you can't remember,
so smile, they
say, smile
for
the
camera,
we're all together now.

September 24, 2024