1

The revolution starts again,

Another year, another number,

Added on, commemorating Earth’s rotation ‘round the sun.

2

A rather silly moment

we indulge in,

Taking time to state once more

A resolution that

the lot of us are bound to break.

It’s arbitrary, even crude;

Irresolute.

For every day, at any moment,

we are free to bind ourselves to promises,

then in the next, to let them die.

In earnest, though,

we should be made to

answer for them…

Often, we would rather not.

3

This attitude prepares us

for the disappointments and deceptions,

degradations, harm and hardship

crushingly imposed,

as days progress,

as time unfolds.

But from these impositions,

must we acquiesce?

4

We’re always free to face the consequences

of our promises,

Imposing on ourselves the discipline

to persevere,

to follow through,

Perhaps to bend — but not to break,

To do what’s right for your own sake.

5

Not only yours—

for you, too, live within the world,

And all of us are held together in the fold.

Your choices, promises,

accountability for failings

each have impact

as we act together,

or opposed to one another.

We’re bound up, interwoven

In and through the fabric of the world

and of life itself.

6

The monarch butterfly will flap its wings,

Which generate the smallest wisps of wind;

they swirl and slowly gather,

growing, building, coalescing,

moving ’cross the globe,

expanding, speeding, darkening,

into a raging tempest,

wild and now unleashed,

a drowning, overwhelming flood

of catastrophic force.

But all the while, the butterfly just flaps.

7

Akin, we read of how the kings

Of old would point and execute

Those close or far,

Expand dominion,

Squeeze their peasantry,

Yet dared to call themselves divine.

Some fast, some slow,

All festered devastation.

But like the papillon, their executions

Still reverberate and harm:

They manifested selfishness,

Mistrust and hatred of all others but their own.

(Even of themselves.)

They pillaged, murdered, looted

All they could.

But worst they spun their webs,

Of terror and deceit,

Ensnaring and enslaving all

Unto the whimsy of their moods and lusts.

Across their dynasties

It has been hard to purge their sicknesses—

the waste they laid upon

our spirits and our kind,

infecting our polities right up to present day.

8

Although we did resolve to end their kind,

And gave them to the guillotine,

The vacuums left us ripe for war

and further exploitation,

cruelly at the hands of

their inheritors:

monopolistic money gluttons—

Tech bros, finance titans,

Tycoons of oil, min’ral, seed, and chemical,

The data miners of your privacy,

The lenders, launderers

And lords of real estate.

9

Across the board,

They’re narcissistic vermin freaks,

Diseased with greed,

Who squeeze and squeeze

Who choke the necks of all of us

And squeeze and squeeze

The life, the liberty, the possibility

of happiness,

‘Tis not without good reason that these

Men and women, too, are known as

oligarchs.

10

A blight, they are, upon the human race,

Accelerants of our demise.

11

The hist’ry of humanity

Records us stunted, mutilated,

And manipulated

Into loathing and mistrusting of

the colors, sexes, shapes

And sizes not our own.

To wit:

“The hoipolloi, the riffraff, rabble,

Are mere sheep that bray,

Deserving nothing but the slaughter,

As we have engineered,

But also to enjoy their squirm.

For when some of the peasants steal

each other’s crumbs,

We name that criminal,

Then when the criminals are rounded up

And sent away,

The scraps are theirs,

Still not enough to live,

As we’ve designed.

They whittle and struggle,

Fall to their knees and hope

As they’ve been taught

That all the goods

That we deny

Shall one day fall

Down from on high!”

12

Do you not see the meaning of their falsehoods?

The fork-tongued words

To play you off against your neighbor,

Drive you to a frenzy

And destroy the solidarity

You naturally share?

So turn, instead, the arms and hate

That have been

Forced upon us by these oligarchs;

Take back your health,

your body, spirit, energies, and mind.

For far too long,

we have been taught

to kill each other,

Let us turn them on the perpetrators,

And then lay them down,

Or leave them hanging

so that we then bend the arch

of our existence

finally — and firmly —

to the side of righteousness,

Toward a path for anyone and everyone,

As brothers, and as sisters,

But most importantly

As fellow human beings.

As one, we are a multitude,

And as a multitude we too are one.

13

We’re also taught to love and honor

All the freedoms fought and died for,

Although hitherto these lessons

Culminate in giving us away

To servitude.

Millennia of human slavery must end.

We need to truly live,

to feel, and to experience

What freedom really means:

Its openness, unbound

and its responsibilities,

To liberate those not yet free —

Including ourselves.

To learn to care and lift

Up everyone in need,

For we contain

the best and least of us.

We owe this fight unto each other.

We owe it to ourselves,

To find resolve

To shift from “I, and for myself alone”

To: “Since I’m free, I

Hold my hand out

Beck’ning you to join;

For I am nothing

without you,

“I” does not exist

if not with you,

And then, together,

Each for each of us.

As one,

We reach that state

in which there need not be

A state at all,

When all are free.

For then and only then—

Prosperity made manifest—

Are our hearts made light.

14

It’s in the future, yes,

And there’s much darkness,

Violence, and dread, ahead.

While now is ever here

It’s also ever leaving,

In motion, always,

Onward, forward,

Whether we are in or out,

Or resolute or weak:

There is no option, is no choice,

It’s coming, coming, coming.

Now lend your powers

And your spirit

To the cause

You do believe in,

Consciously,

Or outside your awares.

You’ve read this song,

Awaken now,

Or if not fully ready

For the freedom that you seek

Allow what can be yours,

What can be shared

And should be cared for,

Make a home

Inside your mind,

Of just how good ‘twill be

To open and embrace

Its dignity, respect,

Responsibility and sweet delight.

15

We’re closer now than ever before.

It’s yours to take, to hold.

To be a brother or a sister,

Friend and lover,

Owner, sharer,

Teacher, student,

Servant, master, too.

Held fast and holding fast,

Persisting by just living and

Exerting for the sake of others,

Suffering for your own growth,

And that of others,

The joy, so deep, of inner calm and satisfaction

In your life.

This is my prayèr for the dire times ahead,

Already filled with so much blood and dread;

Persist and live, not just for you

But for your neighbors, too.

16

Now find your voice:

I call upon the Pantheon — the goddess of the aegis —

Invoking her to lend you fire,

To breathe engulfing words

Of heat and power.

To feed the fires within your soul,

Inspiring you to act

And join with open, linkèd arms;

To stand your ground

And push for righteousness,

While knowing well the poisons,

Ever streaming from the god of death,

That long have sapped and maimed

your natural strength and decency.

This is reality; it’s here,

They’re in our neighborhoods,

They’re raiding homes and businesses,

As though they’re destiny.

But they’ve already lost:

For we are one,

Awoken and ignited,

And together we shall win.

17

With every dawn may we instill:

The day is new—

unwritten and untrod;

We are compelled to live

until our breath expires.

So let us fill our lungs

For inspiration, strength, and energy,

To live for what our hearts

And spirits truly seek,

To do our part for each

and every one of us.

It may mean suffering,

It may mean sacrifice,

But we shall grow:

With resolution — revolution.

“[This poem is] spectacularly graphic and profound.” – A reader

Just fine,
but not great.

I’m awkward —
but not bad,
at least give me that.

A pinch
of some intelligence,
a mix of mediocrity,
all rolled into a big round ball of bread
that’s over-proofed,
that fails to rise,
and only bakes halfway.

The sad result
of half-assed prep
and indolence.

Truthfulness is sad.
A sad result, indeed.

The bread is bland.

— To think
we lived on bread alone
for some millennia,
as has been said —

But now
we gorge
and eat
and watch
and shit
and fap,

because our bread, today,
is nowhere near enough
to satisfy the cravings
of my smart-but-sluggish mind.

Why speak of lust
or love?

The one
takes thirty minutes;
the other’s
not enough.

How droll!

I use a turn of phrase
that’s got some bite —
a masochistic bite,
but sharpness nonetheless.

Who the fuck says,
“droll”?
How sharp is that?

Poor and sloppy,
dangerous slices
that originate from blunted knives.

Blunted blades,
from overuse?
Or simply cheap,
unfit to cut or stab?

The want
is to be razor sharp,
illustrious
and deeply penetrating —

exposing
sinews,
entrails,
gore —

to see how deep the cut can go,
down to the heart of things.

What is that lying thing in there,
protected by a cage of bones?

The muscle —
is it raw?
Edible?
Can it be squeezed
or trampled?
Broken, perhaps?

Behold the thing,
pounding out in wild heat,
each atrium, alive and filled,
pushing beating blood —

until the knife
— it strikes —
…

What happens then?

The slice is true
and swift
and clean,
worthy of an itamae,
focused
and decisive.

At once the beating ceases.

Two perfect pools
of human wine,
so thick and placid,
held together
by the sanguine chambers,

butterflied
and flaccid,

compressing slowly
into perfectly
symmetric cups.

The cut
hit home.

Now it’s time to drink
unto our health,
unto our human wretchedness:

What doesn’t kill me
makes me more like “art” —
not stronger.

What’s killed me
made me … dead.
Inside, at least.

Slicing
to remove the false
and sluggish spirit of my self
has turned me
into gorged-on art.

I pray
my wine
be like more salt
on the wounds of
for the Earth,

to use for cooking up
another living
work of “art.”

Unfinished,
stunted,
sharp but slow,

too subtle
or too blunt
but never smooth,

and always slighted
for the bit of vanity
we cannot help but show,

to make the world
think better
of us
for just a glimpse or two.

In truth,
to gawk
and point
and jeer —
and then consume.

It’s all the same.

We’re all the same.

If man
could not construe himself,
what chance is there
that woman could?

Each
may be different,
but in the end —
we’re all the same.

Just fine,
but not great.

That’s also wrong:
we’re mostly worse.

So season,
kill,
and eat
the dead.

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The sun departs, again,
As it has always done.
It brightens high, then dims,
And will, until its end.

Oh do you see?
This is the future, my dearest:
A harrowing repetition,
A sorrowful contradiction.

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Look, my dearest, out before you.
Behold this residue of the humans’
Foretold destiny – their doom:
Technology.
Disintegrating skeletons
Of concrete, stone, and steel;
Their toxic lakes and plastics will persist
To strangle Nature’s more
Harmonious ones
For millennia to come.

That was millennia ago.
Now behold the world
Without the human ego.

For we have our ego now.
Built over the remains
Of their crude innovations.
Have we learned their lessons?
The warning that their self-destruction
Constitutes?

Oh yes, my dearest, I know
You know these truths.
But we mustn’t merely know;
It is our task to live
According to the lessons
Which we claim we know.

For every new creation, every innovation,
Every thought, pursued or followed
To fruition; each and every one, enacted,
Is an alteration of what came before
Or already was. That means: what had
Already been, had had its essence
Tampered with, twisted, torn apart,
Perverted. My dear, this is the meaning
Of all creation, beginning with the seed.
Everything new disturbs what already is.
Those humans, dear, had merely been the first
To interfere too much, to pollute too much,
Pervert too much.
They viewed the problem of creation
Differently. Their teachers, too intoxicated
By poetry’s seductive pull. They did not
Grasp that to create means to pervert, pollute, destroy.

What have we learned? Are we evolved?
Improved? Superior?
My dearest, sadly, no.
We may be less depraved than they,
But in a way, perhaps, in truth,
We’re even worse than they.
Newer creations in a longer line
Extending out millennia.

Look at the sun, as he sets,
How he departs with measured grace.
Even dim, it’s still so bright.
Evolution is absurd.
Harrowing repetition,
Our sorrowful contradiction.

Until the ebb, when darkness
Merges with the light
And all will rest in silence,
And then will all begin again.

From everlasting to everlasting.

What is “low”?
This poem is an attempt to answer that question—not with a single definition, but through a journey of reflection. It explores the many facets of "low" in modern life: the personal, the societal, the psychological, the spiritual, and more. Each line invites you to confront, consider, and connect with the world around you and within you.

Trigger Warning: You may find this poem unsettling, overwhelming, confronting, even provocative. That is by design. It is meant to awaken awareness, to disrupt the ease with which we sometimes accept what is destructive or harmful. At its core, Low is a challenge—a call to examine what diminishes us and to rise beyond it.

Read actively, thoughtfully. Pause when a line strikes you, follow where it leads, and reflect on its truth in your life. A clear path out of “low” is not given here; it is yours to find.

Begin where you are, and rise.

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Low

§1

What is low?
Low is a relation.
Low relates – to what, or to whom?
Low is therefore something or someone?
Low is no mere relation.

§2

What is low?
Low is feeling down.
Low is looking down.
Low is not at bottom.
Low has no bottom.

§3

Low is being lied to.
Low is working hard, without regard.
Low is having no regard, much less self-regard.
Low is being led on.
Low is exploitation.
Low is working with regard but without an end – a means for someone else’s means.
Low is being told one thing but receiving another.
Low is being hit and beaten, jerked around and pulled apart.
Low is violence to body, soul and mind.

§4

Low is being too afraid to question.
Low is driven by a fear of being cut and therefore being cut.
Low is cutting into others out of resignation.
Low is out-of-focus, licking wounds, planning senseless retribution.
Low is going on in aimless non-direction, given up but too afraid to face this fact.

§5

Low is crass conformity.
Low is sinking, yielding to the flattening press, the pressure to be similar or same.
Low is fear of self-thought, of daring to self-teach.
Low is thinking with the other lowlifes.
Low is fear of facing up to fear itself, whatever it or she or he or they may be.
Low is choosing to become a lowlife.
Lower still – is choosing to remain one.
Low is following the rest and yet remaining lonely.

§6

Low is a lonely one whose soul has been corrupted by technology.
Low is the obsessed engagement, the click-sad-click-sad sadness…
Low is self-deceptive comfort in technology’s conforming powers.
Low is surrendering to isolation, to the numbing of the mind.
Low is forgetting how to learn.
Low is then becoming too inert to learn, too indolent for work.
Low is technology becoming the actor on the stage of life.
Low is the making of a tragedy.
Low is the climax of the tragedy, when fiber optics pierce and poison all humanity.
Low is the tragedy of technology.

§7

Low is the disengagement from sex.
Low is disengagement from the sexes.
Low is no longer feeling a partner’s heat, their warmth – the spirituality, the physicality of their love.
Low is the digitalizing of human connection.
Low is the connection that’s been twice removed: no more touch; just images on screen, the phantom fantasies of satisfaction.
Low is reducing oneself to technologic’ possibility.

§8

Low is thus a lack of energy.
Low is the choice to not exert, to disengage.
Low is unapologetic cynicism.
Low is lack of self-awareness of one’s cynicism.
Low is giving up but without ending.
Low is the resigned response: spilling one’s seed before the screen, exploding to the possibilities of futile fantasies.
Low, in turn, is sitting, fidgeting, while dripping with anticipation.
Low is growing hunger for the image, the instant, the digital.
Low is lusting after satisfaction, oblivious to the work it takes to satisfy another.
Low is refusing to be satisfied through the satisfaction of another.
Low is forgetting the magic inherent to connecting with another.
Low is not mustering the energy to seek connection with another.

§9

Low is unlearning appreciation for what came before, the shoulders on which we stand, the cultures we’ve inherited.
Low is disrespect toward the lights still shining from the past.
Low is rejecting the past because it is past, while gnashing teeth or slicing wrists over the present, over the fucked-ness of it all, with predetermined doom ahead.
Low is hatred of past achievements – because the pigment of their skin just happened to be “white.”
Low is hatred of women due to hatred of men in the name of women’s rights.
Low is rejection of right and wrong in the names of any of the following isms: traditionalism, atheism, feminism, fascism, post-colonialism, post-racism, post-humanism, futurism, accelerationism, globalism, nationalism, Stalinism, Maoism, Americanism, & all the rest.
Low is the refusal to appreciate what has been good, to acknowledge the benefits available, or the beauty that is still possible.

§10

Low is unbending faith in lack of faith.
Low is unbending faith in religion and religiosity.
Low is conflating love of country with religiosity.
Low is believing the country loves you back.
Low is forgetting that religiosity cannot be overcome.
Low is the false belief one has no god(s).
Low is following false prophets.
Low is sitting alone and being poisoned by their rhetoric.

§11

Low is rejecting great achievers because they were men.
Low is forgetting to worship and revere the women who bore and raised these men.
Low is failing to exalt the dignity of womanhood – and what Nature causes that to mean.

§12

Low is a person of color, too bound up with their color to let the art inside them flourish.
Low is a person of color, broken by the systems of power, such that the art inside them flickers out and dies.
Lower still are the people of lesser pigmentation who actively perpetuate and propagate those very systems.
Low is the willfully unassuming, blind-eye turning man or woman to the centuries of persistent lynchings, murders, mutilations, subjugation, segregation, and exploitation, yet their souls still burn with hatred.
Low is the person of color, who fate saw fit to be born, all but predetermined to be undereducated, rejected, desperate, ripe for so-called criminality, abuse, and early death.

§13

Low are the journalists, the story keepers of our age.
Low are their stories they call news: around-the-clock distractions for entertainment’s sake.
Low is the decline of the journalistic discipline.
Low is the partnership with government, the ceding of accountability.
Low is the truth they manufacture for their funders, while claiming to be trusted, fair, and balanced.
Lower still – their loss of all integrity, as their funders plunder our treasury and suck the lifeblood of the polity.
Low is the constant push to deconstruct the necessary dialogue to bites of sound and fury, commanding nothing, save – your silence, acquiescence, and compliance.

§14

Low are the lawmakers who say, “so shall it be” – unjustly and/or incorrectly.
Low is misunderstanding the difference between making and discovering.
Low is intentionally collapsing the distinction between discovering and making.
Lower still is using rhetoric to corrupt generations of listeners and readers to this error.
Low is getting carried away with the idea of creation.
Low is conflating making with creation.
Low is calling every action a creation.
Low is calling every creation a work of genius.
Low is uttering the word “genius” irresponsibly.

§15

Low is willful ignorance to the consequence of mankind’s pillaging of Earth.
Low is the ignorant debate that rages on, truthful, fair, and balanced it is, indeed.
Low are those whose raging, natalist drive considers not the world that they will leave behind.
Low are those whose selfish lust and glut for monetary gain amounts to sacrificing self and all.
Low are policies of violence in the name of energy production maximization.
Low is mass production. All of it.
Low is our long forgetting that Mother Nature is the master over us – not we o’er Her.
Low is the fear to acknowledge that some deserve to die.
Low is the willful taking of life.
Low is the blind eye, the turning away, the payoff, as another dies.
Low is total disregard for the indigenous peoples’ position or view.
Low is the corruption of sciences, now monetized, indoctrinated, and unfree.
Low is forgetting that truths of life and living often are not scientific, Biblical, common sense, or –
Low is refusing to acknowledge the missing fourth.

§16

Low is the religious belief in rationality.
Low is the questionable belief that answers must be delineated definitively and clearly.
Low is not admitting that a thought, thought through, remains sometimes merely hypothetical.
Low is science’s refusal to admit that all of its hypotheses yield theories at maximum and wasted research funds at minimum.

§17

Low is an unexamined life: the ignorance of Nature and what is natural.

§18

Low is the belief that only what one feels is absolute and fundamental, inseparable, – and therefore true.
Low is the belief that since I felt like beating her, I beat her; since I felt like mutilating myself, I mutilated myself; since I felt like I’m the alpha, I cannot be soft; since I felt something, I must learn not to care; since felt like I am somewhere in between, I must kill this; since I felt like drinking, I drank; since I felt like snorting, I snorted; since I felt like going bareback, I went bareback; since I felt like going crazy, I went insane; since I felt like I was entitled to her, I beat him with a baseball bat; since I felt I own her, I tied her up and had my way with them; since my colleague is better liked, I sabotaged her hard work; since I hate Jews, I collected them for the gas chambers; since my neighbor’s wife is more attractive than mine, I seduced her; since my color is purer than others, I am entitled to rule; since I am male, I am better than woman; since I am the center of the universe… –

§19

Low is the belief in thinking small, and therefore one remains small.
Low is the feeling of bombardment by information, useless and intoxicating.
Low is succumbing to these distractions.
Low is pop.
Low is of the moment, the fleeting mood, that instant bliss.
Low is the manufactured blurring of the lines: oligarchs with democrats.
Low is belittlement of oneself.
Low is allowing this thought to rape your psyche.
Low is letting go, little by little, becoming smaller and smaller in mind and deed and spirit.
Low is humility.
Lower still is reckless audacity.
Low is not allowing the foundation of a grand idea to take shape and grow, too many distractions.
Low is being unable to concentrate.
Low is consciousness of this overwhelming sense of smallness.
Low is anxiety because she’s skinnier, smaller than I.
Low is the belief that everyone else is somehow better, even though I am center.
Low is engaging in addictive, altered states in order to forget, fleetingly, the traumas of socialization.
Low is consumption of these substances as excuses and then succumbing to them.
Low is the following life-encapsulation: vulgar sadness masquerading as a grandiloquent tragedy.

§20

Low is a certain personality.
Low is a certain personality, obsessed with how she looks.
Low is how she looks at you, tempting your returning gaze, a look of attraction, of wanting.
Low is internalizing the power of such a look.
Low is realizing the need for this look, then commodifying it to reject the lust or yearning for, which her look’s aroused.
Low is competition for the look.
Low is the insecurity the look engenders, as she runs from what is healthy to the toilet bowl for spews and forced starvation – all to maintain the look.
Low is what results from comparing others’ looks unto one’s own: psychoses of the body.
Low is when the obsession with one’s look corrupts, corrodes, consumes the beauty of the body.
Low is the result: a miserable digger of middle-aged men’s gold.
Low is heartless: anorexia, anxiety, bulimia and starvation, television, para-socialization, politicians, the media, bad parents, so-called friends, – the self –, for all have eaten away the heart.
Low is a heartless, barely beating, barely breathing stretch of skin over bones, sunken cheeks with puckered lips and bedroom eyes.
Low is this self-obsession.

§21

Low is the lust to lead.
Low is the apathy involved in shrugging and following.
Low is mistaking the heaviness of what it means to wear the crown – with egoism.
Low is the dramatic attention cast on personalities instead of policies.
Low is the corrupting process required to lead.
Low is the act of blaming everyone except oneself.
Lowest of all is the root – greed, the basic, base and all-consuming drive for selfish gain at any cost.
Low is the masking of their greed.
Low is pretending to be a god.
Low are the followers, the true believes in these false gods.
Low is feeling compelled to speak these things.
Low are the followers, primed for fork-tongued, poison words – and deeds.
Low are the toxic slogans, which these so-called leaders spew: hope and change. A change we can believe in, but then do not deliver on. I alone can solve it. Trust me, I’m from the government. Believe me, I’m a good Christian. You’re going to have to work on Sunday; Saturday too. You’ll pay for this. All that matters is how much money you make. Yes, we can. Actually, no, you cannot. You are alone. Now, do what you’ve been told. Putting Corporations First. Not going back. Read my lips. No more handouts. This isn’t the country I know. Tax the poor. Elevate exploiters. It all trickles down. It all tumbles down. There are good people on both sides. Compassionate fascism. Make it great again. Too many colors. Too many cat ladies. I’m with her and they’re deplorables. They’re coming for your kids. Put them back to work. There is no burn. It’s all ready to burn…
Low are all the citizens, awake, watching the decline, but remained seated. Some wring their wrists in agony.

§22

Low is where you are now, relearning how to read, relearning how to think.
Low is where all things start but not where they must end.
Low is the common denominator.
Low is claiming to not know how to start and rise, instead of just starting and rising. Where, matters not.
Low is claiming to not know how to learn; simply read the words, allow yourself to be receptive to them.
Low is refusing what is noble.
Low is refusing what is beautiful.
Low is refusing what is just.
Low is rejection of the good.
Low is where you’ve been, brought toward the bottom, challenged to reject Nothingness and learn.
Low is where you are. It is time to start. Get up. Rebuild. Refresh. Renew. And be an ally. Amen. Om.

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