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Archive for September, 2025

 book of dominion ; chapter Three

Posted in Writing on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Broken Truth

Preface: The Vanishing of Belief

Belief was the mortar of the Republic: trust binding the stones of law, loyalty holding the beams of community.
But belief, once fractured, vanished.

Falsehoods, repeated enough, became truth.
And truth, repeated too seldom, was dismissed as falsehood.

(Margin note: “I’ve seen lies polished until they gleam like marble, and truth tossed aside as rubble. A temple built of counterfeit will never stand. Absurd, isn’t it?” — Soaky)

The Verses of the Broken Truth

3:1 And lo, the People no longer asked, What is true? but rather, What is useful to believe?

3:2 And each faction built its temple of illusions, raising up falsehoods as scripture, and casting down truth as heresy.

3:3 And belief, once the bond of trust, was shattered, scattered as shards in the dust.

3:4 And the People, walking barefoot, bled upon the shards, yet called the pain loyalty.

3:5 And the leaders, seeing the bleeding, declared it devotion.
3:6 And the merchants, seeing the bleeding, declared it opportunity.
3:7 And the prophets of opinion, seeing the bleeding, declared it destiny.

3:8 And so the Broken Truth was lifted high, carried not as burden but as banner.
3:9 And the People marched, not knowing the banner bore their own wounds as its colors.

(Margin note: “I once watched a crowd cheer louder at the cut than the cure. Pain sells better than peace, doesn’t it?” — Soaky)

Refrain I

Thus was the Broken Truth enthroned, not as a light to guide,
but as a mirror — fractured, endless, reflecting the People’s own faces back upon them, distorted, multiplied, unending.

Verses Continued

3:10 And the children, asking of their elders, What is truth?, were taught instead, What must be said to belong.
3:11 And the elders, forgetting the difference, nodded, and called it wisdom.

3:12 And the judges weighed not the scales of fact, but the scales of faction.
3:13 And the scribes wrote not for remembrance, but for applause.

3:14 And when a lone voice cried out, This is false!, the People asked first, Whose side are you on?
3:15 And the answer, no matter what it was, condemned the voice to silence.

(Margin note: “You can almost hear the stones of the courthouse groan under the weight of such nonsense. Foundations crack quietly first — then all at once.” — Soaky)

Refrain II

So the Broken Truth grew strong,
feeding on silence, thriving on fear,
clothed in the vestments of patriotism,
and crowned with the laurels of expedience.

And those who looked for light found only reflections,
each more flattering than the last,
until they bowed not to the truth,
but to themselves.

(Soaky’s Lament)

(Margin note, scribbled sideways along the page edge:
“If both sides are holy and both sides are heretic, then maybe the devil just runs tech support. I tried deleting the app, but the Crowd followed me into the silence. Absurd, isn’t it? A whole civilization shouting at shadows on a glowing wall, swearing it’s freedom.” — Soaky)

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happenings

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The storm broke before midnight, a black sky split open by white fire. Rain hammered the roof in heavy sheets, and thunder rattled the glasses on Sandy’s shelves. Inside, the bar hummed like a bunker dry, dim, and crowded.

Soaky sat in his corner, five shot glasses already lined up like witnesses, a tepid beer standing guard. His phone screen pulsed against his painted face: headlines about Nepal protests, fires, resignations. The scroll was endless.

He muttered without looking up, “It’s just a bunch of kids.”

Sandy tilted her head, misunderstanding, polishing the same pint glass she’d been worrying all night. “Storm’ll blow through. Always does.”

The TV over the bar lit with breaking footage — parliament burning, young faces in the streets, soldiers in smoke. Eddie the Veteran jabbed a finger at the screen. “Kids don’t know what real struggle is. One blackout on their apps and they torch a parliament? Back in my day—”

Maya, the grad student with a backpack full of books, cut him off. “Back in your day you had jobs, pensions, a future. These kids are told to wait their turn forever. Then the plug gets pulled on their voices and you expect them to just clap politely?”

Eddie’s knuckles whitened on his glass. “Burning your own house down don’t fix a leaky roof.”

From the booth by the window, Old Joe, who never missed a headline, croaked, “They say the Prime Minister resigned. Parliament’s gone. First woman running the country now. But the dead? Still dead. Curfews lifted, but what’s calm when you’ve already buried your sons?”

The thunder rolled in after his words, as if punctuating.

Soaky finally set the phone down, screen-first on the wood. He tapped each shot glass like rosary beads. “You all keep talking like power belongs to ministers, parliaments, apps. But it don’t. It’s always rested here” he spread his hands across the room, across the storm, “in the people. Divide that power, and it’s smoke. Unite it, and no government, no general, no algorithm can stand.”

Maya leaned in, eager. “Exactly. That’s why these uprisings matter. It’s proof.”

Eddie shook his head. “Proof of chaos. One voice, one will? Sounds nice ‘til the wrong voice shouts loudest.”

Soaky sipped his beer, let the bitter linger. “Chaos is just what unity feels like at the start. Like this storm, it rattles, it floods. But tomorrow the air’s clearer. The question ain’t whether people have the power. It’s whether they’ll remember it belongs to all, not each against each.”

Sandy slid him another shot without asking. “So what’s our breaking point, Soak?”

Soaky pondered the shot, held it up to the stormlight, then tossed it back. He set the glass down slow, listening as the room fractured into little arguments: Eddie muttering about order, Maya whispering about justice, Joe coughing into his sleeve, Sandy stacking glasses like a careful prayer.

He pulled the battered notebook from his coat pocket, thumbed to a blank page, and let the pen wander:

Saturday night, thunder in the rafters, the bar shook like an ark at sea. The people argued: youth too rash, elders too rigid, governments too brittle. I counted the shot glasses like little republics — fragile, transparent, waiting to be lifted or shattered.

The truth is older than any parliament: power never leaves the people, it only hides when we forget each other. Divided, we gift it away to those who promise order. United, we are the storm itself.

One voice. One will. Just a touch of kids, just a spark of memory, and the house trembles.

He underlined the last words, capped the pen, and sat still long enough for thunder to swallow the silence.

But tell me, is the breaking point when we finally rise, or when we decide we cannot rise together?

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half-staff

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2025| 2 Comments »

It was an unseasonably warm September night, air thick and restless. The bar’s door stood open, but no breeze came in. Inside was a refuge, dim and cool, wood worn soft by years of elbows and spilled drinks.

The television above the bar glowed silently, captions crawling: “Charlie Kirk shot… Utah Valley University… political violence.” The sound was muted. Nobody needed to hear it.

Sandy leaned on the counter, rag twisting in her hand. “World’s lost its brakes,” she muttered.

At one end, Red Cap Joe hunched over his whiskey. “This ain’t just murder. This is war on free speech. You don’t shoot a man for talking. You don’t muzzle a patriot unless you hate America itself.”

Len, the union man, barked a laugh without joy. “Patriot? He made his living spewing fire. You throw sparks long enough, don’t be shocked when one lands. Rage begets rage.”

Maya, young and taut, rainbow pin flashing in the neon, stirred the ice in her soda. “All I see is proof that none of us are safe. He’s dead, you two are still fighting, and my friends talk about Canada like it’s a lifeboat. I don’t want to run. I want to live here, and not feel like every headline is a countdown.”

A trucker at a corner table, sleeves rolled up, lunchbox by his feet added, “I don’t care red or blue. I just want to work my shift, pay my bills, watch my kids grow up in peace. I’m tired of being caught in the crossfire. Every time they scream at each other, it feels like the bullets find us instead.”

The bar held still, waiting for someone to break the silence.

It was Sandy. She set her rag down flat and said, steady as stone:
“All I want is a country big enough for all of us. Not one side winning, the other side burning. Just a place where people can live, raise families, and not have to flinch every time the news comes on.”

The words hung heavier than smoke.

Soaky sat hunched in the middle, nose red, flower sagging, notebook open. In front of him: a weary pint and a line of shots, little soldiers awaiting orders. He tipped one back, glass landing upside-down like a period.

“Funny thing about bars,” he said, voice slow, “you put a farmer, a preacher, a dropout, a drag queen, and a trucker side by side — they’ll argue, they’ll laugh, maybe even sing. Out there? Out there, everyone’s locked and loaded before they even open their mouths.”

He tossed another shot. Glass clattered like punctuation.

“A man with a microphone spoke sharp. A boy with a rifle answered sharper. And now the rest of us are choking on the echo.”

Another shot. Another tiny gravestone.

“Those flags at half-staff don’t just mourn him. They mourn us — the people in the middle, the ones just trying to live, who end up carrying the weight of all this hate.”

Sandy slid him a beer without asking. “On the house,” she whispered.

Soaky scribbled in his notebook as the last shot waited like the final word:

*‘September, unseasonably warm.
Inside, a refuge muted by grief.
One man slain for words,
a nation slays itself in reply.
Flags at half-staff.
Voices at half-pitch.
Rage at full-volume.
And in the middle
those who only wanted a life,
and a country to belong to.

Maybe Sandy’s right.
Maybe all we need is a country
big enough for all of us.’*

He downed the last shot, flipped it with the others into a line of glass headstones, and raised his beer in a silent toast.

Not to Kirk. Not to the shooter.
But to the weary in the middle,
still hoping words might one day be enough.

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 book of dominion ; chapter two

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on September 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

the rise of the liberal

Preface: The Counter-Legend

In dusty corners of the closed Library, scholars whispered of a counter-text, written not on Tablets but on feeds, not with chisels but with keystrokes. Where the Party carved scripture, the Liberals scrawled memes; where the Party thundered doctrine, the Liberals muttered threads. And in this cacophony, truth became as shifting sand, a mirage glimpsed between hashtags.

(Margin note, smudged ink beneath a wine ring: “A rebellion of tweets against an empire of talk shows. I’ve seen both armies. They fight with gifs, not swords. They summon rage with algorithms, not trumpets. Madness enough to shame nameless monsters.” — Soaky)

The Verses of the Ascent

2:1 And it was in those days that the Liberal arose, not in temples but in comment sections, not with banners but with avatars.

2:2 They proclaimed: The People must be freed from lies! Yet each faction bore its own lies, and each believed the other’s poison to be pure.

2:3 And lo, a great confusion spread, for news was multiplied, and truth was divided, until no man could say what was fact, and every man could claim it was his.

2:4 And algorithms, like unseen gods, lifted voices not by weight of truth but by weight of rage, so that the loudest were enthroned, and the wisest cast into shadow.

2:5 And the multitude, scrolling endlessly, cried out: Which side is light, and which side is darkness? But the feeds answered not, for in their sight, outrage was profit, and clarity was loss.

2:6 Thus did the Empire of Noise rise, stretching from screen to screen, until the stars themselves were dimmed by notifications.

The Parable of the Two Extremes

2:7 In a vision was shown two extremes, one tainted red and the other tainted blue, each rising as a fortress of the Good, each demanding worship from its followers.

2:8 And the people scrolled between them, pledging allegiance, hurling curses, blind to the truth that both extremes fed upon the same trembling earth.

2:9 And from above descended shadows—faceless, many-eyed—feeding on the discord, delighting in the madness, for to them all creeds were nourishment.

2:10 The people trembled, yet kept scrolling, for the abyss was addictive, and despair was clothed in the garment of entertainment.

The Madness of the Crowd

2:11 And it came to pass that the Crowd gathered, not in streets but in feeds, not with torches but with trending tags. Their faces were many, yet their voices were one, echoing louder than sense.

2:12 And the Crowd beheld itself multiplied, seeing millions in the mirror of the feed, and they believed their reflection to be truth.

2:13 And dissent was cast out, branded as heresy; yet heresy was but yesterday’s trending truth, now discarded like broken idols.

2:14 And the prophets of the Crowd spoke in riddles of sarcasm, wrapped in irony, until meaning fled and only performance remained.

2:15 And the multitude consumed it, each heart swelling with certainty, though no certainty was shared. For belief was not measured in substance, but in shares.

2:16 Then arose the Whisperers, merchants of misinformation, whose wares were cheap and plentiful, yet costly to the soul. And the Crowd bought eagerly, paying with their peace.

2:17 And the din grew as a storm without center, until the very air trembled with fury, and silence was drowned as a man in floodwaters.

2:18 Lo, those who sought truth were mocked, saying, Why speak softly when the Crowd demands shouting? And wisdom was scattered like chaff in the whirlwind.

2:19 Thus were warped truths lost, as scripted illusion took form. And the Crowd, mistaking chains for garlands, sang hymns of deliverance while shackled to their screens.

2:20 And laughter was heard, hollow and endless, for the madness of the multitude was crowned as wisdom, and folly enthroned as faith.

Closing Remark (Soaky’s Lament)

(Margin note, scribbled sideways along the page edge:
“If both sides are holy and both sides are heretic, then maybe the devil just runs tech support. I tried deleting the app, but the Crowd followed me into the silence. Absurd, isn’t it? A whole civilization shouting at shadows on a glowing wall, swearing it’s freedom.” — Soaky)

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the book of dominion

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Chapter One: The Beginning

Preface: The Source

These words are said to have been uncovered in the forbidden stacks of a university library, in the wing where liberals kept their dusty tomes. Bound in recycled paper and filed under “Political Science 201,” the original texts spoke plainly of civic duty, the ballot, and the balance of power. Professors annotated them, students highlighted them, librarians stamped them overdue.

But when the Party discovered these texts, they stripped away the reason, rephrased the sentences, and proclaimed them holy. Thus were the Tablets of the Great Ledger forged—not from stone, but from syllabus; not from revelation, but from revision. Where the text once promised a common good, it was rewritten to praise uncommon wealth. Where it once bound leaders to the people, it was inverted, binding people to their leaders’ donors. And the Party spake: Behold, we have found the Word, though we have altered it to our image.

(Margin note, cramped between coffee stains: “Holy scripture from a college basement? Makes sense. I once found a whole gospel on the back of a beer coaster. Probably made more sense than this one. Difference is, mine admitted it was nonsense.” — Soaky)

The Verses of the Beginning

1:1 In the beginning, there was an Election, and the Election was without form, and void, and the darkness of money moved upon the face of the people.

1:2 And lo, the Party said, Let there be ballots, and there were ballots; but they counted not the ballots, they counted the donors, for donors speak louder than multitudes.

1:3 And the people cried out, saying, Is this democracy? And the Party answered, It is better, for it is efficient.

1:4 And the Billionaires beheld the Election, and they saw that it was good, for the outcome was theirs from the foundation of the fund.

1:5 Thus the First Day was named Victory, though none could recall what was won.

1:6 And it was proclaimed: Blessed are the loyal, for truth shall be added unto them as doctrine, and doctrine shall be given unto them as truth.

1:7 And the Word went forth: Ignorance is strength, obedience is liberty, debt is offering, and servitude is prosperity.

1:8 And the people were divided, each against his neighbor, for division was profitable, and profit was holy.

The Parable of the Great House

1:9 And it came to pass in the days of discontent, that the people gathered before the great house of governance.

1:10 They carried banners of loyalty and voices of rage, crying, We were chosen, though the count denies it.

1:11 And the Party spake unto them from afar, saying, Your zeal is noted, your chaos is useful, your loyalty is priceless.

1:12 And the multitude surged as a river against its own banks, believing they defended freedom, even as they drowned it.

1:13 And some entered the holy chambers unbidden, and they sat upon the seats of power as children at play, yet the stage was bloodied by their mirth.

1:14 And the Party turned its face, neither blessing nor condemning, for disorder is a ladder, and ladders are climbed by those already above.

Refrain

And so the Election was finished, not in count but in clamor, not in law but in loyalty. The ballots lay forgotten, the donors remembered, and the people bowed in gratitude for chains they mistook as crowns.

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