At the reptile zoo,my child stood before the pythonsas if she had come to meetsomething ancient and beautiful. Five snakes, coiled and watchful.Five dark ribbons of muscle and scale.I remember how my body tightenedbefore she ever moved. Then the keeper lifted themand laid them across her shoulders,across her arms. Sabine did not flinch. She looked … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “What Sabine Taught Me” – Innocence, Courage, and my Sabine, v.4
Don’t Let Your Damn Light Die Out (Revisionist Shakespeare – Sonnet 1 for Gen X)
From hottest looks we still expect fresh fire,So beauty’s not some dusty VHS tape;But when the old-school smoke-show starts to tire,Some younger version keeps the whole thing shaped. But you, locked in your own damn head all day,Feeding your ego like it’s bottomless fries,Burning your future for a quick buffet,Too blind to see the world … Continue reading Don’t Let Your Damn Light Die Out (Revisionist Shakespeare – Sonnet 1 for Gen X)
Still Hot, Still Broke, Still Pretending We’ve Got Time (Revisionist Shakespeare – Sonnet 1 for Gen X)
From good-looking people, we expect good-looking kids,so the whole damn show keeps rolling after we’re gone.But when the hottest among us checks out someday,at least there’s a version 2.0 left carrying the torch. But you—totally obsessed with your own damn reflection,feeding your ego like it’s bottomless at happy hour,you burn your own fuel just to … Continue reading Still Hot, Still Broke, Still Pretending We’ve Got Time (Revisionist Shakespeare – Sonnet 1 for Gen X)
T.A.E.’s Book Review – The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is one of the strangest and most revealing corners of this imaginative world: a slim collection that seems, at first glance, to be a set of playful nursery rhymes and folk songs, yet gradually opens into something older, darker, and more elusive. Read casually, it can appear delightfully slight. Read … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
Revisionist Poetry – “A Child Before the Snakes” – Innocence, Courage, and my Sabine, v.3
How proud I was—how deeply, almost painfully proud—to stand beside my childas danger leaned close and found her smiling. At the reptile zooshe faced the pythons,five patient serpents coiled in expectation,their silent gaze fixed on her. I held my breath. But Sabine stood steady,not hardened, not careless,only open to wonder.Then the zookeeper placed them on … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “A Child Before the Snakes” – Innocence, Courage, and my Sabine, v.3
Shakespeare’s Opening Argument to Humanity (T.A.E.’s Analysis of Sonnet 1)
Shakespeare's Sonnets begins not with romance, but with pressure. In Sonnet #1, William Shakespeare opens his famous sonnet sequence with a command disguised as philosophy: beautiful people have a duty to reproduce. The poem is not merely about love or beauty. It is about time, legacy, mortality, and what happens when human beings become too … Continue reading Shakespeare’s Opening Argument to Humanity (T.A.E.’s Analysis of Sonnet 1)
Revisionist Poetry – “Sabine and the Pythons” – Innocence, Courage, and my Sabine, v.2
My heart rose in me like a tidewhen I watched my child before the glass—small, bright Sabine, standingwhere fear was meant to gather. It was the reptile house.The pythons waited there,five living coils of muscle and scale,their stillness older than language. I feared for her.I feared the sudden strike of instinct,the cold weight of danger.But … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Sabine and the Pythons” – Innocence, Courage, and my Sabine, v.2
Revisionist Poetry – “Where the Fungus Keeps Vigil” – Colonizing Decay, v.5
In the oldest quarter of the woods,where daylight arrives already dying,the trees stand gaunt and funereal,their bark split openlike the walls of abandoned crypts. From these woundsthe fungus enters. Not violently—never violently. It arrives the way sorrow arrives:gradually,patiently,through the smallest fractures. White tendrils creep beneath the skin of the forest,threading through root and marrowwood,until every … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Where the Fungus Keeps Vigil” – Colonizing Decay, v.5
Revisionist Poetry – “The Catechism of Rot” – Colonizing Decay, v.4
Beneath the black cathedral of the pines,where moonlight curdles in stagnant pools,the forest keeps its terrible liturgy. There, among the roots swollen like drowned fingers,fungus wakes in pallid colonies,soft as grave-milk,quiet as things that feed unseen. It climbs the trees with monk-like patience,pressing its white mouthsinto wounded bark,drinking the slow memory of the wood. Nothing … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “The Catechism of Rot” – Colonizing Decay, v.4
Revisionist Poetry – “The Forest’s Quiet Conquest” – Colonizing Decay, v.3
Under the veil of leaves,the forest keeps its oldest pulse:not silence, but labor. Fungal life ascends the trunkin pale, deliberate script,curling over bark like a secretthe tree can no longer hold alone.It enters every fault and fracturewith the patience of rainand the intimacy of breath. Nothing here is merely ending.The fallen branch becomes a threshold;the … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “The Forest’s Quiet Conquest” – Colonizing Decay, v.3