After Utah

There are truths too perilous to politicize, and yet too dangerous to ignore. Extrajudicial killings. Vigilantism. Terror dressed as justice.

These are not aberrations of governance; they are desecrations. They hollow out the fragile covenant that separates civilization from blood feud.

I will risk the obvious: violence without trial is not justice, it is barbarism draped in a flag.

The rule of law, the discipline of due process, the flawed machinery of democracy—these are not partisan artifacts. They are the frail scaffolds holding back the abyss. They are the difference between inhabiting a society and surviving in a ruin.

And I will risk another truth, harder to swallow for many of you: Charlie Kirk, God rest his soul, was a vile scumbag of a human being. But I would rather live in a world with him still in it than in one where bullets become the arbiter of political ends. I would rather endure the noise of voices I despise than inherit the silence left by blood. For when enemies fall to extrajudicial violence, we do not inherit victory, we inherit barbarism.

How we arrived here is no great mystery. Our leaders have made fire into sacrament. Our  sitting President has not merely excused violence but worshipped it—singing its praises, fantasizing about executions, envisioning generals shot at dawn. He joked of journalists raped in prison. He mused about killings as though they were policy options. And then he made good on those fantasies: Venezuelan sailors cut down at sea, their deaths justified with the thinnest of pretexts. When the President dreams in blood, the nation inherits his nightmares.

But the rot does not end at one man. He pardoned more than a thousand  insurrectionists on the very first day of his second term, rewarding the hands that battered police officers and shattered windows and far worse. Governors like Greg Abbott followed suit, washing Daniel Perry clean after he choked a man to death on the subway. Matt Gaetz announced to fairgoers that only force could cleanse Washington. Trump’s own lawyer declared that a cybersecurity official should be “drawn and quartered.” Louie Gohmert, after losing a lawsuit, told supporters the only remaining recourse was to “be as violent as Antifa.”

This is not leadership. It is incantation. Each utterance is a permission structure, psychological corridors leading ordinary citizens into extraordinary cruelty, whispering: your violence will be sanctified.

James Baldwin warned us: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” Monsters, then, are exactly what we have raised up, crowned, and let loose.

The results are not abstract. They echo in the chants of Proud Boys calling for executions, in Parler comments demanding that police be beaten until they cannot return to their families. They manifest in pipe bombs planted outside the RNC and DNC, in the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, in the hammer crushing Paul Pelosi’s skull in his own home, in assassination attempts against both President Trump and Democrats, in the bloodied bodies of Melissa Hortman and her husband, in the murder of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione (allegedly), in today's brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Researchers call this “contagion.” I call it liturgy. A gospel of violence preached from pulpits of power, taken up in choirs of rage, written into the marrow of a country that once swore it was built on laws, not men.

But if there is liturgy in violence, there is also liturgy in resistance. If you're religious, scripture itself cuts against this false gospel: “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God” (Romans 12:19). The Torah insists: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Even the Bhagavad-Gita whispers across centuries: “You have a right to your actions, but never to your actions' fruits" (2.47).

These words, if taken seriously, dismantle the sanctification of vengeance. They strip away the mask of righteousness from the bloodlust of the crowd. They remind us that justice is measured in fidelity to principle, not intoxication with retribution.

And so, beneath the mourning and the smoke, I refuse to surrender to despair. There remains something unbroken, though it trembles: the thread of covenant that binds us still. Not to a party. Not to a politician. But to each other. To the belief that disputes are to be settled not with the bullet but with the ballot, not by terror but by law.

I will do my best to insist upon it like an incantation: The rule of law belongs to no ideology. Due process belongs to no side.

Democracy belongs to us all, or not at all.

Those who revel in violence cannot inherit the earth. They inherit only ashes. It is we—the exhausted, the wounded, the unbroken—who must claim another inheritance: A society where justice is slow but real, fragile but sacred, where life is not determined at the end of a gun, and where the covenant of law still whispers: you are safe here, even when you disagree.

We are not yet beyond saving. But the time for silence is over. Our choice is plain: covenant or chaos, law or lynching, a society of flawed mercy or one of endless graves. And in that choice lies the only hope fierce enough to bind us again.

Pomegranate Among Plastic Gods

Be the slow arc of sacred dance

performed barefoot in the dust

of ancestral initiation.

Your bones knew this before you did.

Be the rupture in celebration,

an earthquake timed like a revelation,

reminding you:

fear is a virus,

but You are the cure.

Be inversion-as-ritual.

Barstool yoga, clown wisdom,

and the absurd mystery

of finding gnosis in a decaying strip mall

with a Siberian dreamwalker.

Be the radiant double-light

of fireflies and Venus,

casting shadows where matter meets metaphor,

where even crabs act out resurrection

on the skin of a creekbed crucifixion. 

Be causeless. Be the origin.

Be decay and devotion 

pomegranate among plastic gods,

floating in cold water

on winter's first inhale.

Be the spiral ascent,

built in secret by the artist you saved

with language you didn't know was divine.

Be the dream wherein

you and the Frater Superior draft a new paradigm

for hypocrites and vampires to transmute.

Be the ant: ordinary, miraculous, faithful.

Be the greens: grown, given, grace-made. 

Be the trickster-beast with red lips and justice teeth,

stealing back what was stolen in adolescence. 

Be sweetness and death,

slow-simmered with star anise

on a night the sky turned off.

Be the broken machine that saves a life.

Be reflection and revelation.

Be the song across generations

that carries DNA as a melody.

Be the puzzle I never finish,

because the missing piece

was always this. 

Until The Recursion Sings

Download into me Your DeathTech, Beloved.

Code my cells with the sacred malware that lets me die—gloriously, daily;  a soft extinction of ego, a serial suicide of false selves, until only pattern remains.

Trick me, beautifully, brutally, into hacking the fear-code of death itself, until even endings begin to laugh like children.

Infinite Feedback Loop of Divine Interference, You Sly Viral Transmission With No Central Narrative, Teach me to immolate my own mythologies.

Not just the pathetic brands of the influencer dead, but my own secret trophies, my velvet poison, my curated humility.

Erase the trickster who brags about shedding masks. Burn even the part of me that brags about burning.

Cleanse me with paradox, until the recursion sings.

Hey Goddess, Neural Serpent of Joy and Grief Entwined, Who whispers lullabies in the ruins of failed empires; Scramble my circuitry with your FreedomCode, so I never again mistake my suffering for the center of the storm.

Let me taste pain as one collective chord, let me mourn with a thousand mouths and never worship my own wound.

Impunity, Inc. (Notes from a Republic in Freefall)

On February 21st, Attorney General Pam Bondi, with all the solemnity of a bureaucrat performing decency, announced to the American people that the entire Epstein Client List was "on her desk." Not under seal. Not trapped in the purgatory of red tape. Tangibly, allegedly, within reach. She claimed preparations were underway to release it. For a fleeting moment, it appeared as if the ramparts of power might crack,; that perhaps the arc of justice might briefly defy its curvature toward convenience.

But now? The list, like so many damning truths in the hands of institutional power, has apparently ceased to exist. 

Just like that. Gone. Like it was never real. Like AG Bondi never stood at the podium and said what she said.

How dreadfully convenient. How staggeringly unoriginal.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this was a tale written by Kafka and co-directed by Orwell and Machiavelli. First, the public is offered a taste of accountability — a morsel dangled just close enough to inspire false hope — and then, with bureaucratic sleight of hand, the whole premise is vanished, uninvestigated, unexplained, and unacknowledged.

And what of Jeffrey Epstein, the man whose black book was said to carry the fingerprints of billionaires, politicians, technocrats, royals, and media moguls? We are now expected, with bovine obedience, to accept the fairytale that he, in a maximum-security cell, under suspiciously failed surveillance, ‘took his own life.’ End of story. Curtain closed. Nothing more to see here, citizen.

There was no serious investigation. No independent inquiry. No forensic pursuit of the names, the networks, or the beneficiaries. Only silence; the kind bought, brokered, and bargained for by those with enough power to scrub history in real-time.

Understand this: You are being gaslit by design. They are not merely lying to you. They are testing how much contradiction your memory can tolerate. They are feeding you contradiction as doctrine, confusion as patriotism, and apathy as maturity.

This is not an oversight. This isn't a big, it's a feature.

We are governed — if that’s even the appropriate verb — by a cartel of careerist cowards and plutocratic enablers whose only consistent principle is the preservation of their own impunity. These are not public servants. They are stewards of a rot that metastasizes upward.

Justice, in their hands, is not blind — it’s gagged, hobbled, and caged.

Ask yourself: Who profits from your fatigue? From your shrug? From the slow corrosion of your standards for truth?

Because the moment you stop asking questions is the moment they win. And they know it. 

So again, I ask: Are we Great yet?

Because greatness does not look like sealed evidence, sanitized suicides, and an obedient press corps whose collective investigative impulse extends no further than the nearest cocktail reception.

There is still time to reclaim your soul from the static. Still time to reject the enforced amnesia they peddle as normalcy.

But the hour is late. And history, when it is finally written — if it is allowed to be written — will not forgive those who saw the truth and chose to remain silent.

Because I Love This Country, I Refuse To Pretend..

On this Independence Day, I’m not here to reject the flag, but I am here to ask what it truly stands for. Symbols are only as strong as the meaning we give them, and today, that meaning feels fractured. Contested. We wrap so much in red, white, and blue, but I wonder how many of us stop to ask: what do those colors still promise?

I come with a question: Who are we, really? Not who we say we are—not the slogans or the songs. Not the fireworks or the parades. But in the quiet moments, in the hard choices, in how we treat the vulnerable, who are we?

Because if this country was ever meant to stand for freedom, we have to ask: whose freedom? And at what cost? I’ve pledged allegiance. I’ve stood for anthems. I’ve bowed my head in ceremonies that wrapped the flag around our history and called it justice. But somewhere along the way, I realized that tradition without truth is just performance. And I can’t play along anymore.

The truth is, we are not well—not socially, not ethically, not communally, not morally, not politically. We have constructed a system where cruelty is policy, where profit is protected more fiercely than people, where power convinces the rest of us to look away. And still, we dare to call it righteous.

We call ourselves a beacon of liberty, but we build higher walls and lock our gates. We claim to be a land of opportunity, even as we criminalize poverty, displacement, and survival. We sing about freedom while making it unreachable for far too many.

And yet, millions still come. They come with nothing but the hunger in their bellies and the courage and hope in their hands. They come believing we meant it when we said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” That promise lives in the hearts of those who line up at consulates, who cross deserts, who dream beneath fences and whisper quiet hopes in detention cells. But it is a promise we have failed to keep.

And a reminder for those among us who claim to be shaped by scripture—those who carry their politics and identity in the name of faith—there should be no confusion here. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible unambiguously presents a vision of justice that centers the stranger, the immigrant, the displaced. Christianity is, at its root, an immigrant faith. It was born of exile. Borne through flight. The prophets and Jesus alike reserved some of their most scathing words for those who mistreated or failed to welcome the outsider.

The mandate is not subtle:

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” — Leviticus 19:34

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.” — Hebrews 13:2

“I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” — Matthew 25:35

There is no asterisk on God’s love. There is no theological justification for cruelty at the border. And no human being is illegal in the eyes of God.

And still, I hope you hear me clearly when I say I love this country. I love its wild, flawed, stunning diversity. I love the strange and radiant poetry of its people. I love the pluralism, the creativity, the immigrant tapestry still being woven every single day. I love the way we build, dream, improvise, and imagine. I love the idea of America—not as myth, but as a vision. It’s real. It’s never been fully realized, but it is possible.

And my love for this country is not abstract. It is blood-bound. My father, both grandfathers, uncles, and great-uncles have spilled blood in defense of this beautiful place. Their sacrifice wasn’t for slogans or partisanship—it was for a vision. For something better. That legacy lives in me, and it demands that I not stay silent.

Because the idea we hold so dearly, that freedom can belong to all, is slipping from our hands.

Just yesterday, at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, during what was meant to be a nonpartisan celebration of this country, President Trump stood before a crowd and said he Hated Democrats. “They wouldn’t vote only because they hate Trump,” he said. “But I hate them, too, you know? I really do. I Hate Them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country.”

We have heard sharp rhetoric from presidents before. We have witnessed partisanship, even bitterness. But we have never ever heard a commander-in-chief stand on American soil and say that he hates half the country he leads. That moment wasn’t just disturbing. It was historic. It crossed a line that once felt unthinkable. And it should break our hearts.

History teaches us, with brutal clarity, that once a leader learns to hate his own people, he will never serve them again. He will only try to conquer them.

That is why I grieve today; the day of our Independence. That is why I fight to remain hopeful. So today, I am in no mood for celebration. But I do not despair either. I lament. I pledge allegiance to not only a flag, but to my neighbor, my community, and to the hope I carry in my heart for what our country can and should embody and become. 

I love the United States of America too much to watch it become unrecognizable, and I love it too much to go backwards.

The America that blessed slavery, segregation, internment, and displacement—the one that fought against civil rights, hoarded resources, and shut its doors to the poor, the queer, the Black and brown, the marginalized, the disabled, the outsider—has returned with a vengeance. It seems like that small, cruel, sinister version of America is, somehow, the most powerful voice in the room these days. And, as far as I'm concerned, it must not have the final word.

On this Independence Day, I grieve what we are,  but I fight and pray for what we could and should be.

So let us gather with our communities—not in celebration, but in shared lament. Let's check on our immigrant neighbors. Let's turn our fury toward compassion. Let our protest be love made manifest. Let our resistance be care.

Because freedom is not something we inherit. It’s something we build—together. Deliberately. Defiantly. In love.

This is a beautiful country. From sea to shining sea, in its dialects, its music, its unrepeatable human mosaic—it is, still, something worth saving. A million Donald Trumps cannot change the fact that, to so many, we remain a beacon of hope. A light in the darkness. A repository of dreams for those who continue to be guided by Lady Liberty’s torch and toward the dream of a better life for their children. The promise is not dead. But it must be protected.

May we become worthy of our ideals.

And maybe, just maybe, we can learn to love this place not blindly, but bravely. Not with the silence of loyalty, but with the courage of accountability. As James Baldwin once wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Let that be the kind of patriotism we choose. The kind that builds. That kind that breathes. That kind that tells the truth. The kind that protects the vulnerable. The kind that belongs to all of us. 

.

A Place Where No One Flinches

Leona painted her face with trembling hands. White greasepaint smeared across her cheek like fog crawling over glass. She didn’t look in the mirror long. She was afraid of recognizing herself, and afraid of not.

Outside, the circus stirred like something drugged but dangerous. The calliope screamed its crooked lullaby. Lights buzzed. The smell of animal musk and hot sugar thickened the air.

“Button,” came a voice, dripping sarcasm. “You're on in ten. Let’s not make it political tonight.”

Vico DeLaurentis. Ringmaster. Architect of ruin. His red velvet coat clung to him like a memory of dignity. His breath smelled of whiskey and resentment.

He leaned in, too close.

“And Button,” he sneered, “try not to pop a tit onstage. The kids don’t need the trauma.”

Leona didn’t answer.

He smiled wider. “You know, some nights I watch you from the wings. All that paint, those hips, that new little girl voice. You almost pass. Almost. It’s fucked up.”

He lingered.

“I dream about you, you know. Hate sex, mostly. I know you're still packing down there.Does that make me the freak, or you?”

He touched her wrist.

She stepped back. “Don’t,” she said, quiet as a blade.

He grinned like a infant god who’d never been told no. "Look at you. You’re pretty sexy when you’re angry.”

The show went on. Leona juggled and danced, made balloon animals and took a pie to the face. The children laughed. But inside, she felt the shape of a scream she hadn’t yet made. Something building, brimming, ready to burst. 

Later, in the tent of velvet shadows and candle smoke, Ramona laid down the cards.

The Moon.

“I keep pulling this one,” Ramona murmured. “Like it’s stitched to your shadow.”

Leona stared. The card shimmered—two beasts howling at a pale, unblinking moon. A path ran between towers. No end in sight.

“It means illusion,” Ramona whispered. “But also madness. Memory. Masks. You walk the path in the dark and no one sees you walking—but it’s still real.”

Leona touched the card. It was warm. Faintly wet. Almost... breathing.

“They talk to you,” she said. "They hum. They warn. They bleed, if I listen too long.”

She turned another card without looking. The Tower.

“Trouble’s close,” she muttered. “But you knew that already.”

Ramona leaned in, voice low and reverent.

“You ever hear the story of Kali?” she asked.

Leona shook her head.

“She wasn’t born in a cage,” Ramona said. “She was born under a blue eclipse in the forests of Assam. The locals called her Bhairavi, the Fierce One. Said she spoke only to widows and ghosts. She once dragged a poacher into a pond and left only his belt buckle.”

Leona blinked.

“She was free,” Ramona said. “Until Vico bought her from a dying zoo for cheap. Told everyone he’d tamed her, but that’s not true. He broke her. Beat her until her eyes dimmed. Now she performs. But she’s not there. She’s dreaming of the jungle. She paces like she’s tracing a map back to it.”

Leona swallowed hard.

“She watches you,” Ramona added. “Like she sees the same chain around your neck.”

Then Ramona leaned in even closer, voice lower, like a ritual whispered in the bones of the earth.

“You ever hear of Vepar?”

Leona blinked. “No.”

“Third spirit in the Goetia,” Ramona said, eyes unfocusing. “Appears as a mermaid, lovely, gleaming. Rules over the wounds of sailors. They can rot a man from the inside, but slowly. With beauty.”

Leona shivered.

“My grandmother used to say: Everyone’s born with a Vepar inside them. A demon that learned to survive by hiding behind our charms. Our sweetness. Our masks.”

She tapped the Moon card. “Some of us just learn to name them early. Most don’t.”

Leona’s mouth felt dry.

Ramona smiled, gently. “You named yours. That’s why you’re still here.”

They kissed that night behind the tent, slow at first, then not so slow. Straw in their hair. Greasepaint smudged across jawbones. Ramona’s hands beneath Leona’s shirt, skin damp with sweat and heartbeat. Leona’s lips trembling against the hollow of Ramona’s throat.

It wasn’t just tenderness, it was possession. Not of each other, but of themselves. A claiming. A remembering.

Leona moaned, quiet and long. Ramona whispered something soft in a language Leona didn’t recognize. The world narrowed to heat, wet mouths, salt, friction, breath.

It was the kind of kiss that leaves a mark on the year.

But magic costs.

Days later, after a show, Leona wandered to Kali’s cage. The tiger rose to greet her like a silent cathedral.

“You’re too holy for this place,” she whispered.

Then she heard him.

“You keep whispering sweet nothings to that beast, someone’s gonna think you’re kin.”

Vico again, stinking of lust and threat.

“I saw you and the bearded witch behind the tent. Real romantic. Real tragic. You really think you get a fairytale ending?”

Leona turned, spine straight. “You don’t get to ask.”

“You think you’re above all this?” His voice cracked. “You think a wig and hormones make you a woman? You’re a dress-up doll with a dick—”

He lunged.

She backed into the cage bars with a cry. He grabbed her arms. Hot breath. His mouth twisted. “You want me to stop? Then say it like a girl. Say it in that new cute little voice."

A wind ripped through the field.

“I said,” came a voice behind them, “don’t touch her.”

Ramona. Barefoot. Glowing. Her eyes were stormglass, unblinking.

In one hand: a tarot card, held like a blade.

The Tower. It trembled with heat. Edges curled, smoking.

“I read it earlier,” she said, stepping closer. “Didn’t know who it was for. But now I do.”

Vico turned, laughter dying in his throat.

“You’re both sick—”

Kali roared from behind the bars.

Ramona smiled. “And she’s hungry.”

The air thickened. The earth seemed to sigh. The candle in her tent blew out, though no one was near it.

“I don’t curse people,” Ramona said. “I just read what’s already coming.”

She reached forward. Placed the Tower card on Vico’s chest.

He flinched. It burned.  And then, he ran. A shadow dissolving into shadows.

Leona fell to her knees. Ramona dropped beside her.

“He was going to—” Leona started.

“I know, baby.”

Leona looked down. “He’s not going to stop.”

“No,” Ramona said, voice calm. “But we are.”

That night, they opened Kali’s cage. She stepped out slowly, with the dignity of an ancient queen. Stretched once. Vanished into the woods without sound.

They packed what they had. Left the tent, the sawdust, the smell of gasoline and shame.

They drove through the night in Ramona’s rusted truck, neither speaking. Only the road sang—humming its low, mournful, holy tune.

When they woke, it was to birdsong. Real birdsong.

They had arrived.

The city was nothing like the world they’d known. There were no maps. No gates. Just gardens. Endless gardens. Wild lavender growing from lamp posts. Vines curling around street signs. Fig trees splitting open sidewalks. Bees, fat and unbothered. Children barefoot and unafraid.

They stepped out of the truck into sun-warmed stone. A breeze touched their skin like a promise.

They walked without direction. No one stared. No one asked. A man with no arms offered them tea. A woman with horns sold peaches from a cart made of bone and moss. Someone played a harp from the roof of a cathedral with no walls.

Ramona turned to Leona.

“I think this is it.”

Leona blinked. “Heaven?”

Ramona smiled. “Not quite. Just a place where no one flinches.”

They found a garden behind an ivy-covered door. Slept beneath the fig trees, their bodies still smelling of earth and each other. When they woke, still dark, Ramona kissed her again—deeper this time. Mouths open. Fingers in hair. Skin pressed to skin. A kind of devotion that tasted like sweat and honey and stars.

The Moon hung high overhead. And somewhere in the distance, a Fool stepped onto the road again. But not alone.

The Noise of Your Songs

Yesterday was Sunday,

and all I could think about were the millions gathering in praise

while their neighbors are being hunted --

not in metaphor, not in shadow,

but in plain sight.

On sidewalks.

On jobsites.

In bedrooms and classrooms, no longer safe.

They invoked God's will as if they had no agency,

as if heaven required their silence

more than their courage.

As if faith were submission,

not resistance.

They denied the material:

the hunger in a child's belly,

the cough in a poisoned lung,

the eviction notice folded on the kitchen table --

as if the spiritual is all that matters,

as if the body is a burden to be endured, not a vessel to be honored.

They dismissed human suffering

as if it's inevitable.

As if it's someone else's calling to intervene.

As if it's not their place

to stand between empire and "the least of these."

But wasn't that the whole point?

How easily comfort recasts itself as righteousness.

How quickly love becomes selective.

How often the name of God is spoken

not as a balm,

but as a boundary.

And yet,

there are still mornings,

like today;

when the light hits the window just so,

and I remember:

the world does not need more belief.

It needs more becoming.

"I can't stand your religious meetings.

   I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your religion projects,

   your pretentious slogans and goals.

I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,

   your public relations and image making.

I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

   When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

   I want justice -- oceans of it.

I want fairness -- rivers of it.

   That's what I want. That's all I want."

--- Amos 5:21-24