to Hive being
welcome
What is Hive Being, and Why the Name?
You have likely heard talk of a hive mind, where one global mind finds more or less figurative expression in various local minds. Such talk is common enough in nature documentaries, especially ones concerning ants or bees, and in sci-fi programs. Take that notion, at least a loose version of it, and broaden its scope. That will be a decent first step in understanding the title I have chosen both for my Blog and for the first five-volume installment of my magnum opus Made For You and Me, a fragmentary collection of minimalist stanzas from 2016 to 2020.
In alignment with Spinoza (the 17th Century Rationalist to whom I devoted my doctoral studies), I view reality in its totality as a grand hive Being: all entities are but pulsating manifestations of the buckstopping fount of everything, an ultimate being we might call “God” or “Nature” (so long as, out of respect for the capital “G” and the capital “N,” we limit it neither to some anthropomorphic cloud father hurling lightning bolts nor to mere wilderness untouched by human smog). According to the hive-Being view (where reality is one lone superorganism, a monistic—and we might even say unividualist—conception I defend in both my creative and academic capacities), each non-foundational being (each being, that is, whose essence does not involve existence) is an utterly necessitated expression or eruption or exudation of this eternal source—each is, perhaps better put, a mode or manner of being, and so a focal point through which is disclosed, what classical theists sometimes call “being itself” (ipsum esse subsistens): the realness of the real, the being of whatever may be, the sheer activity of being, the very isness of whatever is. This Blog, which duplicates my Substack, throbs as but one among many literary unfurlings of this self-necessitated foundation, this supreme wellspring, of which we—like black holes and broken beliefs, like fractal ferns and flickering flames—are the inevitable stylings.
My Journey
I am an academic who found himself pressured into early retirement by the rising tides of cancel culture. The illiberal scourge of censoring, silencing, and shaming—although always with us throughout our evolution—reached a local peak around 2021. That was the turbulent year my creative pursuits, which the old left once encouraged as a healthy outlet for the stresses of a childhood steeped in poverty and illiteracy, drew the ire of the new safe-space left. A small cadre of self-proclaimed victims and their allies, several of whom continue to berate me years later under pseudonyms as see through as their sexual infatuation, sought to erase me and my heterodoxy. They found support from a wannabe-woke dean, covered in the grand inquisitor robes of our decadent modernity (full-body tattoos) and just itching to signal his commitment to protecting “vulnerable populations” from triggering material (even if just, as it was in my case, off-duty poems “unbecoming for someone calling himself a teacher”). Although I eventually won my due-process case with the help of The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, I slunk away from a college that turned its back on protecting freedom of expression and from an institution increasingly intolerant of intellectual diversity.
The wrecking ball to my too-comfy office in the windowless ivory tower came with a silver lining. From the ashes of my professional aspirations rose a phoenix of increased freedom to fulfill the literary calling I have pursued for decades. Reputation concerns never stopped me, even within academia’s sterile halls of conformity. Indeed, my unapologetic defiance, which has long baffled friends and family, no doubt chummed even safe waters—almost as if I were asking for it all along—until the cancel shiver grew too frenzied to hold back its blind thrashings. But now, now I piston the most forbidden territories of human thought with no longer even a twinge of conscience. The newfound freedom means extra time to hone my craft. When not assisting special-needs communities (a day job far more rewarding than freeway-flyer drudgeries), I pursue my literary mission with Dionysian fervor.
Call for Co-Conspirators
This space, my digital sanctuary, showcases the fruits of my mission. Think of my posts, even those linking to my publications, as works in progress. I want your input, unflinching brutality included. Each post begins with an invitation to action: “Let’s workshop this [draft about x, y, z].” Your contributions, whether through public comments or my contact page, help hammer scraps of ore into polished blades fit for magazine publication.
Your input is valuable, even if you are neither a writer nor a reader of literature—twin disciplines dying by the cyber nanosecond. Sometimes—even if at the risk of uttering banalities—an outsider’s fresh vantage can pierce the veils of convention to reveal what insiders miss. It often takes an outsider to make us even think to question our ingrained presuppositions and attitudes. I stand by the hygienic value of contagion. That is one reason I advocate so strongly for intellectual diversity and freedom of expression. And that is also one reason I was so harrowed by the anti-diversity swell of cancel culture in academia (an institution that should be the utmost caretaker of such values)—harrowed especially insofar as that swell masqueraded under the gaslighting guise of “diversity”).
You will witness the breathing evolution of my writings over time. To track these changes, I label each revision by round: “ROUND 2,” ROUND 3,” and so forth. Each piece undergoes continuous refinement based on your feedback and my own revisitations. Sometimes changes will mar the work. That is the risk of creative tinkering as a finite creature. I hope you will alert me to missteps. After many semesters of university writing workshops, one rule has impressed itself upon me: when someone senses a flaw, something almost always needs to change—even if, yes, the proposed solution misses the mark (which often it does). From a quick look into the archives, accessible here, you can see how much I have benefited from your feedback so far.
My Hope
Sharing drafts can be daunting. But showing you the ravaged and unperfumed real deal unfiltered by makeup (stuttering starts and falsities, awkward line breaks and clumsy word choices, grammatical errors and misspellings)—that not only makes my work more relatable, but helps me refine things through your input. I hope the unfiltered look at the raw process of fumbling, rather than just the polished product, also helps other writers develop their craft. Imperfect works often instruct more than perfect ones: whereas the perfect ones tend to have a grace by which they slip inside us without activating our scrutiny, the imperfect ones—especially the near perfect ones—show us glaringly what not to do.
People laugh at me, seeing—in my tilting at the windmills of literary excellence—a Don Quixote clunking around in Arthurian armor in a post-knight era. I am not naïve. I am well aware of the diminishing ability to read, let alone well: slowly and deeply, with gratitude. I am also aware that my style, which often nests subpoints within larger points, never waters down virtuosity for the sake of mass appeal. I watch readers stumble over my sentences, unable to unlock even just the music of the envelope let alone the semantic meat within, which—given my tendency to flashlight through the darker facets of human nature (the addicts, the miscreants, the abusers among us)—only adds an additional alienating layer of difficulty). Beholding these depressive scenes of even supportive family members getting bucked off my syntactic bronco makes me feel like a dinosaur who should get a hint and, if not succumb to the brain rot of skibidi-toilet speak, just hang himself already. Even though the decline in linguistic background and grammatical voltage makes my compositions seem quixotic in a world binging Netflix and TikTok, I persist—raging against the dying of the light—by some internal compulsion to celebrate the richness of language and thought.
My hope is that, despite social media’s unparalleled power to farm our attention, people never forget the unique power of writing. Beyond unveiling hypocrisy, teasing out complex implications, and detailing the commonalities between even the most alien phenomena, writing offers something we need today—trapped in agoraphobic cyber bubbles only thickened by the Lyme dangers of forests and the COVID dangers of cities—perhaps more than ever. Granting us rich access to the first-person perspectives of others (to how things feel to them), writing serves as one of humanity’s best tools for combating loneliness. It allows us to linger, broadly and deeply and at high resolution, within the inner lives of others in a way that other arts can only suggest.
What to Expect
My work spans a broad spectrum: from metaphysical discourses on free will and determinism and the ontology of holes to the ephemera of western culture (whether the childhood impacts of the hypersexual mono-image of black woman as squirting twerkers or Terrence Howard’s sham revolution of mathematics). Some tight and minimal, others free-flowing sprawls; some heady and abstract, others emotional and imagistic—my inkwell musings, which often blend scholarly rigor with a dark humor from both high and low culture, aim to capture the visceral intensity of our personal and social and ultimately existential predicaments.
By no means can I deny that drug abuse, sexual assault, and the tales of the broken and the damned loom large in the tag cloud of my work. My writing will never be a paradise of easy truths and comforting lies. It will challenge you, provoke you, and at times even repulse you. I offer no apologies for the monsters I unleash. They are as much a part of us, at long root scared rodent mammals scurrying in the shadows of dinosaurs, as our noblest aspirations.
But make no mistake. It is not all downer darkness. The archives are my receipts. You will find pieces exploring the pursuit of authenticity in a media-saturated world, the search for meaning in an indifferent cosmos, and the celebration of beauty in both the sublime and the profane. I locate much of my inspiration, in fact, in novelists like Dostoevsky and poets like Ted Kooser—writers unafraid to pursue moral agendas or risk Hallmark sentimentality in an age that often sneers at sincerity.
Be they satirical dissections of modern social dynamics or poignant poems about addiction or academic articles on moral responsibility, my goal is to provoke thought, evoke emotion, and foster meaningful dialogue. Fear has not and will not stop me from challenging humanity’s fundamental taboos (like bestiality and cannibalism) or self-reflecting into the dark chaos of the subconscious, even if that means exposing the Jungian shadows—the inner Goebbels—lurking within us all!
Expect posts each day, no day missed. Donations are welcome, but I impose no paywall: it feels wrong to charge for art, especially given our date with obliteration. Feel free to explore what amounts to, at the time of writing this, close to a thousand pieces of poetry and prose here. That should give you a sense of what awaits.
Join me—specula holstered—on this literary odyssey into the public and private nooks of the hive Being. Let us navigate the labyrinth of creation together, confronting our demons and even slaying our darlings if we must. Let us dance on the razor’s edge between the sublime and the profane in pursuit of an elusive literary perfection never to be confused—as it has been confused in our declining civilization—with the pursuit of popularity or likeability over truth.
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Posts
Logical Palsy or Will to Power? (Round 3)
"Logical Palsy or Will to Power?" is a highly polemical poem that critiques what it perceives as a selective and self-serving application of anti-border ideology. The poem frames a contemporary debate around immigration and land claims, arguing that a particular ideological stance, seemingly rooted in universal principles, ultimately reveals itself as a naked exercise in power.
Formally, the poem adopts a confrontational and interrogative structure. It begins with the direct address of "bullhorns" bleating slogans like "“Borders,”... “are bogus and immoral / to police,” hence “no Mexican, / no migrant, is illegal”—". This sets up the initial premise, presenting a common rhetorical position regarding open borders and the illegality of human movement. The use of quotes and "bullhorns" suggests a public, activist discourse. The poem then introduces a "gotcha" question, designed to expose perceived hypocrisy: "So how can you say / whites stole this land?" This question directly challenges the consistency of the initial anti-border stance when applied to historical territorial claims. The climax of the poem comes with the "reply" that "spreadeagles (speculum / cranked) their power ploy: / “The borders are white.”" This response is depicted as both revealing and aggressive. The imagery of "spreadeagles" and "speculum cranked" is visceral and violent, suggesting a forced exposure or a brutal unveiling of an underlying motive.
Thematically, the poem fundamentally questions the coherence and motivations behind certain contemporary political arguments. The title, "Logical Palsy or Will to Power?", encapsulates the core tension: is the inconsistency simply a "logical palsy" (a cognitive or intellectual failure), or is it a deliberate "will to power" (a strategic manipulation of arguments to gain dominance)? The poem argues for the latter, portraying the "The borders are white" retort not as a logical extension of the initial anti-border stance, but as a calculated "power ploy." It suggests that the same borders deemed "bogus and immoral" when limiting migration are suddenly acknowledged and weaponized when they serve a narrative of historical grievance and racialized land claims. This highlights a perceived selective application of principles, where the very concept of "borders" shifts its moral valence depending on who is being accused or who stands to benefit. The poem critiques what it sees as a strategic inconsistency, where the rhetoric of liberation from borders is deployed to achieve specific ends related to historical redress, revealing an underlying agenda of power acquisition rather than consistent ideological adherence.
identity politics, borders, immigration, land claims, political critique, rhetoric, hypocrisy, power dynamics, logical inconsistency, social commentary, polemic, contemporary issues, race, historical grievance, activism.
Edging La Grande Mort (Round 2)
"Edging La Grande Mort" is a visceral, unsettling poem that plunges into the dark, dangerous intersection of sexual obsession, substance abuse, and the very real threat of death. It functions as a body horror lyric, using explicit physiological details and psychological insight to depict a moment of intense, self-destructive indulgence. The poem's power lies in its unflinching portrayal of a highly taboo subject and the terrifying consequences of pushing one's body to its limits for a perverse pleasure.
Formally, the poem is remarkably compressed, achieving its intense effect through a dense concentration of highly charged vocabulary and a rapid, almost breathless rhythm created by enjambment. The title itself, "Edging La Grande Mort," immediately sets a grim, ironic tone, playing on the sexual practice of "edging" (prolonging arousal) and linking it directly to "La Grande Mort" (the "Big Death," a euphemism for orgasm, here twisted into actual death). The opening lines, "Blood arousal sucked / skullward, away from half-mast cock, / over the chafed hour-plus / on the toilet—" instantly establish the grim, solitary, and physically uncomfortable setting of this indulgence. The shift of blood "skullward" indicates a shift from physical sexual gratification to a more cerebral, dangerous high. The crucial turning point arrives with "the terror / spike of realizing your hot cocaine fap / has had you conflating / mounting tachycardia / for mounting payload only propels / the sprint toward infarction." This is where the grim reality shatters the delusion. The "hot cocaine fap" explicitly names the drivers of this dangerous act, while "conflating / mounting tachycardia / for mounting payload" reveals the fatal error in perception: the physiological signs of a heart attack are misinterpreted as signs of intensified sexual pleasure. The final phrase, "the sprint toward infarction," delivers the chilling, undeniable consequence, leaving the reader with a stark image of self-annihilation.
Thematically, the poem explores the dangerous feedback loop between addiction, warped perception, and self-destruction. The protagonist is so consumed by his "hot cocaine fap" that his body's warning signs of distress (tachycardia) are not only ignored but actively reinterpreted as a desirable intensification of pleasure. This highlights a profound cognitive dissonance and a terrifying disconnect from self-preservation. The poem delves into the psychology of extreme indulgence, where the pursuit of sensation overrides all rational thought and biological warnings. The "chafed hour-plus / on the toilet" underscores the degraded and isolated nature of the act. Ultimately, "Edging La Grande Mort" serves as a stark and unsparing warning against the perils of unchecked desire and the fatal consequences of misinterpreting the body's signals in the pursuit of extreme sensation, portraying a voluntary, terrifying rush towards an ignominious end.
sexual obsession, cocaine abuse, addiction, self-destruction, body horror, erotic horror, heart attack, tachycardia, physiological distress, warped perception, cognitive dissonance, taboo, self-annihilation, dark desire, warning, contemporary poetry.
Seroconversion Cruising Grounds (ROUIND 2)
"Seroconversion Cruising Grounds" is a profoundly unsettling and viscerally graphic poem that delves into themes of illicit sexual encounter, disease, and the grotesque intersection of pleasure and peril. It operates as a stark, uncompromising piece within the body horror lyric tradition, using explicit physiological imagery to evoke a sense of revulsion and discomfort. The poem's power lies in its unblinking portrayal of a taboo subject, forcing the reader to confront the abject and the biological realities of risk and consequence.
Formally, the poem is tightly condensed, employing a spare and precise vocabulary to create its disturbing imagery. The use of enjambment ("fecal sludge / pools," "waveform / contour fluctuating") contributes to a sense of fluid, almost inexorable movement, mimicking the "pullback" described in the second stanza. The central image of "fecal sludge / pools at the hilt / of the continence-wrecker" is a particularly potent and confrontational metaphor, immediately establishing the poem's transgressive nature and its focus on the violation of bodily integrity. The "waveform / contour fluctuating / with every pullback" is a chillingly clinical description of a repulsive act, lending a disturbing scientific detachment to the scene. The comparison to "a time-lapsed beach’s scuzzy scum line" further emphasizes the accumulation of filth and decay, linking the personal act to a broader, almost ecological sense of degradation.
Thematically, the poem is a meditation on the grotesque and the abject, specifically in the context of sexual encounters fraught with danger. The titular "Seroconversion Cruising Grounds" immediately establishes a backdrop of risk and potential infection (seroconversion referring to the development of antibodies in response to an infection). The explicit imagery serves to underscore the literal and metaphorical "contamination" at play. The climax of the poem arrives with the shocking "inversion, demonic / as toes-ever-inward ballet, / of the life corona of cervical mucus." This final comparison is a masterstroke of horrifying juxtaposition. Cervical mucus, in its "life corona," signifies fertility, creation, and the potential for new life. Its "demonic" inversion with "fecal sludge" not only signifies sterility and decay but also suggests a perversion of natural processes, a deliberate embrace of the destructive over the generative. The "toes-ever-inward ballet" adds a layer of unnatural contortion, reinforcing the sense of something profoundly wrong and deliberately twisted. The poem ultimately functions as a chilling exploration of desire pushed to its most perilous limits, where the pursuit of sensation intersects with the specter of disease and the violation of the sacred.
Meta Description:
A viscerally graphic poem dissects illicit sexual encounter, disease, and the grotesque, portraying the "death corona of fecal sludge" as a "demonic inversion" of life-affirming processes, exploring the chilling intersection of pleasure and peril.
Keywords:
sexual transgression, body horror, disease, seroconversion, grotesque, abject, bodily fluids, anal sex, sexual risk, perversion, contamination, visceral imagery, taboo, erotic horror, biological decay, inversion, fertility vs. sterility, transgressive poetry, human sexuality, moral decay.
Pushups on Water (Round 2)
"Pushups on Water" is a satirical poem that critiques the exaggerated and often mythical reverence surrounding popular figures, particularly martial arts legends, in contemporary culture. The poem functions as a commentary on the amplification of prowess into absurdity and the potential for hagiography to distort reality over time.
The title, "Pushups on Water," immediately sets a tone of hyperbole and impossibility. It conjures an image of a feat that defies physical laws, signaling the poem's engagement with exaggerated abilities.
The poem proceeds by listing several increasingly outlandish claims attributed to martial arts icon Bruce Lee: "Bruce Lee could do / a layaway one-inch poke / where you die / a hundred steps later / or midair dash too fast / for film." These claims, though rooted in actual martial arts lore (like the one-inch punch), are presented in an exaggerated, almost folkloric manner. The phrase "layaway one-inch poke" adds a touch of absurd domesticity to the deadly force, while "midair dash too fast / for film" pushes the ability beyond verifiable reality, into the realm of pure myth. The parenthetical "or, still absurd, / even just tap out / Royce Gracie" introduces a contemporary martial arts figure, implicitly mocking the tendency to project Lee's abilities onto hypothetical modern-day victories, even against a legend of a different era and discipline. The poem establishes that "so many today swear" these impossible feats are true, highlighting a collective credulity.
The poem's central question, "what / immaculate conceptions / might we halo him with / after centuries?", delivers its core satirical punch. The phrase "immaculate conceptions" is a religious term, here used sacrilegiously to imply that over time, legendary figures are not just admired but deified, imbued with divine or supernatural qualities born of unquestioning belief. The poem suggests that if such absurd claims are already accepted after a relatively short period, the future holds even greater, more fantastical glorifications. It critiques the human tendency to mythologize, creating a hagiographic distance that replaces verifiable reality with fantastical narratives, driven by admiration that borders on uncritical reverence.
Satire, Bruce Lee, martial arts, legend, myth-making, hagiography, hyperbole, cultural critique, hero worship, exaggeration, popular culture, critical thinking, deification, contemporary poetry.
The Art of Subtraction (ROUND 4)
“The Art of Subtraction” is a deeply reflective and formally restrained poem that grapples with generational inheritance, masculinity, self-erasure, and the redemptive potential of surrender. At its core, the poem is an ars poetica not only of fatherhood but of human aging and spiritual maturation. Drawing on Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo (“You must change your life”) while invoking six unnamed “Mikes”—potentially avatars of the everyman—the speaker meditates on the slow, humbling art of stepping aside, of making peace with no longer being central.
The poem opens with a blunt declaration: “I isolate.” This staccato phrase establishes both tone and theme. From the outset, the speaker identifies emotional withdrawal as not merely a habit but a familial legacy: “Like my own father / before me.” In naming this inheritance, the poem locates isolation not as an anomaly but as a masculine inheritance—genetic, perhaps, but more likely cultural and behavioral. The lines “it takes everything in me / to look straight at my son” encapsulate the core crisis: the inability to meet the child’s gaze becomes emblematic of the broader struggle to remain open, vulnerable, and emotionally available.
The poem’s middle section unfolds as a meditation on memory and shame. There is a near-cinematic recall of the son’s “little nose” in the mirror, the “Pee-yew” diapers—quotidian moments rendered luminous and almost unbearable in retrospect. These are not sentimental flourishes, but evidentiary fragments that intrude with psychic force, making the speaker’s current estrangement from his son even harder to bear. The line “foregrounding too much for me / to fathom the man he is becoming” is crucial: it positions fatherhood as a state of emotional overload, where proximity to one’s child does not guarantee comprehension or comfort.
The poem resists resolution. Even as the son matures into a more “considerate” presence, the father’s shame persists. His response to his son’s enthusiasm is not ease but guilt—“I look down, look / at me, like a cuffed criminal ushered / into court for his disgrace.” This simile enacts a reversal: the child is now the figure of moral authority, the judge, while the father stands condemned—not for any crime of abuse or abandonment, but for the more ordinary, more devastating failure of presence. The father cannot be fully there. And this insufficiency is seen.
The allusion to Rilke enters here with pointed irony. Where Rilke’s Apollo commands the viewer to transformation—“You must change your life”—the speaker reads in the same mirrored image not only exhortation but doom: “Your time has come to an end.” The body—“the carved torso of Apollo”—becomes a site of both awe and accusation, beauty and judgment. It is this ambivalence that carries the poem forward: the speaker does not reject the command, but he also does not fantasize a grand self-overhaul. Instead, he moves toward something quieter, harder: “to apprentice oneself into erasure.”
This phrase, perhaps the poem’s most resonant, encapsulates the philosophical core. “Erasure” is not death, but a practice. It is the father’s task to disappear not violently or with resentment, but gracefully and deliberately—to become “he who can bear not being / the center.” In this, the poem affirms that real maturity lies not in assertion but in relinquishment. It is not a poem of self-loathing or tragic loss, but of moral discipline, humility, and love.
The final image—of the speaker’s own father “bowed over beer bottles towering / in a bravado beaten by my own blaze”—completes the generational circle. The speaker has become what his father was: vulnerable, diminished, aware. But he chooses a different form of strength. “I doubt my strength for the other road… / What I do know… is this: / if I cannot muster the strength, / at least I will walk beside him.” The poem ends not in transcendence but in solidarity. If the speaker cannot be perfect, he can be present. If he cannot be central, he can still accompany.
Stylistically, the poem is marked by enjambed free verse, syntactic hesitations, and an austerity that mirrors its subject matter. The diction is plain, at times blunt, but haunted by philosophical precision. There are no rhetorical flourishes, only slow, earned insights. Like the best of late-style poetry (one hears echoes of Donald Hall, Jack Gilbert, and of course Rilke), “The Art of Subtraction” practices its theme formally as well as thematically: it subtracts excess in favor of clarity, revelation, and the hard grace of living with oneself in the shadow of one’s children.
Meta Description:
A restrained and elegiac poem, “The Art of Subtraction” explores the quiet struggle of fatherhood, aging, and spiritual humility. Through inherited shame, Rilkean self-reckoning, and the metaphor of erasure, the poem stages maturity as a surrender of centrality in favor of presence and love.
Keywords:
fatherhood, Rilke, masculinity, aging, erasure, presence, intergenerational trauma, reflection, poetic restraint, selfhood, subtraction, memory, humility, the gaze, ars poetica, shame and redemption, modern lyric
The Art of Subtraction (ROUND 3)
“The Art of Subtraction” is a deeply reflective and formally restrained poem that grapples with generational inheritance, masculinity, self-erasure, and the redemptive potential of surrender. At its core, the poem is an ars poetica not only of fatherhood but of human aging and spiritual maturation. Drawing on Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo (“You must change your life”) while invoking six unnamed “Mikes”—potentially avatars of the everyman—the speaker meditates on the slow, humbling art of stepping aside, of making peace with no longer being central.
The poem opens with a blunt declaration: “I isolate.” This staccato phrase establishes both tone and theme. From the outset, the speaker identifies emotional withdrawal as not merely a habit but a familial legacy: “Like my own father / before me.” In naming this inheritance, the poem locates isolation not as an anomaly but as a masculine inheritance—genetic, perhaps, but more likely cultural and behavioral. The lines “it takes everything in me / to look straight at my son” encapsulate the core crisis: the inability to meet the child’s gaze becomes emblematic of the broader struggle to remain open, vulnerable, and emotionally available.
The poem’s middle section unfolds as a meditation on memory and shame. There is a near-cinematic recall of the son’s “little nose” in the mirror, the “Pee-yew” diapers—quotidian moments rendered luminous and almost unbearable in retrospect. These are not sentimental flourishes, but evidentiary fragments that intrude with psychic force, making the speaker’s current estrangement from his son even harder to bear. The line “foregrounding too much for me / to fathom the man he is becoming” is crucial: it positions fatherhood as a state of emotional overload, where proximity to one’s child does not guarantee comprehension or comfort.
The poem resists resolution. Even as the son matures into a more “considerate” presence, the father’s shame persists. His response to his son’s enthusiasm is not ease but guilt—“I look down, look / at me, like a cuffed criminal ushered / into court for his disgrace.” This simile enacts a reversal: the child is now the figure of moral authority, the judge, while the father stands condemned—not for any crime of abuse or abandonment, but for the more ordinary, more devastating failure of presence. The father cannot be fully there. And this insufficiency is seen.
The allusion to Rilke enters here with pointed irony. Where Rilke’s Apollo commands the viewer to transformation—“You must change your life”—the speaker reads in the same mirrored image not only exhortation but doom: “Your time has come to an end.” The body—“the carved torso of Apollo”—becomes a site of both awe and accusation, beauty and judgment. It is this ambivalence that carries the poem forward: the speaker does not reject the command, but he also does not fantasize a grand self-overhaul. Instead, he moves toward something quieter, harder: “to apprentice oneself into erasure.”
This phrase, perhaps the poem’s most resonant, encapsulates the philosophical core. “Erasure” is not death, but a practice. It is the father’s task to disappear not violently or with resentment, but gracefully and deliberately—to become “he who can bear not being / the center.” In this, the poem affirms that real maturity lies not in assertion but in relinquishment. It is not a poem of self-loathing or tragic loss, but of moral discipline, humility, and love.
The final image—of the speaker’s own father “bowed over beer bottles towering / in a bravado beaten by my own blaze”—completes the generational circle. The speaker has become what his father was: vulnerable, diminished, aware. But he chooses a different form of strength. “I doubt my strength for the other road… / What I do know… is this: / if I cannot muster the strength, / at least I will walk beside him.” The poem ends not in transcendence but in solidarity. If the speaker cannot be perfect, he can be present. If he cannot be central, he can still accompany.
Stylistically, the poem is marked by enjambed free verse, syntactic hesitations, and an austerity that mirrors its subject matter. The diction is plain, at times blunt, but haunted by philosophical precision. There are no rhetorical flourishes, only slow, earned insights. Like the best of late-style poetry (one hears echoes of Donald Hall, Jack Gilbert, and of course Rilke), “The Art of Subtraction” practices its theme formally as well as thematically: it subtracts excess in favor of clarity, revelation, and the hard grace of living with oneself in the shadow of one’s children.
Meta Description:
A restrained and elegiac poem, “The Art of Subtraction” explores the quiet struggle of fatherhood, aging, and spiritual humility. Through inherited shame, Rilkean self-reckoning, and the metaphor of erasure, the poem stages maturity as a surrender of centrality in favor of presence and love.
Keywords:
fatherhood, Rilke, masculinity, aging, erasure, presence, intergenerational trauma, reflection, poetic restraint, selfhood, subtraction, memory, humility, the gaze, ars poetica, shame and redemption, modern lyric
A Cold Hunt (Round 2)
A Cold Hunt is a compact yet emotionally resonant lyric that stages a moment of early failure and tenderness between father and son during a frigid morning hunt. Through tightly controlled free verse, evocative physical detail, and tonal modulation between shame and humor, the poem reconstructs a foundational masculine memory: a moment in which pride, pain, and familial love briefly coalesce. The poem’s restraint is its greatest strength. Eschewing overt sentimentality, it conveys emotional depth through minimal gestures—both linguistic and narrative.
The opening stanza establishes a physical and psychological atmosphere of exposure. The father, described in his “hunter wool of rusty red,” becomes a kind of archetypal masculine figure, leading his child through a precarious passage across a winter stream. The image of “black-algae stones / poking just above the tinkle of the icy stream” sets up a visual register of instability and danger. That the father carves a “wobbly path” — rather than a sure-footed one — is telling: he is no stoic woodsman, no infallible patriarch. He is human, tired, perhaps aging. And yet, he retains authority, as marked by his backward glance and warning: “Just watch your step there.”
The speaker’s fall, underlined by the comic outburst “Fuckin Spikey!” (the nickname presumably his father’s for him), serves as both a literal slip and a symbolic disruption in masculine initiation. This is the poem’s emotional pivot. The child's fall occurs while the father still points — an image of arrested instruction — and the speaker's urgent self-preservation emerges not through concern for his body or weapon, but through his instinct to “save the coffee.” This absurd detail — heroic in its earnestness — becomes the emotional hinge of the poem. The child’s dignity is preserved by a domestic gesture that is both practical and ritualistic.
The second stanza deepens this emotional ambiguity. The shotgun is drying upside-down — a symbol of masculinity temporarily sidelined — while the father warms himself with the Styrofoam cup. The speaker’s decision to suppress his physical discomfort, unwilling to “let my teeth chatter reveal / I needed out,” reveals a classic rite of passage tension: the need to prove one’s fortitude to the father, to be accepted not as a child but as a partner in a shared masculine world. The father’s chuckle — “Fuckin Spikey, huh?” — reanimates the earlier insult into something more affectionate, lightly mocking but no longer angry. His repetition implies forgiveness, recognition, even intimacy.
Stylistically, the poem’s success lies in its balance of naturalistic speech and lyrical compression. The enjambment slows the narrative into a cinematic unfolding, while the diction resists embellishment. Words like “wobbly,” “tinkle,” and “chatter” contribute to the physical realism, but they also hint at the child’s vulnerability, grounding the emotional tension in sensory minutiae.
More broadly, “A Cold Hunt” participates in a tradition of father-son poems that reckon with the quiet rituals through which masculinity is passed on — not in speeches or declarations, but in glances, in silences, in jokes. The poem recalls works like Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” and Seamus Heaney’s “Follower” — poems where labor, cold, and paternal presence forge emotional bonds that are understood only in retrospect. Yet unlike those canonical works, “A Cold Hunt” is not elegiac. The note appended suggests that this moment became a recurring point of familial humor, a joke repeated over years.
That retrospective laughter does not cancel the shame. It metabolizes it. In this way, the poem becomes a gentle artifact of masculine vulnerability: how a boy’s error becomes a family myth, and how a father's small mercy — the shift from “Fuckin Spikey!” to “Fuckin Spikey, huh?” — communicates what might otherwise go unsaid: you’re doing fine, kid.
Meta Description:
A Cold Hunt captures a boy’s shameful fall during a winter hunt with his father and the tender masculine bond forged through restraint and humor. The poem explores pride, vulnerability, and memory through tightly focused lyric realism and minimalistic emotional gestures.
Keywords:
father-son poetry, masculinity, shame, rite of passage, hunting, memory, humor and restraint, lyric minimalism, emotional inheritance, bodily vulnerability, poetic realism.
A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (ROUND 6)
Scholarly Analysis: “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”
A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes is a poem of extreme bodily excess and linguistic density, operating at the threshold between grotesque comedy and sublimated grief. Through a layered poetics of anatomical hyperbole, surreal metaphor, and escalating obscenity, the poem investigates how kink, spectacle, and distortion can become a language for something deeper than eroticism—something closer to mourning, tribute, and the survival of a vernacular tradition.
The speaker constructs a vision of erotic “self-play” taken “too damn far,” beginning with a half-sarcastic suggestion that any man who has “craned past his wife’s beach slaps” or “hummed beneath Becky on an escalator” already recognizes the signs of someone who has indulged too far into their own solitary fantasy world. What follows is a catalog of grotesque, surreal, and sexually violent images: a body marked by overuse, reshaped into an alien landscape of “liver lips,” “Ray Finkle” tucks, and Seussian “roast beast” folds. The language here is not accidental vulgarity—it is deliberately maximal, borrowing visual excess from both cartoon logic and body horror.
Crucially, the poem repeatedly stages the body not as object, but as site of performance—a theater of abjection that is also, paradoxically, a theater of power. The Gut Puncher™ is the centerpiece of this performance: a device named and stylized like a consumer product, imagined as both comedic (“toppled lawn gnome”) and terrifying (“spook-the-shit-outta-ya shadows”). The violence implied is not merely spectacle—it is mythologized. The anus is transformed into a haunted shrine (“that one surviving gullet”), edged by “demonic slanders to God.” The physical becomes metaphysical.
What anchors the poem, however, is the progression from cartoonish bodily distortion to a strangely sincere evocation of beauty and grief. As the speaker imagines “sunlimned dilation,” “Cinderelli-Cinderelli glow,” and “intestinal breadcrumbs,” the language drifts from slapstick toward reverie. The surreal becomes nearly sublime. This is not eroticism in any straightforward sense—it is a mourning practice for a lost figure who remains irreducible to decorum. It is grotesque because it refuses to lie. The body is not sanitized, and neither is memory.
The poem’s final movement imagines an intimate animal relation—likening the speaker to a magpie, an oxpecker, a scavenger feeding from a sacred ruin. This zoological metaphor—sick, strange, yet tender—signals a collapse of hierarchy: human and animal, erotic and alimentary, sacred and obscene, all merge in a vision of vulnerability and survival.
Stylistically, the poem’s method draws from the tradition of high-modernist obscenity: Joyce’s scatology, Burroughs’s anatomical surrealism, and the maximalism of contemporary poets like Ariana Reines or CAConrad. Yet it is grounded in its own idiom—a voice equally shaped by pop detritus (“ET undulants,” “Disney glow”) and working-class oral traditions. It is this collision of registers that gives the poem its force: a poetics of extreme compression where slapstick, eros, and elegy become indistinguishable.
Meta Description:
An anatomically surreal poem, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” uses grotesque imagery and violent erotic metaphor to turn kink performance into a site of grief and tribute. The poem transforms bodily abjection into elegiac spectacle, fusing slapstick, surrealism, and sincerity in a language of excess.
Keywords:
grotesque poetics, surrealism, anality, kink performance, bodily abjection, maximalism, erotic elegy, anatomical metaphor, postmodern obscenity, trauma ritual, sacred profane collapse, consumer object erotics, scatological sublime, pop cultural surrealism, vernacular performance.
Hypocorism (ROUND 39)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 38)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 37)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 36)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 35)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 34)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 33)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 32)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 31)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 30)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 29)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
Hypocorism (ROUND 28)
A Scholarly Summary of "Hypocorism"
This narrative, titled "Hypocorism" and framed by an epigraph from the Gospel of Thomas, is a dense, transgressive, and philosophically charged case study of a man's intellectual and emotional surrender to a taboo relationship. The story meticulously documents the final stages of his psychological resistance crumbling, not through external force, but through the active, persuasive agency of his younger partner.
The Architecture of a Failed Ethic:
The central tension revolves around the narrator's self-imposed rule: no full sexual consummation until the teenage girl, "baby girl," confides in a trusted third-party adult. This condition is presented as a bulwark of ethical integrity, a way to navigate the profound power imbalance of their age gap. However, the narrative reveals this rule to be a fragile intellectual construct, a form of elaborate self-tantalization rather than a true moral safeguard. The narrator, a disgraced ethics professor, is paralyzed by hyper-analysis, paranoia, and a hypochondriacal fear of his own motives. His "love" is a constant, anxious negotiation between his overwhelming desire and his need to see himself as a good man.
The Inversion of Power and Agency:
A critical element of the narrative is the radical inversion of expected power dynamics. The narrator is emotionally weak, haunted by jealousy, and intellectually exhausted. The girl, by contrast, is a figure of immense strength, maturity, and pragmatic wisdom. Forged by a life of hardship, she is the emotional anchor of the relationship. It is she who reassures him, who demonstrates intellectual prowess in their philosophical discussions (independently articulating a Leibnizian argument for God), and who ultimately directs the course of their intimacy. She is not a passive object of desire but an active, desiring subject who resents the rule even as she respects his discipline, seeing it as proof that he is "solid" in a world of undisciplined men.
The Collapse of Resistance:
The narrator's moment of potential epiphany—his realization that he must "let her go" for her own good—is fleeting and entirely self-centered. It is an intellectual conclusion about the nature of a "higher love" that is immediately and completely overwhelmed by the reality of the girl's desires. His attempt to reframe their dynamic into one of paternal guidance ("Be the ancestor of your future happiness") is a desperate, last-ditch effort by his mind to maintain control. The narrative makes it clear that this intellectual posturing is no match for the physical and emotional reality of their connection.
The Final Surrender:
The ending is not one of renunciation but of capitulation. The narrator's brief resolve to "let her go" dissolves when she responds not with relief, but with nurturing affection ("nuzzled like a cat"), which only "solidified his resolve" to stay. Her final question, "You ever heard of ‘DDLG?’" (Daddy Dom/Little Girl), is not a tragic reminder of their dynamic, but the final key that unlocks it. It is the explicit articulation of the very role-play and power structure their relationship has been implicitly building towards. Her question is an invitation, a granting of permission, and a final, authoritative dismissal of his ethical anxieties. The implication is not that he walks away, but that he gives in. The "hypocorism" of the title is thus fulfilled not in a tender nickname, but in his complete and total surrender to the role she has assigned him, ending his internal philosophical war and embracing the transgression he has so painstakingly analyzed.
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Don’t let anyone tell you that real life is lacking in poetic interest. This is exactly what the poet is for: he has the mind and the imagination to find something of interest in everyday things. Real life supplies the motifs, the points that need to be said—the actual heart of the matter; but it is the poet’s job to fashion it all into a beautiful, animated whole. You are familiar with Fürnstein, the so-called “nature poet”? He has written a poem about growing hops, and you couldn’t imagine anything nicer. I have now asked him to write some poems celebrating the work of skilled artisans, in particular weavers, and I am quite sure he will succeed; he has lived among such people from an early age, he knows the subject inside out, and will be in full command of his material. That is the advantage of small works: you need only choose subjects that you know and have at your command. With a longer poetic work, however, this is not possible. There is no way around it: all the different threads that tie the whole thing together, and are woven into the design, have to be shown in accurate detail. Young people only have a one-sided view of things, whereas a longer work requires a multiplicity of viewpoints—and that’s where they come unstuck.—Goethe (Conversations with Eckermann)
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