to Hive being
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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
Threat Level Midnight Ladder
“Threat Level Midnight Ladder” is a terse, fragmentary, and highly charged poem that exposes the collision of adolescent sexual awakening, patriarchal surveillance, and cultural repression, all compressed into a scene of thwarted desire and abrupt containment. The poem uses explicit language, bodily detail, and a jarring shift in imagery to highlight how budding sexuality is aggressively policed, especially when gender, innocence, and cultural signifiers collide.
The title, “Threat Level Midnight Ladder,” draws on the language of maximum security alerts and covert escape. “Threat Level Midnight,” an absurdly heightened state of alarm, signals the panic around emerging female sexuality, while “Ladder” implies a secret path — a window, a means of climbing out, a precarious bridge between childish innocence and illicit erotic knowledge. The title alone sets the poem up as a darkly comic but unsettling fable about the adult panic surrounding adolescent bodies.
The opening expletive, “Fuck that age when the neighbor / dad cockblocks your window / strokery—” catapults the reader into the speaker’s raw frustration. This “window strokery” alludes to clandestine masturbation and voyeurism, situating the speaker as both observer and participant in a drama of desire that is immediately under threat. The “neighbor dad” becomes a petty patriarchal enforcer who intervenes to “cockblock,” shutting down the possibility of sexual exploration.
The next lines — “brown budlet / just starting to plump / those raw-kneed Dora shorts” — juxtapose childlike imagery with the faint eroticism of pubescent change. “Budlet” and “plump” evoke a body in bloom, while “raw-kneed Dora shorts” pin the girl to a specific, embarrassingly juvenile marker of childhood. This clash of erotic charge and childlike costume intensifies the reader’s discomfort, mirroring society’s horror at the ambiguous age when a child’s body becomes newly visible as sexual.
The poem then shifts abruptly: “and then bam, in a blink, dribbling / her soccer ball up and down / the sidewalk in eye-mesh burqa / like a black Pac-Man ghost.” The girl’s transformation is total — her budding sexuality, having provoked panic, is now concealed beneath an “eye-mesh burqa.” This piece of clothing, traditionally signifying modesty and protection, becomes an instrument of forced invisibility. The “black Pac-Man ghost” simile renders her an anonymous, spectral figure haunting the sidewalk, evoking an image of devouring or evasion that suggests the futility of repression — the desire is not gone, only masked.
In effect, the poem functions as a savage, condensed critique of how patriarchal authority and cultural norms converge to surveil and repress adolescent female bodies. The speaker’s bitterness and crude defiance (“Fuck that age”) unmask the power dynamics that police the boundary between childhood and sexuality. The final image is not one of safety but of spectral erasure — a girl made ghostly to neutralize the “threat level” of her becoming.
transgressive poetry, adolescent sexuality, surveillance, patriarchy, modesty, burqa, voyeurism, repression, coming-of-age, policing desire, taboo, gender politics, childhood eroticism, cultural panic, containment, ghost imagery, visibility and invisibility.
Mary’s Hairbrush Handle*
“Mary’s Hairbrush Handle” is a volatile, taboo-shredding prose-poem that uses the most iconic consent story in the Christian canon — the Annunciation — to probe the hypocrisy and blind spots in how we treat sexual maturity today. Its core provocation is simple yet disorienting: if we recoil in moral outrage at the idea that a twelve-year-old Mary could have given real consent — to her betrothal to Joseph, let alone to becoming the literal “slave” (doulos) of an omnipotent God — then we must also reckon with what that standard implies about our own cultural assumptions that a modern teenager, or even a young adult, is automatically mature enough to handle complex, power-laden sexual dynamics.
The poem’s unsettling power comes from its fusion of biblical philology (“doulos,” not servant but owned chattel) with kink discourse (“DDLG,” “consensual non-consent”). By forcing the reader to look directly at the raw power asymmetry — a powerless young girl submitting to an all-powerful, all-knowing being — it exposes how fragile the idea of “informed consent” can be when the imbalance is that extreme. The piece plays with the reader’s discomfort: is this a disturbing metaphor for divine devotion, or an unspoken spiritual erotica hidden in plain sight? Either way, it shows how both atheists and apologists circle the same unease, yet rarely follow its logic to the real-world parallel.
The poem’s savage humor is its weapon. In one breath it imagines Luke, the Gospel writer, “getting a little plethysmograph-throbbing titillation spelling out the DDLG-BDSM terms of Mary’s relationship with God.” In the next, it ridicules how the pious hand-wave away the moral problem: if God is all-good, then any worry about exploitation must, by definition, be wrong — “any evidence our lying eyes ever thought we received… would simply have to be recategorized as a good thing.” This dark parody of theodicy sets up the bigger point: if we can’t trust a girl to freely consent to her entire self becoming a divine womb, how can we so blithely assume that modern young people, immersed in a hyper-sexualized, infantilizing culture, are ready to navigate complex sexual relationships?
The piece’s social commentary bites hardest when it contrasts Mary’s ancient context with today’s extended adolescence. The text spares no illusions about life in first-century Galilee: “grinding grain, pulling buckets of well water, tending livestock, mending clothes” — backbreaking domestic labor that forced girls into real, survival-driven adulthood before they ever menstruated. A twelve-year-old in that world, the poem argues, bore the kind of physical, emotional, and intellectual responsibilities that most 25-year-olds in developed nations today are only beginning to glimpse — if they ever do at all.
Against this, the poem lays out the modern bubble: constant digital dopamine, overprotective “snowplowing” parents, the flattening effects of a culture that encourages perpetual self-regard and excuses for stunted growth. It lampoons the way contemporary “infancy bubbles” keep young people in a perpetual state of emotional immaturity, coddled from real-world pushback or self-denial. As the poem acidly observes, “the merest bit of boredom or delay in gratification feels… like the end of the world.” The argument is not that we should lower the bar for what counts as sexual maturity — but rather that if we accept the logic that Mary could not have meaningfully consented at twelve, we must question whether many legal adults today, in a culture that delays maturity, truly meet that threshold either.
In the end, “Mary’s Hairbrush Handle” flips a familiar polemic inside out. It doesn’t excuse child marriage or divine impregnation; it doesn’t wink at the power imbalance as something to be fetishized in real life. Instead, it asks: if we find the Annunciation intolerable because a girl that young could never rationally grasp what she was agreeing to, then why do we assume a modern eighteen-year-old — often coddled, distracted, lacking self-reliance — automatically can? The poem’s final implication is radical but logically consistent: perhaps a society serious about meaningful consent should be more willing to question whether the legal age of consent — and the broader markers of adulthood — are set far too low for the actual maturity we see in practice.
Beneath the wild imagery, the pornographic kink comparisons, and the irreverent scriptural mockery lies an uncomfortably moral question: if real consent requires true agency, wisdom, and self-sufficiency, the bar should be higher than the easy lines we draw on paper — even if that means that today’s “adults” might not qualify so quickly.
transgressive poetry, age of consent, Mary, doulos, Annunciation, power asymmetry, informed consent, coming-of-age, cultural infantilization, kink discourse, DDLG, consensual non-consent, biblical critique, religious satire, theodicy, sexual ethics, maturity threshold, youth culture, extended adolescence.
Quikrete
"Quikrete" is an exceptionally graphic and highly transgressive poem that uses extreme sexual and violent imagery to launch a scathing critique of perceived excesses in contemporary gay adoption culture, specifically targeting what it portrays as a self-serving, competitive, and ultimately perverse approach to parenthood. The poem functions as a polemical indictment of a specific pathology it attributes to a segment of "adoptive gays," hinting at concealed violence and irreversible harm.
The title, "Quikrete," is a brand name for fast-setting concrete mix. This subtly ominous title immediately foreshadows the poem's themes of permanent, perhaps irreversible, damage or a swift, brutal outcome, strongly hinting at body burial or the quick disposal of evidence, solidifying a crime. It suggests a destructive force that solidifies quickly, leaving no trace.
The poem immediately thrusts the reader into a scene of disturbing competition and violence: "The adoptive gays, one-upmanship / revving waiting-list edging / into insanity, tag team / a 'Finish Him!' fatality (only / no arcade-pixel respawn)." The phrase "one-upmanship / revving waiting-list edging / into insanity" characterizes the adoptive parents as engaged in a destructive, competitive quest, driven to extremes by the desire to outdo each other, turning the adoption process into a perverse game. The allusion to "Finish Him!" from the video game Mortal Kombat and "fatality (only / no arcade-pixel respawn)" brutally underscores the literal, irreversible harm inflicted, contrasting it with the simulated violence of a game.
The specific act of violence and its horrific consequence are then detailed: "colonic torsion neither dad— / spinner, fucker—meant / to shadow the kiddo creampie: / 'Fuck yes! Spin that lil’ prick!'" This is the poem's most shocking and explicit core. "Colonic torsion" describes a severe, life-threatening injury to the child. The poem attributes this to neither dad "mean[ing]" it, suggesting an unintended but direct consequence of their actions, a result perhaps of their perverse game. The terms "spinner, fucker" are presented as roles or personas taken by the dads, linking the violence directly to their sexual practices or aggressive behaviors. The phrase "kiddo creampie" is a grotesque and deeply disturbing sexualization of the child, implying the child is an object of their gratification. The concluding shouted line, "'Fuck yes! Spin that lil’ prick!'" is a horrifying climax. It implies a perverse encouragement of an act that leads to severe harm, revealing a profound lack of empathy, a sexualized view of the child, and a moral depravity that the poem attributes to this specific group.
Thematically, "Quikrete" critiques what it portrays as a hyper-sexualized, self-centered, and pathologically competitive strain within gay male culture, particularly as it intersects with parenthood. The poem argues that when parenthood becomes a vehicle for "one-upmanship" or "soiree flex" (as seen in related poems), driven by ego and a desire for novelty, it can lead to horrific and unintended consequences for the child, ultimately suggesting a possible, grim disposal or concealment implied by the title. The poem suggests a complete inversion of traditional parental care and responsibility, replacing it with a disturbing focus on sexual gratification and competitive performance, ultimately portraying these "adoptive gays" as monstrous in their self-absorption and disregard for the child's well-being. It is a highly aggressive and controversial condemnation of perceived ethical failures within a specific community.
transgressive poetry, social critique, gay culture, adoption, pedophilia, child abuse, violence, satire, moral depravity, sexualization, one-upmanship, identity politics, controversy, shock value, body burial, concealment.
Inner Beauty
"Inner Beauty" is a poignant and sharply critical poem that delves into the subtle yet profound cruelty of perceived pity and the damaging insinuation of intellectual deficiency. The poem functions as a commentary on the subjective nature of beauty, social awkwardness, and the cutting impact of perceived condescension.
The title, "Inner Beauty," immediately establishes an ironic tension with the poem's content. While the phrase typically refers to the value of character over physical appearance, the poem proceeds to explore how physical perceived flaws can lead to judgments that undermine a person's inner worth and intellect.
The poem begins by detailing a specific social interaction: "Moist-brow refusal to stare / burned crueler than heckling ogles / (even spitball thwacks)." The "moist-brow refusal to stare" suggests a deliberate, perhaps uncomfortable, avoidance of direct eye contact, possibly accompanied by an expression of pity or discomfort. The poem immediately establishes that this seemingly benign act of avoidance is perceived as more painful than overt bullying like "heckling ogles" or "spitball thwacks." This highlights the insidious nature of subtle social cues, which can inflict deeper wounds than direct aggression. The use of "burned crueler" underscores the emotional devastation caused by this specific form of non-engagement.
The poem then articulates the reason for this heightened pain: "because the insinuation, / a brazen backhand to all those hours / hidden in library stacks, / was that—as if only retards / sprouted moles—she was too dense / to spot strained mercy." The "insinuation" is the core of the poem's critique. It is described as a "brazen backhand" to the subject's intellectual efforts, represented by "all those hours / hidden in library stacks." This directly links the social snub to an undermining of her intellect. The poem reveals the specific, cruel implication: that her perceived physical flaw ("moles" are implied as the source of the "refusal to stare") is linked to intellectual disability ("as if only retards / sprouted moles"). The most painful sting is the idea that "she was too dense / to spot strained mercy." This means she is not only judged for her appearance but also deemed too unintelligent to recognize the pity being extended to her. The poem thus exposes a profound level of social cruelty, where physical perceived imperfections lead to an assumption of intellectual inferiority, and even a show of "mercy" is delivered with a dismissive arrogance that further demeans the recipient.
social critique, inner beauty, perception, cruelty, pity, intellect, appearance, social dynamics, bullying, insinuation, emotional pain, self-worth, condescension, stigma, intellectualism, judgment.
Chihuahua
"Chihuahua" is a highly polemical and derogatory poem that expresses profound anxiety and contempt regarding perceived shifts in masculinity within contemporary Western society. The poem functions as a critique of evolving gender norms and identity politics, specifically targeting a perceived feminization and weakening of white men.
The title, "Chihuahua," immediately functions as a pejorative metaphor. Chihuahuas are often associated with smallness, perceived weakness, and being overly pampered or "cute," which directly aligns with the poem's critique of contemporary masculinity. This sets a tone of disdain and mockery.
The poem begins by listing what it perceives as the insidious influences contributing to this perceived decline: "Microplastics and soy, / the expanding creep of what / masculine traits count as toxic—". "Microplastics and soy" are often cited in certain online subcultures as environmental factors believed to contribute to feminization or reduced male vigor, even if scientifically unfounded. "The expanding creep of what / masculine traits count as toxic" directly attacks the re-evaluation of traditional masculine attributes, suggesting that this redefinition is an overreach that demonizes natural male characteristics.
The poem then accelerates its condemnation, projecting a bleak future: "soon there will be, especially / among self-cucking whites, / enough halfling girlie-men". The phrase "self-cucking whites" is a highly offensive and loaded term, implying a voluntary emasculation and submission, specifically within the white male demographic. "Halfling girlie-men" is a deeply demeaning and dehumanizing descriptor, painting a picture of men who are perceived as weak, effeminate, and diminished. The poem suggests this demographic is growing and is particularly prevalent among white men, linking it to self-inflicted ideological or cultural choices.
The final lines introduce a perverse twist of "respect": "deserving, no matter what / bred them, respect / only the inhumane would withhold." This is deeply ironic. The poem itself has just subjected these "halfling girlie-men" to intense ridicule and dehumanization. The concluding statement, framed as a conditional assertion about withholding respect, subtly flips the condemnation. It implies that these men, despite being anathema to the poem's vision of masculinity, are still human enough to warrant a basic level of respect, withholding which would be "inhumane." However, this is uttered within a context of profound disdain for their existence, creating a complex and unsettling satirical paradox. The poem's "respect" is offered with a cynical, almost disgusted, concession, underlining the poem's core argument that such men represent a degenerate form of masculinity.
masculinity, gender norms, identity politics, social critique, polemic, dehumanization, white male, feminization, satire, contemporary culture, toxicity, emasculation, pejorative, irony.
Pushups on Water
"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.
As if Goethe Once Ate Up a Black Queen’s Mic Time
"As if Goethe Once Ate Up a Black Queen's Mic Time" is a sharply satirical and polemical poem that critiques contemporary intellectual and cultural trends, particularly the perceived anti-intellectualism and identity-driven rejections of canonical Western literature. The poem argues that the dismissal of "great literature" as "toxic" serves as a convenient "excuse" for a broader cultural illiteracy.
The title itself is a highly provocative and hyperbolic metaphor. It juxtaposes the revered German literary figure Goethe with "Black Queen's Mic Time," a phrase that immediately evokes modern cultural spaces, particularly those focused on marginalized voices and issues of representation and equity. The implied scenario—Goethe "eating up" mic time—satirizes the idea of historical Western figures somehow monopolizing contemporary discourse or overshadowing other narratives, even in an anachronistic and absurd way. This sets a tone of direct confrontation with current cultural debates.
The poem proceeds to characterize contemporary engagement with "great literature" as a form of "hashtag illiteracy". The simile "Champing on great literature / in our hashtag illiteracy / makes us look like orangutans / with Rubik’s cubes" is a central, derisive image. It suggests that modern individuals, due to their superficial engagement with knowledge ("hashtag illiteracy"), are incapable of comprehending complex intellectual works ("great literature"), making their attempts appear as futile and clumsy as an orangutan trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. This paints a bleak picture of intellectual decline.
The poem then introduces a small, beleaguered group: "for the few still fighting to crack / its necromantic nutrition." This phrase imbues "great literature" with a mystical, almost forbidden power ("necromantic nutrition"), suggesting it holds profound, life-giving sustenance that is difficult to access but vital. The reference to "the few still fighting" highlights the perceived marginalization of those who value this intellectual pursuit. The final lines deliver the poem's core satirical argument: "what better TikTok excuse / than to learn the broccoli— / dead, white, male—is toxic?" Here, the poem directly targets the reasons for this abandonment. "TikTok excuse" immediately points to a superficial, trend-driven form of justification. The metaphor of "the broccoli— / dead, white, male—is toxic" is a powerful and cynical summation of how canonical Western works are often categorized and dismissed in contemporary discourse. "Broccoli" implies something inherently good or nourishing but rejected for being unpalatable. The labels "dead, white, male" are presented as the convenient, pre-packaged reasons for deeming this literature "toxic," thus providing an "excuse" for intellectual disengagement rather than genuine effort to "crack its necromantic nutrition." The poem thus skewers what it views as a performative and ideologically driven rejection of the literary canon.
satire, literary criticism, cultural critique, identity politics, anti-intellectualism, literary canon, Western literature, cultural literacy, hashtag culture, TikTok, academic discourse, intellectual decline, performative activism, contemporary poetry.
True Crime in a Clown World
"True Crime in a Clown World" is an intensely dark, satirical poem that offers a scathing critique of what it perceives as the distorted moral sensibilities and performative empathy prevalent in the "safe-space era," particularly within the true crime genre. The poem argues that contemporary cultural norms can lead to a scoliotic moral prioritization, where profound human suffering is desensitized or overlooked, while selectively chosen traumas or more palatable forms of victimhood receive undue emphasis.
The title, "True Crime in a Clown World," immediately sets a cynical and unsettling tone. "True Crime" points to the genre, while "Clown World" suggests a reality that is absurd, chaotic, and fundamentally disordered, implying a breakdown of genuine ethical engagement and a triumph of performative or inverted values. This context establishes the "safe-space era" as a landscape of moral paradox.
The poem unfolds with a brutal and graphic enumeration of extreme violence: "Vulva stabbed to meat-mallet mush; / neck oyster-shucked / to bone; spine knee-snapped / like a yard branch; eye sockets / goon hamstered (three / extra-cheese deliveries of edging)—". This series of visceral, almost surgical descriptions details horrific bodily harm with chilling detachment. The imagery of "meat-mallet mush," "oyster-shucked," and "knee-snapped like a yard branch" conveys a dehumanizing brutality. The phrase "eye sockets / goon hamstered (three / extra-cheese deliveries of edging)" is particularly disturbing, blending extreme violence with the mundane, almost absurd, language of commercial transactions and sexualized internet culture ("edging"). This juxtaposition heightens the sense of a world where horror is casually consumed, rendered into content.
The poem's central satirical thrust, which explicitly targets the "scoliotic moral sensibilities" of the "safe-space era," arrives with the final lines: "all this, yet the podcaster pauses / for her one trigger warning: / the victim’s turtle starved." This abrupt and jarring shift is the poem's core critique. After detailing an extreme, multi-faceted act of human violence with unsparing clarity, the single "trigger warning" is reserved for the death of a pet. This stark ironic displacement of empathy and concern critiques what the poem perceives as a performative, misguided, or desensitized approach to trauma in media. It suggests that in this "Clown World," while genuine violence is detailed without explicit warning, the "cherrypicked trauma" of a starving turtle (a more conventionally sympathetic or culturally sanctioned form of suffering) is meticulously flagged. The poem implicitly connects this selective empathy to the broader cultural demands for "honoring not only indigenous lands and trans bravery" (as alluded to in the summary's "safe-space era" context), suggesting that while these causes are acknowledged, the immediate, visceral horror of the crime itself is either overlooked or deemed less worthy of caution than a specific, less human-centric, form of victimhood. The poem thus argues that such narratives, despite their graphic content, ultimately fail to engage with the actual human tragedy in a morally consistent way, instead prioritizing superficial or ideologically aligned forms of empathy.
true crime, satire, moral sensibilities, safe space, trigger warning, empathy, violence, normalization, cultural critique, hypocrisy, irony, selective trauma, desensitization, contemporary media, performative activism, social commentary.
Summer Communion
"Summer Communion" is a deeply evocative poem that explores themes of elemental connection to nature, interspecies empathy, and echoes of historical experience through a series of vivid, often challenging similes. The poem functions as a meditation on shared sensation and a provocative attempt to draw parallels between contemporary acts of communion and historically resonant experiences, inviting readers to consider universal aspects of life and hardship.
The title, "Summer Communion," establishes a tone of unity and connection to nature's cycles. The poem then unfolds in three distinct stanzas, each presenting a seemingly simple "summer" activity that is then enriched by a profound and sometimes unsettling historical or biological comparison.
The first stanza, "Pick burrs and ticks off your pet / in hunched lullaby / like our groom-bent chimp moms," establishes an immediate connection to primal caregiving. The act of tending to a pet is framed with tenderness, elevated to a "hunched lullaby," suggesting an intimate, almost ritualistic bond. The simile "like our groom-bent chimp moms" universalizes this act of meticulous care, drawing a direct line to primate behavior and highlighting a shared, instinctual bond across species in nurturing.
The second stanza introduces a powerful historical parallel: "chill the watermelon in the creek swirl / for electrolyte blessings / like cotton-sun slaves." The image of cooling watermelon for refreshment is initially simple and pastoral, depicting it as a natural "electrolyte blessing." The comparison "like cotton-sun slaves" directly links this act of seeking relief from heat to the immense physical labor and suffering endured by enslaved people under the sun. This simile functions to evoke a sense of shared human experience with elemental hardship and the universal need for basic sustenance and respite.
Finally, the third stanza continues this pattern: "hug a big stone to moon-bounce / along the swim-hole floor / like fire-lung Indian kids." The act of playing in a swim-hole, "hugging a big stone to moon-bounce," suggests childlike joy and buoyancy in nature. This is then strikingly compared to "fire-lung Indian kids." This simile calls forth images of the historical suffering of Indigenous children, possibly alluding to diseases like tuberculosis (implied by "fire-lung") or the profound hardships of forced displacement and cultural loss. This comparison seeks to forge a deep, almost ancestral, resonance between a contemporary, innocent act and past struggles for survival and joy within nature's embrace.
Overall, "Summer Communion" is a poem that uses bold and challenging parallels to expand the scope of empathy and historical connection. It invites the reader to find common ground in human experience, even across vast historical, cultural, and species divides, prompting a reconsideration of shared vulnerabilities, elemental joys, and universal struggles for survival and comfort within the natural world.
empathy, historical resonance, universal experience, human-animal bond, nature connection, slavery, Indigenous history, shared suffering, solace, summer, communion, similes, elemental, human condition.
Tartan Scarves, the New Klan Hood
“Tartan Scarves, the New Klan Hood" is a highly polemical poem that critiques specific aspects of contemporary racial discourse and identity politics, particularly within academic and literary contexts. The poem argues that certain progressive stances, far from being beneficial, actually cause harm to the very groups they aim to protect, and even enable behaviors that undermine their own stated premises.
The title, "Tartan Scarves, the New Klan Hood," is a deliberately provocative and inflammatory metaphor. "Tartan scarves" can symbolize progressive or intellectual circles (perhaps invoking a bohemian or academic aesthetic), which the poem starkly equates with the "Klan Hood"—a potent symbol of white supremacy and racial oppression. This hyperbolic comparison immediately signals the poem's intent to invert conventional moral hierarchies and accuse certain progressive ideologies of functioning in a similarly oppressive manner, albeit through different means.
The poem establishes its central argument by focusing on the supposed harms of restricting critical engagement: "Nonblacks forbidden to judge / a black author’s characters or plot / even in college harms / blacks as it is." This directly targets the concept of "identity-based critique," where only members of a specific racial group are deemed authorized to critique art produced by that group. The poem asserts that this practice, even within an educational setting like "college," ultimately "harms blacks," suggesting it stifles intellectual rigor, honest feedback, and genuine growth.
The critique then sharpens, moving from literary judgment to social behavior: "yet white spoiling / breeds black brats so entitled / they stand likeliest to do / precisely what proves / the trembling-prey pretense / for that spoiling a lie: defying cops." Here, the poem introduces the concept of "white spoiling"—a perceived excessive indulgence or uncritical affirmation by white individuals. This "spoiling," the poem argues, "breeds black brats so entitled" that they are prone to actions (specifically "defying cops") which contradict the "trembling-prey pretense." This "pretense" refers to the idea that black individuals are perpetually vulnerable and oppressed, a notion that the poem suggests is undermined when those who benefit from "spoiling" engage in defiant behavior. The poem posits a cynical cause-and-effect: the very indulgence meant to affirm victimhood ultimately produces a behavior (defiance) that, in the poem's view, exposes the "pretense" of constant vulnerability as a lie, thus serving to justify the initial "spoiling." This presents a highly contentious argument, directly challenging notions of systemic racism and victimhood in favor of a focus on individual agency and the perceived negative consequences of certain progressive pedagogical or social approaches.
identity politics, critical race theory, social commentary, polemic, racial critique, white spoiling, entitlement, victimhood culture, police defiance, academic freedom, literary criticism, racial dynamics, controversy, social justice.
Arlo
“Arlo" is a maximalist tragicomedy of postmodern parenthood, where ideological grooming masquerades as empowerment, and identity becomes the battleground upon which social capital, political theatre, and psychic desperation converge. At once a character study and a cultural x-ray, the piece operates with the granular obsessiveness of literary autofiction and the rhetorical flamboyance of a polemic—splicing performativity, parody, and psychoanalytic realism into a cascading narrative of inadvertent yet devastating coercion.
The titular child is rendered with careful ambivalence: sensitive, imaginative, suggestible—an affective tuning fork in a household pitched to the frequency of institutional wokeness. Far from lampooning queerness or progressive ideals per se, the narrative instead targets a mutation of progressive ideology, wherein social justice becomes a self-consuming catechism and identity exploration becomes tantamount to sacrament. Arlo’s “femininity” is not suppressed by patriarchal norms but colonized by parental overidentification, pedagogical cueing, and a broader cultural climate that equates deviation from gender norms with existential heroism. The poem’s central irony—that Arlo’s “transition” is less a moment of revelation than a culmination of pressures—offers a biting inversion of the genre’s typical bildungsroman arc.
Becky and Karen are not monsters, and therein lies the text’s complexity. They are sincere, informed, and deeply loving. Yet they are also caught in the gravitational pull of a neoliberal virtue economy in which parenting becomes proof of political orthodoxy, and children become avatars for ideological self-redemption. The real indictment here is not of individual actors but of systems: social media’s algorithmic hunger for affirmation, education systems infused with therapeutic-political jargon, and a medical-industrial complex increasingly willing to medicalize ambiguity. The structural critique mirrors the Foucauldian insight that power is most insidious when internalized, when it flows not from a panopticon but from self-curation in the name of liberation.
The stylistic bravado—the maximal detail, the recursive elaboration, the grotesque comedy—echoes Thomas Bernhard, David Foster Wallace, and Michel Houellebecq. But rather than cynicism for its own sake, the density performs a kind of manic resistance: a refusal to simplify a reality that itself refuses simplification. “Arlo” ultimately dramatizes the high-stakes cost of meaning-making in an era where sincerity is indistinguishable from satire and where to question the rituals of inclusion is to risk excommunication from the very communities that claim to prize pluralism. The text closes not with condemnation but with a melancholic warning: when identity becomes liturgy, and children its tabernacle, even love can be a form of violence.
Meta Description:
A baroque and blistering study of ideology-as-parenting, Arlo dissects how progressive virtue-signaling, institutional dogma, and childhood pliability entangle in a tragic feedback loop of well-meaning coercion and inadvertent harm.
Keywords:
gender ideology, performative progressivism, ideological parenting, virtue economy, identity coercion, childhood suggestibility, therapeutic education, symbolic parenthood, postmodern virtue ethics, trans affirmation, maximalist narrative, Foucauldian pedagogy, cultural satire, liberal complicity, medicalization of ambiguity, parental projection, psychic colonization, ritualized inclusion
To Whom
“To Whom” operates as a sharp satire of institutional speech surrounding identity politics, artistic expression, and the contemporary academic regime of “equity.” It adopts the form of an official university letter — complete with the sterile, bureaucratic diction of diversity departments — but imbues that form with ideological extremity, exposing the contradictions and authoritarian tendencies that arise when institutions attempt to enforce moral hierarchies via identity-based frameworks.
At its heart, the text interrogates and explodes the logic of standpoint epistemology, wherein truth is no longer evaluated by criteria of coherence, evidence, or argumentative rigor, but rather by the social identity of the speaker. In this framework, Mario’s racial and gendered identity (white, male, cisgender) functions not merely as a context for his work, but as a disqualification from the right to produce certain types of artistic content. His personhood becomes, by bureaucratic fiat, inherently oppressive, such that even when his art mirrors the tropes celebrated elsewhere — particularly in drag performance or hypersexual female rap — it is reinterpreted as “predatory,” “punching down,” or “r*ping the Black body.”
The satire’s rhetorical strategy is subtle in its mimicry: it does not adopt an obviously exaggerated voice, but rather inhabits the real tone and idioms of academic DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) bureaucracies. Terms like “moral currency,” “resistant to training,” and “problematic optics” are not invented caricatures but lifted directly from the language of institutional governance, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. The reference to “fair discrimination” — itself a profound oxymoron — reflects how the equity framework redefines justice as proportional reallocation of speech rights, visibility, and opportunity according to identity markers rather than behavior or merit. The claim that Mario’s writings “demoralize” by their very existence is not justified with reference to content, only to authorship — an inversion of liberal humanist values of universality, dialogue, and content-based critique.
The deeper irony is that Mario is not, in fact, violating norms by being transgressive. He is being punished for violating a new orthodoxy — one which permits transgression only by sanctioned identities. The university's support for drag shows and sexually explicit performances by marginalized artists is held up as “community enrichment,” whereas similar content from Mario is treated as “hair-raising,” “predatory,” and requiring removal. The text thus maps out a double-bind in which the very ethos of expressive freedom is hollowed out, re-inscribed within a framework that makes freedom conditional on background.
Equally notable is the document’s use of racialized moral accounting: Mario is said to possess “negative moral currency” due to historical white supremacy, slavery, and structural injustice. The invocation of “the horrors of the Middle Passage” as moral ballast against any defense he might raise illustrates how historical trauma is mobilized to override all considerations of artistic intention or the internal diversity of experience even within categories like “white male.” No acknowledgment is made that Mario may come from poverty, abuse, or marginalization of other sorts — his identity renders such possibilities invisible. This flattening of complexity, wherein power is treated as an ontological constant rather than a shifting and situational phenomenon, mirrors the zero-sum frameworks of Maoist cultural revolution and other ideological purges throughout history.
Furthermore, the language of therapeutic intervention (“training,” “retreats,” “resistant to growth”) casts Mario as a sort of moral defective in need of correction — a familiar pattern in totalizing ideological systems. The desire for him to “Do Better” — capitalized, as if a religious commandment — mirrors the evangelical imperative to confess and repent. But in this case, the standard of repentance is unclear and ever-shifting: Mario is punished for content that resembles, and even quotes, widely accepted mainstream culture. This marks the Kafkaesque quality of the satire: Mario is accused, tried, and sentenced without clear charges or criteria, except that his very identity disqualifies him from innocence.
This disciplinary logic is not only oppressive, but also reveals the contradictions of progressive ideology when removed from universality and placed in a purely identitarian register. The piece does not call for a return to conservative moralism; rather, it points out that the same puritanical logic — with its suspicion of artistic expression, its redefinition of harm in ever-expanding ways, and its obsessive boundary-policing — now animates sectors of the Left, particularly within academic and cultural institutions. The moral panic about Mario’s writing mirrors older fears about pornography and obscenity, except that now the concern is not about sexual content per se, but about who is allowed to create and disseminate it.
By adopting the format of an institutional document, the text drives home the fact that these are not fringe opinions but mainstream positions in today’s cultural gatekeeping apparatus. Its power lies in its mimicry of language — in the way it dramatizes how administrative culture can weaponize moralizing jargon to silence dissent and flatten art into mere propaganda. Ultimately, “To Whom” forces the reader to confront the question: Can a culture survive that no longer judges expression by meaning, only by authorship?
Meta
This piece is a dramatized exposé of how expressive license is now distributed along identitarian lines rather than artistic or moral substance. It functions as a brutal lampoon of how the equity-based reorientation of institutions permits — even demands — discrimination, but frames it as justice. The paradoxes it surfaces are not abstract but lived: who gets to say what? Who is protected, and who is punished, for the same utterance? The piece lays bare the failure of procedural liberalism to withstand the institutional capture by ideologies that reject neutrality and universality, replacing them with a theological structure of inherited guilt and selective expiation. In effect, it offers a contemporary Book of Job — except that God is an HR director, and Job is a white male artist told that suffering is his birthright and repentance alone is not enough.
Every Curve a Middle Finger
"Every Curve a Middle Finger" by Michael Anthony Istvan Jr. is a scathing critique of performative activism and the commodification of resistance. The poem dissects the dynamics of a post-abortion party, examining how acts of rebellion can become hollow gestures when they are more about social media approval than genuine defiance. Istvan's incisive language and vivid imagery expose the contradictions and superficiality of the characters’ actions, questioning the authenticity of their proclaimed ideals.
The title, "Every Curve a Middle Finger," sets the tone for the poem, suggesting a bold and confrontational attitude. This phrase captures the essence of the poem’s critique: the way personal expression and bodily autonomy are used as tools of defiance against oppressive structures, yet often in a way that can seem insincere or performative.
The poem opens with "Drunken talk after / the livestreamed abortion party," immediately placing the reader in a setting of casual revelry mixed with heavy social and political undertones. The concept of an "abortion party" is jarring, highlighting the extreme measures taken to reclaim and celebrate bodily autonomy. However, the "drunken talk" hints at the lack of seriousness and depth in the participants’ engagement with such a profound issue.
Istvan reveals the group’s collective mindset with "a unanimity already clear / in finger snaps and hashtag cringe." The finger snaps—a common gesture of approval in certain activist and artistic circles—coupled with the "hashtag cringe" reflect a culture that prioritizes surface-level engagement and social media validation. The phrase "Slay, Queen" epitomizes this, showcasing how acts of rebellion are often reduced to catchy slogans and digital approval.
The lines "parading about / holding many men / in pure lard" serve as a metaphor for the superficial and sometimes absurd ways in which the group believes they are challenging the status quo. The imagery of "pure lard" suggests excess and grotesqueness, implying that their methods are not just ineffective but also mockingly counterproductive. It’s a stark visual that conveys a sense of misguided defiance.
The poem culminates with the declaration that such actions "help dismantle / the white patriarchy that just / loves to control our bodies." This statement, dripping with irony, underscores the poem’s central critique: that these performative acts of rebellion are seen as dismantling oppressive structures, yet they often fail to address the deeper, more systemic issues. Istvan's use of the word "just" highlights the oversimplification of complex social problems, pointing to the inadequacy of these gestures in effecting real change.
Through "Every Curve a Middle Finger," Michael Anthony Istvan Jr. challenges readers to reflect on the nature of modern activism. The poem questions the authenticity and effectiveness of performative acts of resistance, urging a deeper engagement with the issues at hand. By exposing the superficiality and contradictions within these acts, Istvan calls for a more sincere and impactful approach to challenging oppressive structures.
Keywords:
performative activism, bodily autonomy, social media validation, superficial resistance, post-abortion party, Michael Anthony Istvan Jr., poetry, incisive critique, modern activism, hollow gestures, oppressive structures, authentic defiance, vivid imagery, cultural critique, social dynamics, digital approval, systemic issues, challenging status quo, performative rebellion, incisive language.
Unagi Nigiri
"Unagi Nigiri," dedicated to Eugenio Montale, draws upon the magnetic allure of the eel to explore themes of seduction, resilience, and kinship. The poem depicts the eel's journey from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, symbolizing a profound connection to life, nature, and the cyclical process of creation.
The poem opens with the irresistible appeal of the eel, juxtaposing our busy denial of death with the eel's seductive power. It charts the eel's passage through various waters, highlighting its vigorous and almost supernatural strength as it navigates seas, estuaries, rivers, and creeks. This image of the eel as a powerful, unrelenting force underscores its role as a symbol of vitality and resilience.
As light from a distant cosmic furnace refracts off chestnuts, it pierces wells and ditches, revealing the eel within the stagnant waters. This light not only uncovers the eel but also agitates it, driving it to continue its journey. The light and the eel's reaction to it symbolize enlightenment and the restless drive for life and renewal.
The eel's movement towards the Adriatic is described as being driven by an intrinsic, almost linguistic force, elevating it to a symbolic status. It becomes a torch that guides and a whip that goads, embodying an Earth-affirming love that shepherds the gullies and dry beds back to a fertile paradise of procreation. This transformation into a symbol of love and renewal is a powerful affirmation of life, even in the face of desolation.
Rejecting the notion of a heavenly paradise, the eel embodies a spirit that seeks life in the most barren places. It dismisses the idea of transcendence in favor of a cyclical, earthly renewal, asserting that new beginnings arise from what seems burnt and lifeless. This rejection of traditional notions of heaven in favor of a more immediate, tangible rebirth highlights the eel's role as a symbol of persistent vitality and hope.
The poem concludes by drawing a deep kinship between the eel and the human experience. The eel's presence in our lives compels us to recognize it as a kindred spirit. This connection is mirrored in the image of a precious iris twinned in hair and eyes, symbolizing beauty and life amidst the struggles of young men mired in metaphorical mud. The eel, as a blood sister, represents a deep, intrinsic bond that keeps us vivacious and connected to the cycle of life.
In "Unagi Nigiri," the eel's journey and its symbolic transformations highlight themes of seduction, resilience, and kinship. The poem affirms the power of life and renewal, emphasizing our connection to the natural world and the enduring spirit of creation.
Hive Being About Page
"Welcome to Hive Being: M. A. Istvan Jr.'s Academic and Creative Writing" introduces readers to the intricate and profound literary world of Michael Anthony Istvan Jr. The name "Hive Being" draws from Spinoza's philosophical framework, presenting reality as a unified organism where every entity is a necessary manifestation of the ultimate being—whether termed "God" or "Nature." This conceptual foundation informs Istvan's expansive body of work, encompassing both academic and creative endeavors. His literary journey is marked by resilience in the face of cancel culture, a phenomenon that pressured him into early retirement but also granted him the freedom to pursue his craft with unbridled passion.
The narrative describes how Istvan's unapologetic defiance and commitment to intellectual freedom often placed him at odds with the safe-space ideologies permeating modern academia. Despite winning a due-process case with the help of The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, he chose to distance himself from an increasingly intolerant institution, redirecting his energies towards more rewarding and creative pursuits. His Substack serves as a digital sanctuary for his diverse writings, inviting readers to engage with and critique his evolving work.
Istvan's call for co-conspirators emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives in refining his work. He welcomes input from both insiders and outsiders, valuing fresh viewpoints that challenge conventions and reveal overlooked insights. His commitment to continuous refinement is evident in his practice of labeling each revision by round, encouraging readers to witness and contribute to the evolution of his pieces.
Sharing drafts publicly, Istvan highlights, serves not only as a means for personal growth but also as an educational tool for other writers. By exposing the raw, unpolished stages of his work, he hopes to offer relatable insights into the creative process, illustrating that imperfection often teaches more than perfection. Despite the challenges posed by the decline in linguistic and literary engagement, Istvan remains driven by an internal compulsion to celebrate the richness of language and thought.
The introduction culminates in a declaration of Istvan's hope for writing's enduring power. In a world increasingly dominated by fleeting digital distractions, he underscores writing's unique ability to combat loneliness by providing rich, first-person perspectives. His work spans a broad spectrum, from metaphysical discourses to critiques of Western culture, blending scholarly rigor with dark humor. While his themes often delve into the darker facets of human nature, Istvan also draws inspiration from writers unafraid to pursue moral agendas and sincerity.
The narrative assures readers of a regular stream of content, emphasizing the absence of a paywall to keep art accessible. With nearly a thousand pieces available at the time of writing, Istvan invites readers to explore his extensive archive. He concludes with a representative poem, inviting readers to join him on a literary journey through the public and private nooks of the hive Being.
Michael Anthony Istvan Jr., Hive Being, Spinoza, academic writing, creative writing, cancel culture, intellectual freedom, literary journey, resilience, metaphysical discourse, Western culture critique, literary odyssey, public engagement, continuous refinement, Substack, literary sanctuary.
Kaminazi
**Kaminazi** is a powerful and provocative poem that addresses themes of racial injustice, hypocrisy, and the selective application of historical guilt in American society. The poem challenges the reader to consider the double standards present in how different racial and ethnic groups are treated, particularly in academic settings.
The poem begins by asserting that America, referred to as "Amerikkka" to emphasize its systemic racism, is deeply anti-black. It suggests that if this were not the case, Asian Americans might face similar historical bullying as white Americans do for slavery, specifically being blamed for Pearl Harbor. This comparison highlights the selective way in which historical guilt is assigned and perpetuated.
The poem also critiques the performative activism often seen on college campuses and in liberal, "sanctuary" cities. The term "keffiyah wokes" likely refers to those who adopt symbols of resistance without fully engaging in meaningful activism. The imagery of "baby-bottle-shot abortion jamborees" suggests a superficial and sensationalized approach to serious issues, contrasting with the genuine struggles faced by marginalized groups.
Overall, **Kaminazi** is a scathing commentary on racial hypocrisy and the uneven distribution of historical blame, urging readers to reflect on the deeper societal injustices and the performative nature of some modern activism. It critiques the selective moral outrage and absurdity in American society. It draws parallels between the baseless accusations faced by minority groups, imagining a world where Korean kids are blamed for Pearl Harbor. This poem highlights the hypocrisy and injustice prevalent on campuses and in progressive spaces, shedding light on the nuanced struggles of marginalized communities.
Before Overwatch’s New "Hamas Hero" There Was Darnell
In "Before Overwatch’s New 'Hamas Hero' There Was Darnell," M. A. Istvan Jr. delves into the intricate landscape of cancel culture and the complexities of digital reparations. The poem highlights a provocative scenario in which a game designer's actions spark a chain reaction of social and cultural shifts within a popular video game, Overwatch. Through this narrative, Istvan explores themes of identity, accountability, and the contentious nature of contemporary social justice movements.
The poem opens with the white game designer whistleblowing on a colleague for retweeting criticism of a university’s decision. This criticism centered around the university cutting ties with a star athlete because of a video showing her father rapping the n-word in the 90s. This act of whistleblowing triggers immediate and severe consequences for the colleague, deemed an “irredeemable bigot.” The subsequent firings and cyber shaming underscore the poem’s examination of the punitive measures often associated with cancel culture, where past actions are scrutinized and lead to severe social penalties.
Istvan satirizes the process of “digital reparations” through the transformation of a central character in the game from Dustin to Darnell. This name change symbolizes a broader cultural shift and the desire to align characters and narratives with contemporary social justice ideals. The brainstorming sessions to redefine Darnell’s “ultimate ability” reflect a hyperbolic and somewhat absurd attempt to incorporate “Black-is-King sentiments,” a reference to Beyoncé’s visual album celebrating Black culture.
The poem’s depiction of the brainstorming results adds layers of dark humor and critique. The third-place idea involves Darnell summoning a stage for twerking and chants, mesmerizing nonBIPOC characters into vulnerability. This visual not only mocks the superficial incorporation of Black culture into media but also questions the authenticity and effectiveness of such gestures.
The second-place idea introduces a “liberation scream” causing spirits of lynched individuals to subdue nonBIPOC characters, highlighting the tension between historical trauma and contemporary activism. This image juxtaposes the gravity of historical injustices with the potentially performative aspects of digital reparations, suggesting a dissonance between the two.
The first-place idea, where Darnell summons bot-controlled men to pummel nonBIPOC characters until they answer questions on “Black epistemology,” serves as a biting commentary on the perceived gatekeeping of knowledge and the pressures to conform to specific ideological perspectives. The multiple-choice questions address controversial topics like colorblind auditions, the legitimacy of historical narratives, and societal responsibilities, encapsulating the contentious debates surrounding race and education.
Istvan’s poem ultimately critiques the extremes of social justice movements and cancel culture, emphasizing the performative and often punitive nature of these phenomena. By presenting a scenario where game mechanics are altered to reflect radical ideological shifts, the poem questions the authenticity and impact of such changes. It invites readers to consider the complexities and potential contradictions inherent in efforts to address historical and cultural injustices within contemporary digital spaces.
M. A. Istvan Jr., poem, cancel culture, digital reparations, social justice, Overwatch, video game narrative, identity, accountability, contemporary activism, satirical poetry, Black culture, historical trauma, cultural shifts, social penalties, ideological perspectives.
michaelistvan.com (live, test run)
Please take a look at my developing website: michaelistvan.com, which you can get to as well via: safespacepress.com. I really appreciate your help. You can find a convenient sitemap here: michaelistvan.com/credits-acknowledgements-sitemap. Please check out my site and let me know if there are any bugs. It is still in draft form and needs a lot of work, but I would appreciate knowing if there any crucial problems with it.
An Olive Branch to the Cancelers
**An Olive Branch to the Cancelers** is a nuanced and provocative essay that addresses the complex interplay between free expression and the impulse to cancel unsettling art and ideas. The essay seeks to empathize with those who believe in canceling problematic content while proposing a solution that honors both the value of free expression and the dangers it can pose.
The essay begins by acknowledging that even the most well-intentioned cancelers of divergent art and thought, those who believe they are protecting vulnerable groups, have a point. They genuinely feel that their actions are just, even if they resort to extreme measures like censoring, shaming, and destroying the careers of artists and thinkers. This perspective is driven by a belief that unsettling art and ideas can cause real harm to certain groups, and that any length of cruelty against creators is justified to protect these groups.
The essay then delves into the genuine risks posed by artists and thinkers. These individuals hold up a mirror to society, revealing uncomfortable truths and challenging cherished beliefs. The reflections they present can be deeply unsettling, leading to crises of identity and belonging. Art and thought can expose the fragility of human existence, the inherent cruelty in our actions, and the disturbing realities of the universe. For many, facing these truths is intolerable, leading to a desire to suppress and cancel the sources of such discomfort.
The author illustrates how the immune systems of those who cannot digest these dangerous truths often protect them through mechanisms like ignorance, ridicule, and evasion. However, there are exceptions—individuals whose defenses are too weak to block out these truths, leading to significant psychological harm. The canceling impulse is thus seen as a reasonable response to protect these vulnerable individuals.
Despite acknowledging the validity of canceling impulses, the essay also argues that these dangers are often overblown. It highlights the resilience of most people to withstand unsettling art and ideas, suggesting that exposure to such content can foster growth and resilience. The essay contends that the widespread fear of art and thought is often performative and driven by a desire for power and control rather than genuine vulnerability.
The author proposes a radical solution: instead of restricting artists and thinkers from creating, restrict the audience from accessing their work. This gatekeeping approach would involve testing and vetting individuals to determine their ability to handle potentially triggering content. The aim is to protect both the creators and the vulnerable individuals, ensuring that only those with the requisite resilience and critical acumen can engage with challenging art and ideas.
The essay suggests that this approach would not only safeguard artistic expression but also elevate the respect for art and thought. By requiring individuals to prove their worthiness to access certain content, society would foster a deeper appreciation for the value and power of art and thought. The proposal is admittedly extreme and satirical, born out of frustration with the current cancel culture, but it aims to spur discussion on balancing free expression with the need to protect vulnerable individuals.
In the concluding section, the author clarifies that the gatekeeping solution is not an ideal in itself but a tactical response to the rampant censorship and cancel culture. While the author personally leans towards open discourse and the cultivation of emotional resilience, the essay emphasizes the need to counter the performative outrage of cancelers by taking their claims seriously and restricting their access to unsettling content. The proposal serves as a rhetorical jujitsu, flipping the script on cancel culture and exposing its performative nature.
**An Olive Branch to the Cancelers** is a thought-provoking essay that seeks to bridge the gap between free-expression advocates and cancelers. It highlights the genuine dangers posed by unsettling art and ideas while proposing a controversial solution to protect both creators and vulnerable individuals. The essay ultimately calls for a nuanced approach to preserving and celebrating artistic expression while minimizing its potential harm.
Daily Affirmations for a Campus Warrior
In "Daily Affirmations for a Campus Warrior," the author presents a satirical take on contemporary campus culture, particularly focusing on the extreme sensitivity and self-righteousness perceived among some student activists. The poem, dedicated to Margaret Atwood, critiques the modern phenomena of trigger warnings, safe spaces, and the cancel culture prevalent in academic environments.
The poem is structured as a series of affirmations, which are typically used to reinforce positive thinking and self-worth. However, in this context, the affirmations are exaggerated to highlight what the author sees as the absurdity of certain attitudes. Each line is a statement that mocks the extremes of victim mentality and the entitlement to absolute emotional protection and moral authority.
The opening lines, "Anything can be a trigger / I stand up for myself and have a right to be recognized," set the tone for the poem. These lines reflect the idea that the current campus environment allows for an overly broad interpretation of what constitutes a trigger, granting individuals the power to demand recognition and accommodation for any perceived slight or discomfort.
As the poem progresses, the affirmations become increasingly hyperbolic, reflecting the author's view that the demands for emotional safety and recognition have gone too far. Lines such as "My virtue, as a victim, gives me absolute moral license" and "Worthy, I am entitled to shout down what is alien to me" critique the notion that victimhood confers moral superiority and the right to silence dissenting voices.
The poem also addresses the culture of canceling and censoring ideas that are deemed offensive. Lines like "I am allowed to censor art and people if it makes me feel better" and "Ban problematic 'art' before examination; it only gives us pain" suggest that the drive to protect students from discomfort has led to a stifling of free expression and critical engagement.
In addition to the critique of cancel culture, the poem mocks the idea that emotional fragility should be indulged rather than worked on. Lines such as "Emotional fragility is to be indulged, not 'worked on'" and "Meltdowns are okay to get what I want: they mean I deserve it" highlight the author's belief that the emphasis on emotional safety can hinder personal growth and resilience.
The poem's conclusion, "Triggering equals raping; raping calls for instant cancellation / Emotional fragility is to be indulged, not 'worked on,'" encapsulates the satirical message. The comparison between triggering and rape is an extreme exaggeration meant to underscore the perceived irrationality of equating emotional discomfort with severe trauma. It also criticizes the tendency to immediately cancel individuals without due process based on subjective feelings of offense.
Overall, "Daily Affirmations for a Campus Warrior" uses satire to critique what the author views as the excesses of modern campus culture. By presenting these exaggerated affirmations, the poem calls into question the balance between protecting individuals from genuine harm and fostering an environment of robust intellectual engagement and personal growth. Through its biting humor and pointed commentary, the poem challenges readers to reconsider the implications of prioritizing emotional comfort over the pursuit of truth and resilience.
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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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