Putrid, thumbed through, bleeding into the baskets.
Slow, angry poison – half price!
A cure-all in a vial marked vengeance,
double-charged for the antidote.
They promised a reckoning
and gave us a rerun.
Must’ve been a holiday on Monday.
Said they’d burn down Babylon –
then sold booth space in the ruins.
Merch for the fall.
It’s totally not queer if you’re in matching outfits, right?
There’s a peculiar truth in a fever dream.
Yes, the system’s rigged.
Point of fact? Who cares.
It felt good to hear someone say it.
(I think he waved right at me!)
Rage, polished into righteousness,
is just more theater.
I keep saying it – I know.
That’s the nature of an encore.
Gallows raised in the name of God,
temple blueprints drafted in blood –
just like the old days.
Worship in red hats and misplaced hope,
confusing cruelty for clarity.
That’s not salvation.
That’s prophecy devouring its young
and livestreaming the feast.
(Prime Day today!)
Extremism is a lousy mathematician.
It multiplies pain, subtracts nuance.
Binary choices in a fractal world.
Grey isn’t a color in electricity.
If this – then obviously that.
If you’re not with us,
you must be plotting against breathing.
(Traitor.)
The tree’s diseased?
Torch the whole forest.
Roots were cracking my sidewalk anyway.
You can’t heal gangrene with more infection.
You can’t fix a compass by screaming north.
(cont)
Glory be to AI,
for granting our lies such effortless grace.
We used to imagine things.
What a load off.
An eagle carries off a horse – millions believe.
A selfie filmed inside the Trojan horse?
Plausible.
(My great-great-great went to Troy on her honeymoon.)
24-bit pulpits with smooth motion blur.
And the algorithm capers nimbly,
unencumbered by truth.
Confidence becomes currency.
The louder the certainty,
the fewer the questions.
(Get that guy out of here.
Never heard of him till he had something important to ask.)
Silly grown-ups.
Missiles are for kids.
This is the imitation age.
A strategy game played with microphones and metadata.
(I’ll be the thimble.)
Fresh conspiracy at the farmer’s market.
Learn the new propaganda shuffle on TikTok.
Feed both wolves,
then blame the shepherd.
Knit sweaters from the fallout.
Free walking stick!
The way through this?
Painfully simple.
Keep your snake oil for that secret rash.
This cure won’t trend –
but it will cost you.
Not dollars.
Not likes.
The price is willingness:
to be wrong.
Science is not heresy.
Curiosity is not betrayal.
Dialogue is not surrender.
And if the breath of God still stirs this wreckage,
it is not confined to party, prophet, or platform.
Extremism ends two ways:
Utopia or hell.
And from the ash pile,
you can’t tell which is which.
History is a burn barrel.
Lean in. It’s still warm.
Let grace guide this resurrection gone astray.
Let us name the rot with plain speech –
“…for whatever is more than these cometh of evil.”
(You might’ve heard that one.)
Let us seek a cure
that doesn’t demand a body count.
What lies ahead
is ours to build –
or bury.
Nick Holmes 2025