I — Enchantment
We drift through our days like lanterns set afloat,
believing the water’s current is our own desire,
though the river bends only where unseen hands
have taught it to curve.
II
The world hums with invisible scaffolding,
and we mistake its rigid lattice for the freedom of open air,
climbing because the rungs are there,
not because we chose the ascent.
III
Religion threads its silks through our marrow,
weaving cathedral shadows into our thoughts
until we confuse the echo of a sermon
with the pulse of our own longing.
IV
Greed grows in us like a second skeleton,
a secret architecture that props up our desires,
bending our posture toward whatever shines,
even when the shine is merely a reflection of our own emptiness.
V
Our unexamined thoughts lie dormant
like seeds in drought-stricken soil,
waiting for any stray rainfall of rhetoric
to bloom into belief, no matter how poisonous the blossom.
VI
We move through the world like marionettes carved from fog,
shaped by hands we never see,
our boundaries dissolving
whenever a new master exhales command.
VII
We mistake momentum for will,
the way a leaf attributes its spinning fall to choice,
unaware that it was lifted and dropped
by winds indifferent to its form.
VIII — Rupture
Yet there are brief moments—
a shiver in the joints, a hesitation in the pull—
when the strings slacken just enough
for us to glimpse the machinery,
cold and intricate, humming our names.
IX
And in that hesitation something shifts:
not freedom exactly, but the memory of it,
a ghost-sensation in the hand
that has never held the rope.
X
Every promise whispered by power
is a script slid under our doors at dawn,
the ink still wet,
inviting us to perform the role written
for the version of ourselves we never questioned.
XI — Aftermath
And in that flicker of clarity,
fragile as a candle in a cathedral’s hollow breath,
we lit it.
We believed we lit it.
The flame was real.
by Bakchos
Another beautiful and insightful poem. Your writing inspires. I often incorporate your work into my ministry work. Your poems have brought inspiration not only to me, but to many of my parishioners. Thank you.
I really appreciate your poetry. I find it insightful and even inspiring at times. Poetry can, when done properly, be a powerful tool for critiquing and making sense of the world we live in.
Beautiful imagery Bakchos. I love your poetry.
Beautiful writing. You put the whole of human reality into a few shirt stanzas. Wonderful.
This is a very powerful stanza
“Every promise whispered by power
is a script slid under our doors at dawn,
the ink still wet,
inviting us to perform the role written
for the version of ourselves we never questioned.”
Love the poem. It carries a punch.
You’re absolutely right Bakchos, we’re not masters of our own destiny. We’re subject to the invisible forces of the universe.
The reality is that we are ultimately controlled by the forces that control our government. The ultimate controllers are donors and lobbyists.
Mark this isn’t a nihilistic poem, nor is it naively hopeful. It’s honest about how thoroughly we’re wired into systems—religion, greed, power, rhetoric—while still insisting that the flicker matters. The flame is real, even if the hand that lit it was never fully free. That tension feels profoundly human and very much in line with the spirit of your blog.
If this was written as catharsis, as philosophy, or as quiet rebellion, it succeeds on every level. It’s the kind of poem that lingers—the kind you come back to weeks later and notice a new string you hadn’t seen before.