There are fools who love to hate –
Their words like stones,
Their hearts small, calcified,
Their laughter echoes
In sunless caves,
Where time runs backward
And shadows thicken.
They gnash old grievances
Like bones,
Smelling of lost centuries,
Primal howls stirring
In throats that have forgotten speech;
They stoke low fires
Until old tails twitch
Under new skin.
Oh, you who take pride
In your disdain,
Who spit at others and call it
Strength –
You sow your mind in barren ground,
You wear your malice
Like a badge of ancient genes.
In loving hate,
You sink to the bedrock –
Begin to regrow the tail
We once shed
When we chose the sun,
When we learned to love.
Progress was a choice:
To see kin in the stranger,
To rise beyond the claw,
To leave behind
The darkness and the tail.
But fools who love to hate –
They spiral downward,
Molting evolution,
Trading wisdom for a shadow,
Where the tailbone aches
With its old longing.
– – –
Bakchos is the founder of Blak and Black, an Australian media and advocacy platform established in 2010. Bakchos writes from the intersecting perspectives of Wiradjuri heritage, Jewish identity, and humanism.
© Bakchos, September 2026
Mark, I always enjoy reading your poetry and this one is no exception.
Thanks Margaret, that means a lot coming from you.
No need to thank me, Mark. I derive great pleasure from reading your poetry, and discussing all things Ancient Greek, while speaking Ancient Greek.
Great poem Bakchos
Another marvellous poem, thanks Bakchos.
It’s white men who are causing humanity to regress look around at the damage what men are doing to this planet and I have no doubt that the tails have already begun to grow back