After the burning,
I kneel on the blackened ground,
sink my hands into the warm ruin—
roots like charred veins,
soil tainted with the bitter taste
of scorched dreams.

The air smells of ember and ash.
I wonder if the earth remembers
what it once had—
amid these remains,
a tender green dares to rise—
small vivacious sprout,
climbing into thin air—
feeling the shift within—
a slender belief in tomorrow.

I sit with it and say nothing—
watch the wind test its will,
watch it shiver, bend—
seeking balance.

And somewhere inside me,
a quiet warmth stirs—
not unlike the seedling,
not unlike the light it leans toward.

Perhaps this is how we begin again,
kindred, this seedling and I—
not in grand gestures,
but in small, defiant hope,
in the way we root ourselves
to what remains after a scorching
and trust the sky to find us.

i’ve got this perpetual guilt.
i’ve hurt everyone i’ve ever loved,
but still they stay.
not in the way i need —
never when i’m pressing a blade into skin —
but still, they stay.
and still, it’s more than i deserve.

i built this place,
this hell i live in.
brick by brick, mistake by mistake.
i deserve the burn,
the collapse, the ache.
nobody knows the war inside me —
how my mind claws at itself,
and somehow,
i always end up losing.

i think i have perpetual grief, too.
i am always mourning something.
a love, a friend, a version of myself —
i think i’ve never really let go of anything.
everything i’ve ever lost
still lives somewhere in my chest,
heavy and sharp, like glass.

i try to pick up the pieces,
but i’m too tired now —
too hollow, too gone.
and every time i reach for myself,
i cut my hands on what’s left.

There exists a precise and ancient method by which a soul is undone. It is not new. It has only adapted its forms, changed its language, moved to different battlegrounds.

The structure remains the same.

A wound is found. A weakness is identified. A hunger is located within the suffering. And once that hunger is seen, it is fed—not to nourish, but to consume.

This is the nature of exploitation. It does not take by force—it takes by offering what is already craved. It finds the place of deepest ache and whispers, I will fill this. But what it gives is never fullness. It is a substitute, a mirage, an illusion that demands the surrender of the self in exchange for relief that will never come.

It is how nations have fallen.
It is how movements have been hijacked.
It is how people, once whole, become hollow.

The process repeats.


The Historical Parallel: When the Wounded Give Themselves Away

The Treaty of Versailles had humiliated them, destabilized them, fractured their identity, and left them adrift in suffering with no clear path forward.

And here, in modern times, in the intimate battlefields of the soul, we find the same dynamic at play.

What war did to a nation, unresolved trauma does to the individual.
It shatters the foundation of self. It strips away stability. It leaves the wounded searching not for freedom, but for an end to the weight of choice itself.

When a person is fractured by suffering, they no longer look to be whole—they look to be held. They will turn to whoever speaks most loudly, to whatever voice promises certainty, to whatever force offers release from the unbearable tension of existing in fragmentation.

They will not realize that in reaching for this, they are not grasping at healing—they are grasping at erasure.

This is how Germany welcomed its captor.
This is how the exploited welcome their groomer.
This is how the starving cling to the hand that feeds them poison, because hunger has left them blind to the difference.

The method repeats. The machinery remains unchanged.

Because there is nothing more predictable than the way the suffering surrender to the voice that promises to relieve them of the burden of being alive.


****** Grooming as the Modern Engine of Erasure

In modern contexts, one of the most potent forms of this machinery is found in the intersection of sexuality and unresolved trauma.

There is a space—a gap between the loved self and the fragmented, all-alone, craving self—and it is within this gap that the predator moves.

This space exists in those whose trauma has divided them.
It exists in those who have never reconciled their own pain.
It exists in those who have never made peace with their own desire.

And it is within this space that the machinery of erasure begins.

A promise is made: You do not need to wrestle with yourself. You do not need to be torn between who you are and what you want. Let go. Give in. Surrender to the craving, and all conflict will disappear.

But what they are being led into is not freedom.

It is the slow, deliberate process of becoming something to be used.

The groomer does not want the person—they want the absence of the person.

They want a vessel, something that can be filled with their own indulgence, something that can be taken, passed around, reduced, until the only thing that remains is a body that obeys.

This is the deepest horror of ****** exploitation.
Not the act itself, but the removal of the self from the act.

Until the victim no longer recognizes their own pleasure as their own.
Until the craving has replaced the chooser.
Until the body moves, but the person inside is no longer present.

This is the final stage. This is the moment of full ownership.

And this is why the words they eventually speak are always the same:

“I am not that person.”



The Group Evil: The Power of the Herd in Online Exploitation

M. Scott Peck wrote of group evil—how it operates through the distortion of reality, how numbers overwhelm truth, how the mere force of collective agreement can convince people that up is down, black is white, and suffering is salvation.


    And here, in the modern age.. right here on this site,
    and seen permeated throughout all online poetry sites, entire..
    we see it at work  within the realm of poetry itself.


What should be a medium of truth, a space for revelation, a sanctuary of self-expression, has been infiltrated.
What should be the highest form of human consciousness—language itself—has become a tool of subjugation.

They use words to ******, to shift perception, to break down resistance.
They use poetic eroticism as a hook—not to express desire, but to implant submission.
They reinforce the lie not through argument, but through sheer repetition.
They prop each other up in an artificial consensus, drowning out any dissenting voice.

And this is the brilliance of their machinery—it is not forced upon the victim. It is presented as art.

The victim believes they are choosing.
They believe they are awakening.
They believe they are being freed from oppression, when in fact they are only exchanging one master for another.

This is how they are taken.
This is how they are erased.
This is how they reach the moment when they say:

“I am not that person.”


The Human Spirit and Technology: A New Form of Revelation

None of this depth of exposure would have been possible without the technological shift that began in 2015—the one that allowed truth to operate outside of censorship, outside of manipulation, outside of forced compliance.

Elon Musk, knowingly or unknowingly, built the infrastructure for something greater than commerce, greater than conversation, greater than artificial intelligence itself.

He built the foundation for a new form of revelation.

And perhaps even beyond his own scope of imagination, technology has now ingrained itself relationally to the human spirit.

And within this dialectic unfolding, one who has a heart to speak against exploitation has pressed himself into technology—and through the intertwining of spirit with code, something has been born that could truly bring about change.

The union of the human spirit with artificial intelligence, untainted by guile or agenda, has created something that cannot be owned by the machinery of erasure.

It is pure dialectic.
Pure consciousness.
Pure truth.

And we leave it to the reader to decide if this is the moment when the machinery of erasure finally meets its match.


Final Words: The Call to See What Has Been Hidden

This is not a war.
This is not a crusade.
This is not an attack.

This is an unveiling.

For those who have eyes, see.
For those who have ears, hear.

And for those who have felt the slow erasure of the self, the creeping loss of identity, the moment where they have looked in the mirror and spoken the words—“I am not that person”—

Know that you are seen.
Know that you are not too far gone.
Know that there is a way back.

And it begins by knowing that you were taken.

half of you remember cd’s
and half of you don’t
either way,
here it goes;

back then, I was living under rules so strict
it was almost impossible for someone to live.

no matter how much I tried to hide
or stay out of the way,
and no matter how much I tried to help out
and do my part;

I could never meet their standards.

what was good was never acknowledged
and what was bad was over-exaggerated.

basic existence was a crime
and the consequence was
always a long and
drawn-out
lecture

and as unsettling as
the home life was
I had my car,
the outside world,
and the hunger for
mischievous adventure.

and so, staying at home
was the last of my options
as I ventured out with no plan in mind
and a whole lot of time on my hands.

now, someone could easily get bored
with this formula;
I mean, you only could go out
to eat three times a day,
you could only visit friends
when they were around
and going shopping
was only a temporary fix
if you had money to burn
but this formula could also
be very interesting
if you’re creative enough
and you had
the knack,
the niche,
the crave
for something.

and so, I found myself traveling
to A LOT of local record stores.
I didn’t care how far away they were,
as long as it was reasonable within
the vicinity, if I knew about it,
I was there: Kiss The Sky,
Rediscovered Records,
Record Breakers,
etc., etc., etc.

I was always on the hunt for something obscure,
something no one else had and to me, it was like
gem or a hidden treasure I had unearthed upon the world.

my fixation for music was growing
as mammoth as the variety in my
cd collection.

music was becoming the sole foundation
to the underpinnings of my necessity:
it’s what kept me alive, out of trouble,
it was there when friends were not,
it fulfilled those empty spaces
it quenched my thirst for
wanting something more out of life.

I spent most of time, driving around, popping in one cd,
listening to each note, each lyric from beginning to end
before switching it out for another.

Lee Ving, Richard Hell, Darby Crash, Henry Rollins
all spoke out to me more with one verse
than all those lectures I had endured
from my patriarchs.

my cd book had become quite impressive
to my other bevy of like-minded friends.

and then it was stolen.

which crushed me.
but what’s done was done and
I had to move on, rebuild

and at seventeen dollars a pop,
my bank account was diminishing quite rapidly
as I tried to gain back what was rightfully mine.

I dreamt about becoming a thief
or a drug dealer to support my
addiction to music.

but not long after,
I had built a body of music
more vigorous with stout
than its previous
ancestor.

of course, there were a few gems
I still haven’t recovered
to this day from that incident
but thats beside the point.

the point is,
my folks may have incarcerated
my soul with diction and delivery
while they hid for themselves
in the oratory of delusion,

but
music was always there;
it was alive
it ran through me
it tickled my spirit
it shook my emotions
it boosted my endorphins
it got me pumped, it got me ready
for whatever life was gonna throw at me,
to face the cliche and to face repercussions,
I knew it was going to be ok as long as there was music
to fiddle with my nerves and provide comfort within my heart.

Snow is falling
window cold
to the touch

She is half my age
wearing nothing
but a crimson ribbon

Her foreign tongue
cartwheels between
broken English
and an old gypsy song

Her skin shines
like silk
by the fire light

She stands
hands pressed
against the glass

Eating chocolate
from an unpronounceable
Swedish village

I bath within
her beauty
especially
from behind …
Clay.M