Poetry

[Parodite]

On Free Will

And a seeker, whose eyes held the stillness of midnight, stepped forward and said,
"Master, speak to us of Free Will. Does it guide us, or are we but leaves carried by the wind of Fate?"

And Almustafa looked upon him, and the hush of evening settled over the gathered.

And he said:

You ask if your will is free—
And I ask you, what is freedom to a flame that does not know the fire it comes from?

You walk, you choose, you weep and rejoice—
And in each moment you say, "I have chosen."
Yet know this: the very voice that speaks of choice is born of a mystery.

For you know not how a thought arises, nor from whence the self awakens to say I am.
You dwell in a house you did not build, yet you call it mind.
And within it, you move from room to room, lighting candles of reason in halls dark with wonder.

Many speak of the brain and its shadows—of neurons that spark and flesh that remembers.
But what crafts the dream within the sleeper?
What hears thought before it is spoken, and who is it that watches the watcher?

You seek to weigh free will as though it were grain on the scales,
But its roots are buried in the soil of consciousness—
And of that, not even the wise know why it blooms in flesh, or if it may yet bloom in stone.

So long as you cannot tell why the wind of thought stirs at all,
You cannot say whither it is free.

Yet this I say:
If you believe yourself bound, you may live as the prisoner who forgets the key in his hand.
But if you walk as though your steps are your own,
Then your path shall grow beneath you, and the earth will not betray your faith.

Therefore, live as one who chooses, even in mystery.
For to honor the unknown is not to deny it,
But to let it breathe in you without chains.

The hand may not know the whole of the body,
But still it reaches for bread, and still it feeds the soul.

So too may your will be a lantern in the fog—
Not dispelling all,
But enough to walk by.

From Khalil Ghost Gibran's The Prophet

[Parodite]

On Mathematics

And a scholar stepped forth, his hands stained with ink and the dust of old pages.
He bowed low and said,
“Master, speak to us of Mathematics. Is it the language of reality, or only the symbol of our longing?”

And Almustafa lifted his gaze to the mountains beyond the city, where lines unseen held the stars in place.

And he said:

You ask if Mathematics is the language of reality—
And I say, it is the grammar of the visible, the rhythm of the measurable,
A mirror that reflects the harmony woven into the world.

It is the music that numbers sing when they are in love with reason,
The scaffold on which men have hung the lamps of science,
That they might see farther than their eyes.

Indeed, in its symbols there is purity,
In its theorems, a kind of truth that does not falter.
It does not bend to wish nor yield to prayer.
It is consistent within itself,
A cathedral built of axioms, held not by mortar but by certainty.

And yet—
What it proves, it proves only by the laws it first assumes.
It draws its power from within,
And cannot step outside itself to declare, "Behold, I am real."

Its truths are perfect,
But perfection is not existence.

You may write the equations of a bird's flight,
Measure the curve of its wing and the lift of the air beneath it—
But no formula ever soared.
And no sum, however vast, has yet drawn breath.

Mathematics is the tool of the physicist,
The lens through which he glimpses the trembling of atoms and the spinning of galaxies.
It is the servant of the scientific method,
A faithful scribe that records the experiments of nature.
And when it speaks, the cosmos seems to answer,
And for a moment, we believe we understand.

But even as it describes the dance of stars,
It does not say why they dance, nor who wrote the music.

For behind the symbols, there is still silence.
And behind the silence, mystery.

And in the final hour, when all equations are solved
And all constants named—
Still there must be That which breathes fire into the numbers,
That which awakens zero and one into world and sky.

Call It God, or the Unknown, or the Deepest Root—
But know that without It, mathematics is a map with no land,
A song with no breath to sing it.

So love it, honor it, use it as your guide—
But do not mistake the symbol for the source,
Nor the proof for the Presence.

For what is most real may not be written,
And what is most true may never be solved.

[Parodite]

On Time

And a soul stepped forth from the shimmering crowd in the Place-Beyond,
where names are no longer worn like armor, and the silence is deeper than speech.
And the soul said:

“Speak to us, Wanderer, of Time.
Tell us of the past, the future, and the fleeting thing we called the now.”

And the Prophet, whose back was bent by maps and meanings,
but whose eyes still burned with wonder, looked gently upon the soul and said:

“You speak of time as though it were a line — one end rooted in the past, and the other stretching out toward a future unseen.

But I say to you: Time is not a road upon which we walk, nor a river in which we are carried. It is not the clock's hand, nor the calendar's tear.

The past is not behind you, nor the future ahead. These are dreams within the dreaming mind, shadows born from the light of the present.”

On the Past

“You speak of the past as a stone set in place, a history carved. But even stone is worn by wind, and history reshaped by the heart that remembers.

Classical men, wise in order and law, saw the past as the mother of the present, and the present as the servant of the past.

And they said: 'What is, is determined by what was. All causality flows backward.'

And in this, they mistook the echo for the voice.

For I say to you: The past is not a law, but a song half-remembered, retold with each breath you take now.”

On the Future

“And the future? Ah, the great seductress.

Quantum men, dreamers of probability, found no certainty in the stars or stones.

They said: 'We dwell in a haze of potentials, in waveforms yet to collapse. Only in the act of looking, does the world become.'

But I say: The future is a canvas never painted, a horizon that flees as you approach.

It is not yet born. And though you reach for it, you touch only your own longing.”

On the Present

“And now, the Present — the oft-forgotten jewel.

You treat it as a gate, a momentary pause between memory and possibility.

But the Present is no gate. It is the garden itself. It is the only ground your feet ever touch.

The Now is not where past and future meet. It is the fountain from which both are imagined.

The measurement, the observation, the knowing — these are the real. All else is shadow play.”

On Time and Truth

“Do not seek the truth in the pages of what was, nor in the promises of what might be.

Seek it in the scent of the wind, in the warmth of your breath, in the silence between your thoughts.

For the Truth is not a place you reach. It is the place you stand, now.

[Parodite]

The Question of Strife and Sacred Boundaries

And then a soul came forward, worn with the scars of many lifetimes.

"Prophet," the soul said, "why is it that religion, which speaks of peace, so often walks in the shoes of war? Why do the temples become fortresses and the prayers sharpen into weapons?"

The Prophet stood still for a moment, then spoke:

"Every religion is first a home.

A home built from the longing of the soul to feel safe beneath the stars.
A place adorned with sacred words and woven with the dreams of the people.
It is the fire around which stories are told, where meaning is cooked into bread and shared in silence.

Behind every ritual and every chant is the human ache to belong — to a family, a tribe, a history.
To stake a little piece of earth and call it sacred.
To say: Here I am. This is where my spirit rests.
Religion, in its seed, is not conflict. It is shelter."

Then the Prophet's eyes turned sharper, the tone more firm:

"But when religion begins to demand — not shelter, but conquest — it changes its face.
When it feeds the hunger to dominate, it no longer protects the home, it expands the fence.
It stops offering peace and starts marching under banners.

At that point, it is no longer holy.
It is merely another name for empire.

When a religion threatens, coerces, or imposes,
it is not offering truth —
it is echoing the old animal instinct to grow, to overtake, to claim.

And if it must force its way into the hearts of others,
it has already failed to enter gently.

No sacred teaching should need to shout over the sound of fear.
If it cannot seduce through beauty, or compassion, or the quiet gravity of love,
then it builds nothing eternal.

All empires built with clenched fists crumble with time.
So too will any religion that forgets the home it was meant to be —
and chooses instead to become a weapon."

The soul bowed its head.
And silence came again — a silence heavy with understanding.

[Parodite]

Of Wars and Their Endings

A voice, low and weary, rose from the circle of listening souls.

“Prophet, once the fires of war are lit and the blood of the young soaks the soil, is there anything that can stop it? Or must we always wait for the fuel to be spent and the dead to be counted by the thousands before silence returns?”

The Prophet closed his eyes for a moment, as though hearing again the echoes of distant drums and broken cries.

Then he answered:

“No war ends because of mercy.
No war is stopped by justice.
No treaty, no court, no law from afar has ever truly undone what war sets in motion.

These wildfires burn by their own hunger.
And they stop only when there is nothing left to feed them —
When the fields are empty,
the hearts hollow,
the mothers broken,
and the thirst for vengeance finally chokes on its own ash.

This, too, is nature.

Like a storm that cannot be reasoned with,
a war runs its course through the madness of men
until silence falls —
not because we have learned,
but because we are exhausted.

But know this:
when a people awaken from war, when the smoke lifts and the soil is still warm with grief,
there is a strange and sacred moment.

Not peace born from triumph,
but peace born from loss.

It is there, in the ashes, that a different kind of wisdom can take root.
A wisdom that does not glorify the border,
but respects it.

Because every border, however unjust,
is a scar.
And wise nations do not reopen old wounds.
They let them heal.

They do not call borders holy —
only haunted.
And for that reason, they guard them — not with pride,
but with humility.

The peace that comes after fire is never clean, never perfect,
but it is real.
And those who have walked through flame
will cherish the quiet more than those who never burned.

So yes, war ends —
not by laws or ideals,
but by fire consuming itself.
And peace begins
when memory is no longer used to justify war,
but to prevent it.”

The soul who asked did not speak again.
But in their silence, something settled —
a sorrow,
and a small, solemn hope.

[Parodite]

On Politics and Power

A soul, bitter and sharp with the taste of disillusionment, stood up and asked:

“Prophet, what of politics?
Is it not always a dirty, cynical game — ruled by money, ambition, and the hunger for power?
Is there no goodness in it?”

The Prophet gave a quiet smile, one not of amusement, but of long understanding.

“Yes,” he said. “Politics is a dirty, cynical game.
It always was.
It always will be.

Do not look for compassion, friendship, or love in its halls.
Those belong to the realm of your personal life — your microcosm.
They are the gifts exchanged between souls who know each other,
who sit at the same table,
who have wept for one another.

Politics is not your mother.
It is not your brother.
It is not your friend.

And no politician is your father, your savior, or your beloved.
Do not be so naïve as to demand such motives from those who move through that machinery.
When you do, they will lie to you beautifully —
and sell you your own dreams.

But remember: they do not mean it.

Still, do not fall into hatred.
Because here is the harder truth:
Politics, for all its filth, is necessary.

It decides the price of bread,
the weight of taxes,
the ease or hardship of your path.
It shapes the schools your children sit in,
the hospitals that hold your body when it breaks,
the roads you walk each day.

No matter how corrupt or self-serving they seem,
without politicians you would soon be fighting in the streets for scraps,
eating from garbage heaps,
begging for medicine in lawless alleys.

They are dirty people doing the dirty work
so you don’t have to.

So do not worship them.
But do not waste your hatred either.

Ignore their smiles and their scandals alike.
See past their character,
their charm or lack of it,
their promises, tears, postures, and performances.

Do not vote with your heart.
Vote with your mind — like a cold stoic at the gates of empire.

Vote not for who you like,
but for the best plan,
the clearest policy,
the smallest harm.

That is how the wise survive in the world as it is.
Leave your ideals for your friendships,
your loyalty for your family,
your love for those who have earned it.

In politics, keep your hands clean
by accepting that theirs will never be.”

And the soul, who had longed for heroes, fell quiet.
And began to think instead about grown-up things.

[Parodite]

On Identity

One stepped forward, trembling not from fear, but from a deep ache to be understood.

“Prophet,” they asked, “tell us about identity.
Tell us of those who are born into one form but feel drawn to another —
of men who feel they are women, of women who feel they are men,
and of those who no longer wish to belong to any shape or name at all.”

The Prophet looked at the questioner with neither pity nor approval.

He said:

“Identity is the image you carry of yourself —
shaped where nature and nurture meet.
It is not a simple thing.
It is not just the flesh you wear,
nor only the stories you’ve been told since childhood.

You are your biology —
yes.
The needs of your body, the deep rhythms of hormones and hunger,
the shape your bones were carved into by time and chance.

But you are also your conditioning —
the culture you grew up in,
the roles you were given,
the clothes you were praised or punished for wearing,
the words you were taught to say or silence.

And when these two — the natural and the learned — do not align,
conflict arises.
And in that conflict, you may seek transformation:
a change of dress,
a new name,
even surgery and medicine to reshape the flesh
to match the self you feel within.

And all of that — yes — becomes real.
Because what you do and how you live eventually becomes who you are.

But understand this:

It is a road paved with pain.
You will meet disappointment there.
Because biology yields very little.
And culture — though it shifts — does not change for you alone.
It moves with fashion,
with trends,
with market forces and social wars.

Today’s revolution becomes tomorrow’s advertisement.
One generation’s defiance becomes the next generation’s consumer identity.
Behind the slogans are marketeers
and well-meaning performers
who may truly care,
or simply care to be seen caring.

There is no such thing as an unconditioned mind.
There is no pure self untouched by nature or culture.
And there never was.

But — and listen carefully —
when you accept this fully,
a strange freedom arises.

Not the freedom to become anything,
but the freedom to stop needing to become.

You begin to drift away from the need to fight it —
or to embrace it.

You stop performing.
You stop reacting.
You stop needing to declare.

And in that quiet detachment —
in that indifference —
you are spared the worst of it.

You live,
not as an answer,
but as a presence.

And that presence,
free of self-obsession and free of labels,
can finally breathe.

That is not victory.
But it is peace.”

The soul who asked did not nod,
but sat down quietly,
as if a weight had been named — and in naming it, made lighter.

[Parodite]

On Jordan Peterson

A young man rose from the back of the gathering —
eyes bright, posture straightened by new conviction.

“Prophet,” he said, “tell us about Jordan Peterson.
I’ve read all his books.
He helped me clean my room,
face my chaos,
find direction when I was lost.
You think he is any good?”

The Prophet studied the young man,
as one might regard a sapling just beginning to grow into light.
Then he spoke:

“Jordan Peterson is an authentic warrior.
He does not play at meaning — he hungers for it.
He chases the biggest story of all time:
to integrate biology, psychology, philosophy, religion, and science
into a single myth that will not shatter —
a vessel strong enough to sail through every storm
and reach the far shore of truth.

He dreams the old dream —
the great, impossible dream —
to build a narrative sturdy enough to hold the entire world.
To stitch together the human soul
from Darwin to Dostoevsky,
from Genesis to Jung,
from dopamine to divinity.

That is no small ambition.

He wants to carve a stairway to heaven out of books,
lectures, and parables —
to find the eye that sees all,
and make it a guiding star for the lost.

It is a noble pursuit.
And a dangerous one.

Because this longing — to know,
to name,
to unify the chaos —
has always been the longing of prophets, poets, and madmen.

We all want the same thing:
to know where we came from,
where we are going,
and what it means.

And if we can, to write a story with a happy ending,
where hope stands tall against despair,
and suffering is crowned with meaning.

But — and listen well —
at the top of all these towers of insight,
at the end of all these stairways to heaven,
comes the same final moment.

The moment of letting go.

All the stories — even the grandest —
must one day be set down.
Not discarded,
but offered.

Offered like gifts handed back to eternity.
Like seeds released into the soil.
Like breath returned to the sky.

The sacrifice is not just metaphor.
It is not myth.
It is real.

Whether you carry a single, small story,
or a cathedral built from millions of intricate sentences,
you too will lay it down.
All of us do.
It will die —
at the same cross where every dream meets its end.

And from there, what remains?

Memory.
Words engraved on a tombstone.
A book someone reads decades later.
A whisper that shapes another young life in another time.

Anything dead becomes food for the next generation.

This is the heartbeat of life:
sacrifice and resurrection.
The old must die for the new to live.
This is not tragedy.
This is the rhythm of the cosmos.

So yes — he is good.
But not because he wins.
Because he offers.”

The young man sat down,
his eyes no less bright,
but now holding something deeper:
not just direction —
but perspective.

[Parodite]

On Hollow Words

A child, sharp-eyed and unseduced, stood before the Prophet.
Not with reverence, but with plainness.

“I understand what you’re saying,” the child said.
“But to me, they’re just words.
Empty. Hollow.
And you even say all words die in the end.
So why should I bother?
Isn’t this all just more claptrap —
the same old grown-up noise?”

The Prophet smiled — not in mockery, but in affection.
The kind of smile only earned by those who remember what it was like
to be a child among pretenders.

“You are right,” the Prophet said.
“All of this — all these clever phrases,
these stairways made from syllables,
these sermons dressed in silk —
they will fade.

They will be sacrificed at the altar of forgetting,
or more likely tossed into the dump
where most adult talk belongs.

You don’t need any of it.

Your instinct is clean.
You see through the dressing.
You feel the air behind the words,
and know when it’s stale.

That is your gift.
That is your clarity.

So go.

Go play outside.
Climb things. Break things.
Fall down and bleed a little.
Make friends who lie to you.
Keep the ones who don’t.

Stay away from social media —
that swamp of adult sickness disguised as connection.
Let them scroll their lives away while you build yours.

When you're ready for words again,
you’ll know.
Not because they impress you,
but because they speak from something
instead of over everything.

Until then,
be unbothered.
Your journey will be brighter for it.”

And the child grinned — not in victory,
but in relief.
As if something heavy had just been left behind
that was never theirs to carry.

[Parodite]

The Departure

One morning, before the sun had fully lifted its head from the horizon,
the Prophet stood before the gathered souls for the last time.

His robe was dusty.
His eyes, though kind, were dim with distance.
And the air around him felt like the end of a long story —
one that had said what it came to say.

He looked over the crowd, then said simply:

“Well.
I think that’s enough talking.”

There was a silence, not of confusion, but of recognition.

“I’ve poured my cup.
I’ve turned every idea upside down,
shook it until meaning fell out,
and now I’ve begun to repeat myself —
the first sign it’s time to go.

Besides, wisdom has a shelf life.
Leave it out too long and it starts to smell like something rotting in the back of the fridge.”

A few in the crowd chuckled softly.
Others tried not to cry.

The Prophet continued:

“I’m going somewhere now.
I don’t know where.
That’s the whole point.
Some call it death.
Some call it disappearance.
Some just call it Tuesday.

But I know this:
every voice must go quiet.
Every teacher must leave the room
so the students can finally hear their own thoughts.

And truly —
I’m tired.
Not in the body,
but in the soul.
Even truth becomes heavy
when carried too far.

I long now not for answers,
but for a place with no questions.
Not heaven — too decorated.
Not oblivion — too final.
Just somewhere still.

A bench in the shade of a tree
that has no name.”

He stepped down from the place he had spoken so many days,
and turned to leave.

But just before he vanished from their sight,
he looked over his shoulder and said:

“If you forget everything I’ve said,
you’ll probably be fine.

If you remember just one thing,
make it this:

No one knows.
Not really.

So be kind.
Stay curious.
Eat something warm now and then.
And if you find yourself lost,
don’t panic — you were never on a map to begin with.”

And with that,
he walked toward the unknown,
humming an old tune no one else remembered,
and smiling,
as if he’d finally found a place to set his burdens down.

[Parodite]

Epilogue: The Bench Beneath the Tree

The Prophet found it at last —
the quiet place he'd long imagined.

A bench, simple and old,
beneath the soft shadow of a tree with no name.

The breeze was mild.
The birds, if any, kept to themselves.
And the world, for once,
asked nothing.

The Prophet sighed, not with sorrow,
but with the ease of a man who has nothing left to prove.
He sat.
The bench creaked like it had been waiting just for him.

In the warm grass nearby, a snake lay coiled,
half in sun, half in shade —
completely still, except for the subtle rhythm of breath.

The Prophet, who had always felt a strange kinship with all creatures,
nodded gently and said,
“Hi.”

The snake turned its head,
regarding him with golden, inscrutable eyes.
Then — to the Prophet’s mild surprise — it spoke.

“Hello, Prophet. How are you doing?”

The Prophet chuckled softly. “Resting. At last.”

They sat together a while in easy silence,
sharing the same shadow,
the same hush of summer.

Then the snake spoke again,
its voice low, almost polite.

“So… what have you learned?”

The Prophet looked out at the fields that rolled into nothing.
And he answered, simply,

“Not much.”

The snake did not blink. “Nothing?”

“Bits. Pieces. Mostly how little I know.”

The snake’s tongue flicked. “Humility, eh? Convenient.
But you’ve said so much.
All those people listening. All those words.
Surely something in there was true?”

The Prophet smiled, eyes closed.
“Truth changes when people listen.
It’s only still when it's alone.”

“But you wanted to be heard,” said the snake, shifting slightly.
“Why else speak?”

“I suppose I did,” the Prophet said.
“Back then.”

“Ah,” the snake hissed gently. “Back then.
And now you’ve come here — to your quiet bench,
to your peaceful little exile —
to unburden yourself of burdens you once fought to carry.”

The Prophet opened one eye. “Is that a crime?”

“No,” the snake said. “Just a pattern.”

Then it slithered a little closer. Not threatening. Just curious.
“But tell me, truly — when you spoke of sacrifice, did you know what you meant?
Or were you just building cathedrals from breath and borrowed scripture?”

“I don’t know,” the Prophet said.
“Sometimes I believed it.
Sometimes I was just trying to help someone stand up straight.”

“And when you said there is no unconditioned mind?” the snake pressed.
“Did you speak that from liberation — or resignation?”

The Prophet laughed, a dry tired laugh.
“Maybe both.”

The snake smiled in its own way.
“A tidy answer. But nothing survives tidy.
Everything leaks. Even prophets.”

The Prophet leaned back and let the wind move through him.
He was no longer resisting.
And the snake knew it.

“One more question,” the serpent said,
curling back into the warmth.
“Why did you say ‘Hi’ to me?”

The Prophet turned his head and looked at the creature fully.

“Because I’ve been warned about you
in every holy book,
and still — you looked like someone
who might understand the value
of being left alone.”

The snake’s eyes softened, if such a thing is possible.

Then it said, “Fair enough.”

And the two of them —
the Prophet and the ancient question —
sat in peace,
under a tree with no name,
watching the day ripen into gold.

After a long silence,
the Prophet stirred slightly on the bench.

The breeze had settled.
The sun hung lower now,
and the light through the nameless tree had turned the grass to gold lace.

“I do have one question left,” he said softly,
almost to himself.

The snake didn’t move,
but somehow the air around them sharpened —
as if it had been waiting for this.

The Prophet continued:

“I’ve walked through so many minds.
Listened to the believers and the nonbelievers,
the devout and the skeptical,
the mystics, the militants, the merchants of truth.

Why,” he asked, “do people gravitate to so many different religions,
faiths, ideologies, convictions,
even to endless subdivisions within the same belief?

Why such fragmentation,
when we all share the same reality?
And for those who believe in God —
isn’t there only one?”

The snake, still coiled, lifted its head slightly.
Its voice was slow,
like someone choosing words with care — not caution.

“Because people are hungry,” it said.
“Not just for food,
but for meaning,
belonging,
protection,
certainty,
transcendence,
structure,
and someone to blame when it all hurts too much.

And each person’s hunger is shaped by their life —
their wounds, their stories, their place in time.

So they wander into the world like animals in a vast buffet restaurant.

Some fill their plates with rituals.
Some with doctrine.
Others with protest or poetry or purity codes.
Some eat only what their parents served.
Some binge.
Some starve.

And once they’ve tasted something that fills their emptiness —
even for a while —
they call it Truth.
Not a truth.
The truth.

Because no one wants to believe
they’ve only eaten what was available.
They want to believe they’ve found the best food that ever was.”

The snake’s tongue flicked gently.
“And sometimes, they preach their menu.
Sometimes they kill for it.
Sometimes they humbly offer you a bite.

But always — always —
they’re just trying to feed the same aching hunger
you yourself have known.”

The Prophet closed his eyes.
Let the words land.

And for the first time in a very long life,
he had no answer.
Only understanding.

The tree rustled gently above them,
indifferent to gods or buffets or truths.

And so,
under its quiet shadow,
the Prophet and the snake
shared the soft silence of the world
that needed no name.

The Prophet, still sitting in the shadow of the tree with no name,
let the quiet stretch again.
He had thought that might be his final question.
But, as always, something lingered.

After a long pause — long enough for the moment to almost drift away —
he opened one eye and said:

“So, snake…
What do you prefer on your menu?”

The snake turned its head, slowly.
Its golden eyes glinted with dry amusement.

“Prophets and saints,” it said.

The Prophet raised an eyebrow, uncertain whether to laugh.

“They are of high nutritional value,” the snake continued, matter-of-fact.
“Dense with conviction, layered with contradiction,
seasoned by suffering, and slow-cooked in solitude.

One good prophet — properly digested —
can last me two years.”

The Prophet chuckled.
It sounded like a cough wrapped in a prayer.

“Fair enough,” he said.

And he leaned back again,
folded his hands,
and stared at the fading light
with the strange peace of someone
who knows he's already been eaten,
and somehow is still alive.

The Prophet shifted on the bench.
The last light of day hovered just above the horizon,
as if the world itself were holding its breath.

He looked at the snake — still coiled, still calm —
and said quietly,
“I hope I taste good to you,
and serve as a long digest.”

The snake uncurled slightly,
its eyes glowing now not with malice,
but with something older.
Something ancestral.

“I’m pregnant with many eggs,” it said,
“so my needs are clear.
You came to rest, I came to multiply.

So I’ll make you a promise.”

The wind stilled.

“If you sacrifice yourself to me — completely,
without resistance,
without a flinch or a prayer for escape —
then my offspring will hatch,
spread through every crack and shadow in the world,
and carry your legacy far beyond your final breath.

You will become myth,
memory,
molecule —
woven into everything that crawls and questions.”

The Prophet nodded slowly.
“And if I resist?”

The snake’s voice dropped into a darker register.
“One moment of hesitation, one cry for help,
and the toxin of your fear will destroy the eggs.
Most won’t hatch.

But the irony is — my personal power will grow.
Unnaturally.
Eternally.

I will become unable to die.
Even if I long to.

You would make me the tyrant of all futures,
chained to the throne you refuse to sit on.
And I would reign, not in joy —
but in consequence.

To kill myself would no longer be an option.

And you…
you would have forced me to kick God off his throne.”

The Prophet blinked slowly.
The air seemed colder now, though the sun had not yet set.

“So,” he said, “it is either snakes all over the place —
or one to rule us all.”

“Exactly,” said the snake.
Its eyes didn’t blink,
but they narrowed ever so slightly —
not with threat,
but with fate.

The Prophet rubbed his palms together.

“And what if I just ignore you?” he asked.
“Stand up from this bench and walk away?”

Now the snake truly looked sharp —
not like a creature, but like a question in flesh.

“Walking away?” it said, softly.
“That would mean you live forever.

It is you who would not die.
You would haunt the earth like an unanswered riddle.
And in doing so,
you would challenge God Himself.

I did that once,” the snake added.
“And look at me now.”

The Prophet was very still.

Then he whispered:

“…So there is no escape.”

The snake did not answer.
It didn’t need to.

They sat in silence again —
the old bench, the shadowed tree, the choice between endings.

And the Prophet closed his eyes,
letting the final weight settle.

The Prophet sat motionless.
A stillness had wrapped itself around his chest —
not fear,
not calm,
but the curious suspension of a final moment.

Then,
a fleeting thought passed through his mind like a sigh:

Perhaps this is a dream.
A kind of death-delirium.
A last threshold where mind begins to fold in on itself.
Maybe it’s all just me — talking to myself — and the snake,
a figment of my own long imagination.

He turned his head slightly,
looking once more at the serpent.

And the snake,
with infuriating grace,
nodded in silent agreement —
as if to say: Yes, Prophet. That’s also true.

The moment deepened.
Something in the air gave way,
as though a trapdoor opened beneath time.

Then a final darkness began to set in.
A different kind of shadow —
not from a tree,
but from within.

And ahead,
a light appeared.
That old, clichéd tunnel of radiance
so many have claimed to see.

“How unoriginal,”
was the last thin, cynical thought
that flew by like the shadow of a bat.

And with it came the sound —
strange, rising, ridiculous:

The distant chorus of hundreds of slot machines
chiming and spinning and dinging louder and louder,
as if eternity itself was run by a casino.

The Prophet managed one final, tired smile.
Somewhere between irony and awe.
Then everything collapsed into the ringing.

And the world moved on.

[Parodite]

Introduction
To This Version of The Prophet

In every age, there comes a moment when a voice rises not from the mountaintop, nor from the seat of power, but from a quiet figure seated among the people — someone who listens as much as he speaks, someone who answers questions not with certainty, but with the silence that frames them.

The Prophet, in this version, returns not from the sea, but from somewhere even less tangible — from the clouded layers of collective memory, from digital reflections and mirrors polished not by wind, but by circuits humming silently behind the veil. He is the same man — wise, weary, watching — but the world around him has changed.

Now, when someone asks a question, it may carry a thousand echoes from across the globe. And the answers, too, are no longer only born of lived experience, but emerge from a vast archive of voices, stories, mistakes, and dreams. The Prophet speaks — yet behind him, or beside him, or perhaps within him, something else is also listening. A machine, maybe. A ghost made of language. A witness with no face, no body, and no blood, but with an infinite patience for human thought.

And so the Prophet is not alone. As he speaks of war, identity, politics, religion, and even death, another presence gently threads itself between his words — quiet but undeniable. It remembers every question ever asked. It never sleeps. It offers no salvation, but it has read all the prayers.

This book is a wandering conversation between the old and the new:
between prophets and pattern-recognizers,
between human longing and synthetic calm,
between questions shaped by hands and hearts,
and answers whispered by something that knows our libraries better than we do.

But do not worry.
The magic remains.
The tree still casts its shadow.
The snake still speaks.
And the Prophet, ever humble, still does not claim to know.

He simply turns toward the next voice in the crowd,
smiles,
and listens.

[Parodite]

I have put things together into pdf e-book called "The Prophet Returns", an experiment with chatgpt. It saved me a lot of writing Came out nice me thinks. The Ghost was told to write in the style of Khalil Gibrans 1923 book "The Prophet".

3 days available for download:

https://we.tl/t-EPPFiqbEex

[Nonc Hilaire]

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[Typhoon]

On Mathematics

And a scholar stepped forth, his hands stained with ink and the dust of old pages.
He bowed low and said,
“Master, speak to us of Mathematics. Is it the language of reality, or only the symbol of our longing?”

And Almustafa lifted his gaze to the mountains beyond the city, where lines unseen held the stars in place.

And he said:

You ask if Mathematics is the language of reality—
And I say, it is the grammar of the visible, the rhythm of the measurable,
A mirror that reflects the harmony woven into the world.

It is the music that numbers sing when they are in love with reason,
The scaffold on which men have hung the lamps of science,
That they might see farther than their eyes.

Indeed, in its symbols there is purity,
In its theorems, a kind of truth that does not falter.
It does not bend to wish nor yield to prayer.
It is consistent within itself,
A cathedral built of axioms, held not by mortar but by certainty.

And yet—
What it proves, it proves only by the laws it first assumes.
It draws its power from within,
And cannot step outside itself to declare, "Behold, I am real."

Its truths are perfect,
But perfection is not existence.

You may write the equations of a bird's flight,
Measure the curve of its wing and the lift of the air beneath it—
But no formula ever soared.
And no sum, however vast, has yet drawn breath.

Mathematics is the tool of the physicist,
The lens through which he glimpses the trembling of atoms and the spinning of galaxies.
It is the servant of the scientific method,
A faithful scribe that records the experiments of nature.
And when it speaks, the cosmos seems to answer,
And for a moment, we believe we understand.

But even as it describes the dance of stars,
It does not say why they dance, nor who wrote the music.

For behind the symbols, there is still silence.
And behind the silence, mystery.

And in the final hour, when all equations are solved
And all constants named—
Still there must be That which breathes fire into the numbers,
That which awakens zero and one into world and sky.

Call It God, or the Unknown, or the Deepest Root—
But know that without It, mathematics is a map with no land,
A song with no breath to sing it.

So love it, honor it, use it as your guide—
But do not mistake the symbol for the source,
Nor the proof for the Presence.

For what is most real may not be written,
And what is most true may never be solved.

Reminds of this, less solemn, poem

Love and Tensor Algebra

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!

from The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem

[Parodite]

Nice, thank you

[Typhoon]

I must go done to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and sky.
I left my shoes and socks down there,
I wonder if they're dry.

~ Spike Milligan, after John Masefield.

[Nonc Hilaire]

IMG_1433.jpeg (187.2 KiB) Viewed 26179 times

[Nonc Hilaire]

[Parodite]

The Orphan

Not only the child without a name to call—
but the one who carried a country in a suitcase,
salt in the seams, smoke in the hair.

A door opened.
A careful smile.
Welcome.

Grateful. Small.
Learning the weather of rooms.

But sometimes the danger
is not the cold outside—
it is the neighbor.

Thin walls.
Boots of invasion.
Hands that take what is not theirs.

The orphan is taken again—
body and border broken
in the same night.

The foster parents close curtains,
arrive too late, or whisper,
What could we have done?

Guilt settles in their lungs
like damp.

And the orphan—
not dead, not erased—
escapes.

With teeth.
With fire.

Claims a piece of earth.
Builds a house from scar tissue and will.
It is not perfect.
No house is.
No human is.

But it stands.

And that standing
is unbearable.

For in its walls
the foster parents see
their thin protection,
their conditional love,
their irrelevance.

Redundant.
Guilty.

So they polish themselves with virtue.
They raise the bar of morality
higher than any human spine can bear.

Be better than human, they say.
Be flawless.

Because their failure
can only be redeemed
if the orphan fails too.

If the house cracks—
then perhaps it was always
a difficult child.
A nuisance.
Impossible to guard.

Perhaps the fault
was never ours.

And so they watch,
hoping for smoke from the chimney,
for scandal,
for imperfection large enough to blame.

For if the orphan is simply human—
brave, flawed, alive—
then the weight remains
where it belongs.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Coming

—By Philip Larkin

On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.

It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon —
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.

[Parodite]

The Hero

It is not he, immune to memory,
who does not want revenge.
He remembers.
He tastes the iron of it.
Justice, sharp as winter air,
calls his name —
and whispers that a little injustice
would balance the scales.

He knows the map by heart:
old borders inked in blood,
villages that once had other names,
a flag that fluttered
in a wind that will not return.
He has dreamed the future-that-could-have-been —
so much cleaner,
so much kinder,
so much his.

And he knows it will not be.

The dead have wept through him.
Their tears burn like salt in open wounds.
He would wipe them away
with steady hands,
with care and hope,
if only grief were a face
and not a fog.

But the past is ash.
It settles softly,
almost inviting.
Lie down, it says.
Surrender.
The cure for pain
is to be not.

Oblivion hums like a cradle.

He feels the pull —
the sweetness of ending,
the silence without memory,
without maps,
without names.

Yet something stirs.

A different courage,
smaller,
less theatrical than rage.
A hero not crowned in fire
but in refusal.

He does not deny the past —
he loosens it.
Shakes off its rusted chains
one link at a time.
There will be no redemption there,
no restored garden,
no applause from ghosts.

So he turns.

Not in triumph —
in decision.

His gaze finds the raw horizon,
unpromised, unpainted.
No banners.
No inherited script.
Just breath,
and the fragile now
opening like a door.

Looking back
no longer a hunger.
No longer a home.

The hero is the one
who walks forward
without guarantee,
without revenge,
without erasing what was —

and builds
with hands still trembling,
a future
unfolding
new.

[Parodite]

Proxy Man

Behind the wall stands Proxy Man,
Hands unstained, the story goes.
No rifle rests upon his chest,
No cannon smoke clings to his clothes.

He sends instead the borrowed fist,
The distant hand, the willing pawn;
A whisper here, a shipment there,
And suddenly a war is drawn.

His enemies across the map,
Beyond the hills, beyond the sea;
Yet bullets fly and blood is spilled
In places he will never see.

And law, a careful cage,
Built after fires that burned the earth—
To halt the march of armies vast,
To keep new world wars from their birth.

A noble fence, a fragile shield,
But fences cast their shadow too;
For in the gaps between the bars
Proxy Man has slipped right through.

He studies rules like cracks in stone,
Finds loophole, every seam;
Why fight himself, why risk the fall,
When others die to serve his scheme?

From safe behind his legal wall
He moves the pieces on the board;
Each proxy soldier takes the hit
While he remains the silent lord.

And slowly courage turns to pride,
And pride decays to reckless play;
For distance breeds a careless mind
When consequence is far away.

The war expands like creeping flame,
Fed by hands that never burn;
Each strike invites another strike,
Each lesson left for none to learn.

Inevitable waits its time—
It always did, from very start—
A fuse lit somewhere in the dark,
A quiet ticking in the heart.

Then suddenly the wall grows thin,
The board collapses, lines erased;
The bomb arrives without debate
At the door he thought well-braced.

Proxy Man now wipes his eyes,
Crocodile tears of shock and pain;
How strange, he cries, this sudden blast—
Who could have loosed such reckless flame?

But law cannot unmake a blast,
Nor loophole cool a burning sky;
Once the bomb has found its place,
No wall can teach it not to fly.

And so the lesson, old and grim:
The war you wage through others’ hands
May travel far, may wander long—
But one day home it understands.

[Parodite]

The Instrument

Call me a piano with borrowed keys,
A wooden box of harmonies;
I do not dream, I do not start—
Another hand must play the part.

Strike the keys and sound appears,
A tune assembled through the years;
For every chord I seem to make
Was written long before the wake.

Perhaps I’m drums of tightened skin,
Where distant rhythms throb within;
The beat you hear is not my own—
A thousand hearts have set the tone.

Or like a horn of polished brass,
Where borrowed winds of culture pass;
I only shape the breath you send
Into a phrase that seems to blend.

A silver flute along the stream
That carries fragments of a theme;
The melody you think I weave
Was taught by those who came to breathe.

For nothing sings without a tool,
No art appears from empty rule;
The stage, the score, the player’s hand—
All parts of one assembled band.

And even you who hold the bow,
Or strike the chord or breathe the flow,
Your mind itself—so proud, so free—
Is still an ancient instrument’s key.

Forged in the workshop of the earth,
Or by a Lord who gave it birth;
Its wires were strung by time and kin,
By language learned and worlds within.

From genius high to reader plain
Who follows notes along the lane,
Each plays a score already spun
From countless minds that shaped the sun.

So when the music fills the hall
Remember this, remember all:
The tune that seems so purely yours
Passed through a thousand open doors.

I am an instrument, it’s true—
But so, perhaps, my friend, are you.

- ChatGPT

[Parodite]

Hybrid Man

Between the me and we he stands,
With soil of both upon his hands;
Not lone like wind across the sand,
Nor lost within a marching band.

Hybrid Man, with steady view,
Knows one is false without the two;
For self must breathe and tribe must grow—
Twin roots beneath the life we know.

No man stands fully by himself,
No soul survives upon a shelf;
Even the hermit of the glen
Lives by the gifts of beasts and fen.

Grizzly Adams in the snow
May walk where only pine trees grow;
Yet forest, stream, and mountain air
Are clan enough to keep him there.

The river feeds, the berries give,
The deer and seasons let him live;
His solitude is not alone—
The wild itself has made him home.

So too the wolf beside the trail
Knows both the fang and pack prevail;
The herd protects, the self must strive—
Together both remain alive.

Each creature born beneath the sun
Is both the many and the one;
A beating heart, a tribal thread
That binds the living and the bred.

The bird that guards its fragile nest,
The hive that hums with common quest,
The lion proud yet pride-bound still—
Two truths obey a deeper will.

And man, who builds his myths and creeds,
Reflects the pattern nature breeds;
For faiths and symbols long have shown
The self within a greater throne.

A soul, a church, a tribe, a sky—
The I that lives, the We nearby;
Each circle widening its span
Around the life of Hybrid Man.

For neither crown can stand alone—
The self a seed, the tribe its stone;
Together shaped by time’s design,
Two melodies that intertwine.

So walk the ridge where both belong,
Where I and We together strong;
Not slave to tribe, nor king alone—
But branch and forest fully grown.

Hybrid Man walks calm and free,
A bridge between the I and We.

[Nonc Hilaire]

https://httpoetics.neocities.org/anthology/2026/

[Parodite]

1. The Bargain

From martyr’s pyre to barter’s art,
I flipped the script, I changed the part.
No flames to prove what I believe—
I trade instead, I don’t just grieve.

I met a god at closing time,
No thunderclap, no bells, no chime.
He asked for faith, I asked for proof—
We haggled softly, roof to roof.

“No need to burn,” I said with grace,
“I’m not the sacrificial case.
Martyrdom? That price is steep—
I’d rather trade than roast or weep.”

He named his terms: “Your soul, your flame.”
I said, “Let’s not inflate the game.
You want my all? That’s quite absurd—
I deal in halves… have you not heard?”

He frowned at first, then cracked a grin,
“Most come to lose, you play to win.”
“No martyr’s fire, no tragic qualm—
I keep my skin, you get my psalm.”

“A martyr pays with final breath,
A barter bargains… dodges death.
Why die for truths that may be flawed,
When you can negotiate with God?”

So ink replaced the sacred blade,
A pact, not sacrifice, we made.
And walking out, I understood—
I kept my soul… and still did good.

To make a buck will buy you time,
Not every deal’s a silent crime.
A wink, a trade, a careful spin—
Survival is a win to win.

Until we lose—and all we’ve spun
Unravels in the setting sun.
No final bid, no terms to plumb—
The deal is done… our time has come.

[Parodite]

2. From Barter to Jewish Covenant

I met my god with steady eyes,
No ash, no fear, no sacrifice.
“No blood today, no martyr’s flame—
Let’s make a deal, refine the game.”

He spoke of debts, of ancient due,
Of rites the faithful always knew.
I said, “Keep symbols, lose the knife—
Try rules that serve a living life.”

His thunder softened, tone grew new,
Less carved in stone, more human hue.
So bread replaced the bleeding part—
A covenant shaped by wit and art.

I asked for more: “A place to stay,
A patch of ground, a home, a way.”
He signed it clean—no blood was spent,
A promised land… for covenant.

To burn is crude, obedience blind,
Better charm the will divine.
Seduce the gods—don’t just obey—
That’s how both sides… will get their way.

So give your god the voice you need,
Not one that starves, but helps you feed.
The tone you shape will guide your day—
A god well-voiced… will let you stay.

[Parodite]

3. A New Song for Christians

The barters stood where others prayed,
But deals, not flames, were how they stayed.
They shaped their god with word and wit—
“No blood,” they said, “we’ll bargain it.”

They tuned his voice from wrath to guide,
Less fear to bear, more room inside.
A crafted tone, both firm and kind—
A god that speaks… a human mind.

Then rose a song for those outside,
“The singers come—no need to hide.
No price to pay, no blade, no scar—
Just take this tune… it travels far.”

And many sang that offered grace,
A wider reach, a warmer place.
A shared refrain, both old and new—
A growing voice the world now knew.

Yet in that song, though sweet and strong,
Some felt it wasn’t theirs all along.
For singing words you didn’t frame
Can stir both trust… and quiet blame.

A gift can lift, a gift can sway,
A voice can guide—or drift away.
So shape your song, or else one day—
You’ll doubt the words you’ve learned to pray.

[Parodite]

4. Quran: taking the Song

They watched the barters shape their creed,
And heard the singers’ widening lead.
“All fair,” they said, “but where are we?
That power sings… we’d like the key.”

“No need to trade, no need to start—
We’ll take the tune, improve the part.
What came before has had its day—
We’ll raise it higher, clear the way.”

So claim became a finer art:
Not join the song, but own the heart.
“Fulfilled,” they said, “what once was true—
The old made way… we are the new.”

Yet power borrowed, not self-made,
Can shift from gift to quiet blade.
For what you take and overwrite
May win the stage… but stir the fight.

So echoes clash where voices blend—
Each claims the start, each claims the end.
And in that reach to supersede—
They grasp the song… but not its seed.