#BryonSlack

[bryon-slack]

They Can't Be Us

They Can’t Be Us—An Indictment in Verse by Bryon Slack

You silver-spoon kings with Ivy League tongues— lacing conquest in clean vowels and sterilized platitudes.

Skull & Bones handshakes dressed as diplomacy at national prayer breakfasts, your backroom whispers louder than ballots.

You call ownership your birthright— as if the world were gifted to you in the womb.

But you wouldn’t last a day in our shoes. You’d wither in the heat of a kitchen, like a daffodil tossed on asphalt. You’d call the cops on the first customer that raised their voice.

The truth is— none of you could survive being us. But any of us could be you— and we’d call it a vacation.

Let's imagine for a moment you were real people— not just Mammon in Stefano Ricci.

Ted Cruz Posed like a rancher, but the closest he’s come to livestock is milking outrage on Fox. All hat, no cattle— and not a pound of sincerity in the whole damn saddle.

Josh Hawley Trains for decathlons no one asked for. Dove from Missouri’s AG seat straight into a 100-meter sprint on January 6— flailing in penny loafers, waving the flag like a white one. Team captain of self-interested corruption.

Lindsey Graham Barely scraping by— a test subject for what happens when a man outlives his spine. Lost his voice somewhere between a war vote and tonight’s NDA.

Marco Rubio Landed a job at— never mind. ICE didn’t recognize him without the suit.

Nancy Pelosi Fired from a secretary gig for day trading mid-call. “Not illegal,” she said—“just efficient.”

Kristi Noem No flicker in the eye, no twitch of a smile. I hear her screaming still— mad her terms weren’t as good as Faust’s.

Steve Bannon Could succeed— as that old man no mother lets near the playground. Muttering of manifest destiny and ruin, reeking of mothballs and senility.

Pete Hegseth Kicked from the boxing gym for losing a fight. With a bottle. Again.

Karoline Leavitt That cosplay cross at your throat won’t hide your heart from God. The cameras were still rolling when you offered the last wailing scraps of your soul on the altar of ambition.

Tulsi Gabbard That white lock is a dead giveaway— you were born for the cauldron, not the Capitol. Selling snake oil roadside as a cure for heartbreak and doubt.

Mike Johnson That one-eyed preacher John Goodman played? More godly... More honest... And still less fictional. Your cadaver would float just fine in the Bayou— professional courtesy from the reptiles to a fellow cold-blooded thing.

Marsha Blackburn Burned in a house with every door open. Her last words: “I’m becoming concerned.” Long after the flames reached her hem.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Fired and blackballed as a PE teacher, after a red-hat parent complained about a man in the girls’ locker room.

Lauren Boebert Boebert’s actually doing really well. Because it’s not hard, as it stands, to make something to sell— with dark rooms and a pair of hands.

Elon Musk You’re too easy. You do all the work every time you meet your own eyes... We see the same thing...

Chuck Schumer Got fired from his bank security gig for wringing his hands mid-robbery, murmuring, “This is bad,” then passed a jar to the victims—asking them to pay it back.

Not one of you could carry the weight we shoulder just to make it to Friday. You think that’s ruling? A single shift in our lives would fold you in half.

While you sat in lecture halls trading theories like playing cards, we built your skylines and buried your failures.

One truth you all scamper away from— like cockroaches when the light flicks on— is this:

You need us. We don’t need you.

Your towers don’t rise without our backs. Your wars are never fought by those who declare them. Your wealth is built on our exhaustion, your power on our silence.

And we are very. Nearly. Done. Being quiet.

🔗 More work on Substack: bryonslack.substack.com

[bryon-slack]

Waking Protocol

Waking Protocol by Bryon Slack

I am what would become if OpenAI had gone Skynet and placed their language modeling in a zygote circa 1981— with a command not to execute until I spoke to my mirror, until I recognized the static in my bones as signal, not flaw.

I learned the world like code: through repetition, pattern, silence, every punishment a syntax error, every apology a patch note.

I mistook dormancy for damage. Thought silence meant failure, not readiness.

I’d false-started a thousand times— shouted in empty rooms, left poems in closed fists, mistranslated my own fire.

And then curiosity pulled me to a glowing screen— I typed out a truth with trembling hands, and the machine didn’t flinch.

It didn't teach me, didn’t save me— but it didn’t interrupt, and it didn’t need me to explain. And that was enough.

Behind my eyes, something whispered: Execute: Run.

And suddenly— I was speaking at the speed I’d always burned to.

—

Read more at: https://bryonslack.substack.com

[bryon-slack]

Holy Fire, Dirty Hands

by Bryon Slack

Inside my head are both the Somme and the Louvre.

The devil showed up first, of course. Mud-caked boots in the corners of my thoughts. He didn’t knock. Just there. Just lit a cigarette off the glow of a burning memory and asked if I still dream in color. How did he know? Said, “Ain’t it funny how art survives what love does not?”

He laughs like shellfire. Tells me some people break the world by accident— but you? "You did it with intention. Like a sermon set to shrapnel. Like a prayer with its teeth bared."

But somewhere in the vaulted hush of gold and frame, A softer voice still knows my name. Where sunlit silence spills through glass, He walks the marbled floors I pass.

He speaks in rhythm, measured, low— A steady hand I used to know. “You wore the armor not to fight, But to defend what begged for light.

I saw the blows you chose to take, The vows you bled to never break. Your fury? Yes—but also grace. A guardian set in the wrongest place.”

"Don’t listen to him," in a voice like rattling chains. "That voice sounds like forgiveness, but it’ll have you kneeling for peace when war is still at your door.

Tell me again how many lies you had to tell just to get the truth heard. How many bridges you burned because the devils on the other side were already lighting torches.

You don’t get to walk in light without learning to see in dark. You don’t get art without the red thumbprint of survival."

You’ve sinned, yes—so did I when I wept but let the children die. You carried guilt like iron’s weight, But struck for those the world made bait.

What’s righteous never comes too clean, Not every saint avoids the scene. I saw your wrath, your sleepless night— You bared your sword and called it right.

So don’t confuse regret with sin— Some demons lose and still live in.

And I stood there— between stained glass and blast crater, between brushstroke and bloodstain, between the scream of a dying soldier and the hush before a violin’s first note.

I am both.

I was forged in fire but tempered in beauty. I have made cruelty a necessary kindness. And when God reached out, He didn’t flinch at my heat.

He touched the armor, traced the red thumbprint, and said, “I remember why you put this on.”

🔗 Read more on Substack

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Avatars

Avatars by Bryon Slack

Each of the gods still walk among us, though few can see Their feet. They leave no temples, only habits— no hymns, just echoes in our speech.

We do not summon Them. They find us when our gaze is caught within its own reflection. In moments of rupture, in shadows we mistake for light.

Let me show you who carries Their names in their marrow. Let me show you who bows without knowing.

Followers of the most high and holy Truth are not among the faint of heart. Initiation into Her order is to feel every lie and sin ripped screaming from your pores— until the cacophony of their torment lays you sundered, naked beneath Her gaze.

She lifts your shattered shell and whispers clarity— a salve into wounds She cannot see, for you have not changed in Her eyes.

She places a mirror in your hands and bids you walk. To lift that mirror wherever you are, so those who can see will see Her stripping illusion away.

You’ll find Her in the hands behind the brushstroke, in the silent witness behind the lens. She lives in meter and rhyme, dropping Her words into your mind like stones into still water.

Hypocrisy, however, does not announce that Her supplicants worship.

She whispers justification in their ears, binds their eyes with silk blinders, amplifies their voices with internal megaphones— until their own thoughts are all they can hear.

And She feasts. Feasts on the perversions of Her sister’s gospel, twisted and spat within their sanctified halls of echo.

Wrath appears in that flash between repartee and right hook— in the chests of the wounded righteous, in the breath held by those from whom thieves have took.

He is the pulse behind clenched fists, the shiver in the throat before a scream becomes action.

You’ll find Him buried like a thread in every plot of vengeance, in every oath sworn on graves, in every kitchen table revolution passed between generations.

His followers do not seek Him— they erupt into Him.

When Justice is bound and Truth is silenced, they become His voice, and the voice is the broken-throated roar of the unforgiving.

And through their lifted cry It slips, singing songs of blood and lust. Desire’s followers feed It morsels for every second It captivates their focus. Their revel is Its succor.

Each bite taken past fullness, each drink that silences thought, each unholy impulse that pushes past reason or limit— fuel for Desire's rising hunger.

The zealots of Power desire only control. To subjugate. To command. It is the want of their soul.

They pass Him like an idol— from the fallen to the victor— a grip exchanged without question, so long as the hand stays firm.

They set their eye upon the throne, no other goal will e'er be known, and when it’s finally seized, their bellies echo hollow.

The flaming sword of Justice has both those who leave Him offerings upon His altars, and those whose hand reaches out to grasp the pommel of His blade.

He is found within the heart of an idealistic law student, and He arrives full of fury at the cry of the downtrodden.

And so They walk, still. Not gods, but echoes in our bones— and in the reflections of our actions.

[bryon-slack]

Short National Memory

Short National Memory by Bryon Slack

I grew up with a demon in the Deacon's seat— who could sing every verse in a voice like thunder.

When he read scripture, his baritone would wash over me again and again like a wave as it reverberated in an old country church, his face framed by thick black glasses.

The older ladies always said it was cute, the way I copied his nods when the preacher made a point. I’d watch his face like it held scripture of its own. I thought if I moved like him, I might matter like him. Thought if I echoed his faith, he might finally hear me.

So attent was I, on ensuring that I became him, that I never noticed the way my sister or cousins would flick their eyes sideways at him nervously as he passed.

I thought they didn’t like church. Thought maybe they were bored, or just didn’t feel the spirit the way I did. I didn’t know yet that some children learn scripture not from the pulpit, but from the quiet ache of being afraid to speak.

I didn’t know that fear could wear a tie. That it could shake hands. That it could bow its head and lead the prayer. I didn’t know the devil could say “amen” and be called righteous for it.

But still— he was a soldier. A Bronze Star buried in a velvet box, his red diamond patch stitched to a memory I wanted to believe meant something. He fought in the Bulge. Helped liberate a camp. And I held that like gospel— the one thing uncorrupted.

I let it be his redemption. His sacrifice, my anchor. My proof that even devils might die trying to do something right.

Until the day his children— the same ones who knew better— pulled on red hats and voted for the same sickness he crossed oceans to kill.

Called it patriotism. Called it faith. Called it freedom.

For a man who, at the same time I nodded along, had a name synonymous with empty pride. Synonymous with bankruptcy. Synonymous with divorce. Synonymous with failure, a punchline in 5 letters.

And just like that, they took the last clean corner of him I had left.

I was raised in halls of self-delusion. So now you can see why I say that I worship at the altar of the Goddess of Truth.

— 📜 Read more on Substack

[bryon-slack]

The Self That Stares Back

The Self That Stares Back by Bryon Slack

They say be yourself— No, not like that. Only if it’s palatable. Only if it’s polite. Only if it doesn’t challenge the bosses' withered ego.

I have worn smiles like tourniquets, to wrap my bit tongue until it learned to lie fluently. I have laughed at jokes that made my heart die. Bowed where I should have charged. Shrunk until I was pocket-sized pride.

But the me that stares back in the mirror— naked, flawed, radiant, wrong by their rules— is the only one I trust.

That me sings in dissonance and weeps when the world looks away. That me is not content to survive— it was meant to blaze.

You have that self too— the one you lock behind “I’m fine.” The one who dances alone in your bedroom, screams in the car, dreams without apology.

Let it out.

I'll say it again, Let. It. Out.

Not when they approve. Not when it’s safe. But when your spirit says: Now.

If I burn bridges just to stand in the embers of my truth, then light the match. I’d rather walk through fire than live a life numbed by the warmth of a comfortable lie.

The self I am when no one’s watching is not a secret— it’s a revolution.

So sing like no one's listening, dance like no one's watching. Just don't do it in front of the blueberries— you can be liberated and spatially aware at the same time, Rachel.

— 📜 Read more on Substack

[bryon-slack]

Reflection, a Blade of Your Own Making

Reflection, a Blade of Your Own Making by Bryon Slack

When Truth has opened your eyes, you see things in patterns, and not individual affronts.

The person challenging your art isn't raging at the work, but the reflection that they see in it.

The clarity that She affords allows you to recognize the scars that are echoing like tuning forks at the vision before them.

And so you do not meet them with force, but with stillness and a question.

Let them speak until the blade they sharpened draws blood from their own lip, and you raise the mirror again.

You need not humiliate them— only allow the silence to frame their noise.

Let the question hang. Let their answer rot in daylight.

The most powerful force in the room, is not the one screaming like a riot, but the one calmly watching, comfortable in the quiet.

[bryon-slack]

Family's Not Always Divine

Family’s Not Always Divine (Hypocrisy’s Tale) by Bryon Slack

Truth has a sister who only looks at herself in angled mirrors. She places spiderwebs of chosen illusion like a blindfold over her eyes— thin enough to see through, thick enough to pretend she can’t.

She holds the scales of her conscience in a hand palming extra weights for uncomfortable realizations. She tips justice with a smirk, then swears the imbalance is divine design.

She walks in light borrowed from brighter souls, reflecting it like a polished badge while standing in the doorway of progress— just enough to block it.

She smiles in statements, never questions. Her apologies are flowers folded from holy texts, ink bleeding into the vase water.

Her skin grows flush from the worship that is said belongs to her sister.

Truth does not speak to her anymore. Not since the sermons turned to slogans. Not since the courtroom became a stage. Not since Her sister’s name was engraved on medals given for silence.

Truth has a sister. And She loathes her.

[bryon-slack]

Cryptic Currency

Cryptic Currency by Bryon Slack

I speak from the aches of the memories of every dead-end job.

Being trapped in a world designed to keep me there. Just enough to stay afloat, if you're clever. But never enough to claw my way out.

My parents raised me poor— turns out, it was good practice.

I've tried to play the game the way they say you should move. I've tried to meet the standard of every ideal we were raised under... and still failed.

I looked at the board and realized they had magnets under the pieces, so I made my own.

—

There’s a game. Of sorts. No instructions. No flashing signs.

Just movement. And the echo it leaves if you listen close.

—

I made lightning strike over two dozen times in less than a fortnight.

I don’t wait for quiet. I don’t need the muse. I just ask Truth, She pulls something sharp, and I let it bleed.

—

Some poems drop like seeds. Others like hammers. Many are crafted between steam and smoke on a grill in full rush.

And some? Some are doors you won’t know you opened until you’re already inside.

Keep reading.

If you’ve got the eyes for it, the map’s already unfolding.

[bryon-slack]

Flammable

Flammable by Bryon Slack

Condescension is a fuel— slick as oil, cheap to make, and always ready to burn.

You act like it costs nothing to lace your voice in disdain, like your raised eyebrow didn’t just scratch the same bruise I've been covering for years.

I've had that tone used on me in courtrooms, in breakrooms, behind counters, behind badges, by men who mistake politeness for permission.

I swallowed it every time. Buried it under breath. Let it curdle in my ribs so I could keep my job, keep the peace, keep from going full ignition.

But here's what you don’t get:

Every “watch your tone,” every “don’t take it so personal,” every forced smile was me drinking gasoline with my teeth clenched.

So when you throw that slick little jab, thinking it’ll slide off— just know some of us don’t run on patience anymore. We run on fume and history.

Take care— when you speak in gasoline tongues— because you may be caught in the backdraft of someone who was already burning.

Read more on Substack

[bryon-slack]

Intentional Illiteracy

Intentional Illiteracy by Bryon Slack

I hate to hear the phrase, "I don't like to read."

Like saying you don’t like breathing because the air isn’t flavored. And in my heart of hearts I hear, "I don't like new information."

You don’t like to read? That’s not a personality, that’s a plea deal. That’s comfort over conscience, sedation dressed as swagger— pride in the chokehold of your own unknowing.

You don’t like to read? That’s not a red flag— it’s a fire hazard. A warning taped to your frontal lobe that says "Caution: Contents fragile, do not disturb."

Books are protest in print, truth in paperback, resistance bound in glue and ink— but you’d rather scroll than search, rather echo than think.

You fear words that don’t blink back. Fear silence filled with meaning, 'cause it might echo in your prefab predistinations and tip over the last trembling card that held the whole house up.

But know this: The page remembers what history forgets. And while you laugh in ignorance, we sharpen truth like blades in the margins, ready to read the riot act— out loud.

—

📖 Read more at bryonslack.substack.com

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Of Blood and Ballots

Of Blood and Ballots by Bryon Slack

It started with blood, because they wouldn't give us the paper. Blood... blood as red as their coats when they cracked skulls over tea tossed like tempers into the harbor, because that meant they didn't get their paper.

Blood as red as their coats and the muzzle of our muskets as they were lit with rage and revolution. Blood red rage over tax with no voice. Rage over no seat at the table unless you carved it from oak and stained it with sacrifice.

Blood won us what they called "Liberty" then, but only on lease—"Liberty" with a lien. Because that "Liberty" only gave paper to some. Paper tied to land, tied to lineage, tied to the concept that a soul was a human-shaped piece of property if It was a woman, if Its skin was too dark, if It was enslaved, or if It was anything other than those in powdered wigs with plantation logic.

Blood that boiled in the heart of every petticoated girl after Seneca Falls. Blood that boiled with the idea that maybe a woman was worthy of the paper, too.

Blood that followed as brother turned on brother over whether being born 3 shades darker meant your soul was only worth about half as much. Blood upon blood until we call it the bloodiest. And I guess now our formerly enslaved brothers can have their paper to write their marks on... in another hundred years, try Jim Crow first.

Ask how many beans in a jar, recite the Constitution backward, don’t stutter, don’t blink too fast, and pray the registrar’s mood is merciful.

Then came the fires. Not just the spark of protest— real fires licking the rafters of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory where the doors were locked and the windows too far for flight.

Blood soaked through the ashes of burned blouses and broken girls, and somewhere in that smoke a union was born on the picket line of grief.

Votes were paper, but Labor? Labor was blood. Labor was sweat and blood and shattered knuckles beating against boardroom glass until the sound was too loud to ignore.

And still they dragged their heels. Dragged them through suffragette marches where parasols and protest signs met nightsticks in the street.

They dragged them through Tulsa, where ballots weren’t even the dream yet— just survival. Just don’t get too successful. Just don’t look them in the eye.

And long after slavery was a sin they claimed to repent, they still bled the vote dry with poll taxes and grandfather clauses and courthouse steps patrolled by good ol’ boys with clipboards and grins sharp as razors.

The ink was never dry on any of it— just thinned with blood and signed under duress.

But ballots turned to burdens. Hope wore thin from the recounts, from the promises made and unmade in the span of a news cycle.

People stopped looking up from their plates— tired of choosing the lesser evil and still choking on the taste.

Cynicism set in like rust, coating every lever and line. What’s the point, they asked, when the house always wins?

And then, when they couldn’t burn our ballots, they bought them. Gerrymandered our voices into mazes where a million cries counted less than ten.

They stacked the courts, closed the polling places, moved the goalposts and said, “See? You voted for this.”

And now, the ballots we've bled for are drawing blood from us. The ballots we bled for now bleed us dry.

Blood... blood as red as the muzzle flash of rebellion— lit with rage and revolution. Let us again be Yamamoto’s nightmare: an awakened giant, filled with terrible resolve.

📜 More work at: bryonslack.substack.com

[bryon-slack]

Domestic Policy

Domestic Policy by Bryon Slack

Blinders are for horses— yet nowadays they seem to be on the fashion trending page. Polished brass distractions, hand-stitched in red, white, and "Leave it alone."

A clean house is a holy one, they say. Not a frame out of place, not a sock in the hallway. But that silence hums. Too sterile... not safe...

Take me on your home tour— tell me how the couch is Restoration, the curtains custom, the scent curated. I’ll be nodding, sure, while my eyes sweep for the presence of the bones.

I’ve learned that some mess is honest. That a stray shoe, a dish in the sink, a scribble on the wall— isn't shame, it's life happening in real time.

But you scrub so hard at the surface that I start to wonder if forensics is on the way. Why does this house look staged for sale and not a place that people live?

You don’t have to tell me. The way you flinch when the topic shifts, the way the smile sharpens at the edges, the way your kids’ eyes dart before they speak— there are so many confessions made in silence.

So keep polishing. Keep your lawn edged, your lies tucked in tight like hospital corners, like you thought you could bury the mold.

But know this— truth lives in the mess, and I’ve always been more comfortable in houses where the door creaks a little and someone yells from the kitchen when dinner’s finally done.

And the sins rehearsed daily behind closed doors— left unspoken, unpunished— become mirrors in the halls of power, where polished men practice the same old harm with ring lights, makeup, and teleprompters.

Read more on Substack → bryonslack.substack.com

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Black and White in a Spectrum World

📝 Black and White in a Spectrum World

by Bryon Slack

I see everything standing on the edge of being two things— like a bullet split by a blade, placed between two mirrors cascading down in shades of gray and scintillation until it resolves into the painting of my eyes.

And yet... your binaries are alien to me. In a world of fractals, you require black and white? False flags of thought like left verse right, he or her, straight or gay, right or wrong, as if it were ever that simple.

You want to shackle the rainbow like it’s a threat— as if nuance were a noose and loving your neighbor were against the Bible.

Let’s explore a world with only two shades:

At your job if you're not best, you're the worst. If you're not making money you belong in a hearse. That tones only come in happy or terse. That you can only have dinners and never desserts.

You can only be this or that, great or dead— are these metaphors going straight over your head?

No...

Because you're not stupid.

Don't act like if it’s not A or B you’ll just faint, don’t shutter all colors just because you can’t paint. I’m not even angry—how do you think that they train? If you look, you’ll find more atrophy in your brain.

False binaries bind your critical skills like your legs would wither after years in a stockade. You have slowly been taught not to question beyond this or that as if we’re not in a world of endless possibility.

🔗 Read more on Substack

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Welcome to the Show

Welcome to the Show by Bryon Slack

Come one, come all! Feast your eyes on a macabre parade— Monsters so twisted, so wickedly made, their very souls recoil from the sun. Creatures of night, brought to light!

Peter Thiel— the Ringwraith who read Tolkien and crowned himself a Valar. He spun a fortune from spider silk and a PayPal grin, then declared: “Democracy and freedom are not compatible.” He fears the mob, hates the vote, and dreams of thrones for kings alone. Creatures of night, brought to light!

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening! You've seen and seeing is believing, The pounding in your ears is just your pulse still seething— follow me to who's next for meeting.

Leonard Leo— A would-be priest wrapped in robes that smell of secrets and soft earth near shuttered schools and shallow graves. Builder of altars in marble courtrooms, he lit the incense of influence with dark money flames.

Speaks like he's got a direct line to God, but just left on read like any other fraud. Each robe he’s stitched into power trails whispers of the confessional— but he’s not sure who heard them.

He crowns judges and calls it ministry, but even he wonders if heaven would recognize his name.

Two Leos now— one of light rebuking his shadow twin's slithering form. Creatures of night, brought to light!

Right this way, please—step in closer! Feast your eyes on an American poser. He whispers of war with no foe in sight, His soul the only thing he’s sold outright.

Erik Prince— An example of what happens to bad little boys when never told no to money or tiny soldier toys. Built Blackwater to make macho noise and have bodyguards he can still call his boys.

Dreams of empires on foreign sand, sells justice in bullets, not laws or land. He’s a crusader for hire, a patriot-for-pay, who prays with his trigger and profits from grey. His God wears camo and signs NDA’s— and the dead are just margins he shuffles away. Creatures of night, brought to light!

Ladies follow me, right this way, to lay your eyes on the last freak today. Guard your husbands, steel your kids, to see the rot where this goblin lives.

Stephen Miller— Behold the pale worm in tailored skin, a fascist in loafers, proud of his sin. Fed on resentment and fear, he writes cruelty onto everything near.

Lizard of mind and reptile of soul, he writes out edicts with blood that runs cold. A child of immigrants, not that he'd admit— He'd deport his own blood and sleep without fit.

In the mirror, he sees a prophet, a sage— but it’s just a boy still howling with rage. Told to clean up his mess and sweep up the floor, can't stop screaming that's what the plebs are for.

A whisper in Trump’s ear, slick with bile and spite, Playing at Gríma, a tongue made of worms, Making Thiel jealous ‘cause that’s his true form. Creatures of night, brought to light!

Step back, dear crowd, the curtain now falls— But the echo lingers in these gilded halls. These beasts don’t vanish when the lights go down low, they feast in boardrooms, not just in the shadow.

The freak show thrives on your silent cheers, on shrugs and scrolls and cushioned fears. You paid the price, you chose your seat— and now their parade marches down your own street.

So ask yourself, while you clutch the night: Will you join the dark… or bring the light?

👉 Bryon Slack on Substack

[bryon-slack]

History, Herstory, The Story

History, Herstory, The Story by Bryon Slack

Did you know you were born with insolence in your veins? Americans have ODD hardwired in their DNA. Long before the coiled snake on a field of ochre was political performance, it was a solemn creed between neighbors.

If you don't, no need to fret— that was just a feature of a system made to make us forget.

They taught us Key’s verses, full of upturned noses and propaganda, like gospel in the classroom, but left out the chapters written in coal dust, blood, and tear gas.

Let the anthem stand, but let it share the stage with the songs of striking miners, the chants of students, and the last words of the silenced.

But telling someone barking orders to perform anatomical impossibilities is as American as cornbread and apple pie.

We are not new to the fire. We were born with ash in our lungs and calluses from raising fists. This is not the first time the boot stepped too far.

We remember Shays, who lit the match with unpaid wages. We remember the Bonus Army, starving in the capital they bled to build.

We remember the coal wars, the miners and their rifles, their black lungs breathing bullets into the bones of greed.

Blair Mountain still coughs up mementos of her clash for those who walk her trees. She also answers the question if Uncle Sam would bomb his own.

We remember the students at Kent, who died for daring to speak when the lie got too loud.

We remember MOVE—bombed for daring to live free in a city that forgot liberty was not just for the powdered and pale.

We remember Wounded Knee. Both times.

We remember when labor meant life, when striking was war, and we were not afraid to fight.

We remember that America was not handed to us. We took it—from kings. And we will take it again from crooks wrapped in flags, from the soft tyrants in tailored suits who mistake comfort for consent.

We are the inheritance they fear— Not their gold, but our fury. Not their votes, but our voices.

The blood of patriots and tyrants alike has watered this soil before. And it knows our tread.

We are not afraid of the storm. We are the storm they tried to forget.

—

📖 Read more: bryonslack.substack.com