Only Equals Negotiate

I see a huddled mass, each breath defiance deified. Stand tall with broken backs; your will defines the battle lines. No compromise when what we lose is not our lives but our dignity their honeyed words try to deprive. I must demur, I must assume you’re insincere. I’m not amused by their refusal to appear. Not one step fucking backwards. Not now. Never again. No one’s alone so long as every throne we see is fucking empty. I dream of better days with their heads severed on display. So don’t gamble it away. Don’t gamble it away. My spine is an anvil where we forge our steel and our stolen luck. Each person a bellows bellowing that we don’t give a fuck. Full hearts. Clear eyes. Sharp knives. Touch one. Touch all. Touch mine. We are the wave, we are the flood; we’re biblical. Their reticence for recompense is cyclical. Not one step fucking backwards. Not now. Never again. No one’s alone so long as every throne we see is fucking empty. I dream of better days with their heads severed on display. So don’t gamble it away. Don’t gamble it away. As we go marching, marching In the beauty of the day A million darkened kitchens A thousand mill lofts gray Are touched with all the radiance That a sudden sun discloses For the people hear us singing Bread and roses, bread and roses No one’s alone so long as every throne we see is fucking empty. I dream of better days with their heads severed on display. But you gambled it away. You gambled it away.

Submitted by The Void — Apr 26, 2025

Coat of Arms in ashes It clogs my nasal passage Their charcoal skin blocks out the sun as we inhale memorium Burn Burn Alive How to reason without a soul Deadeye panic Smiles without the all manic knowledge they’ve lost control Make ‘em stare It’s not pretty Either the world you leave us or how you leave the coil Your rot would salt the soil Underhanded unforgiven Unrepentant Reprimanded Receptors sing your songs of ashes These people all have names They all have places where they sleep These people all have necks Let’s let ‘em choose which one they keep Breaking faces undertaking Smirks infuriating as childhood lies With justice you will watch them Burn Burn Alive Life is flesh and they’re carrion Implicit threats Picked apart by pencils wielded in violent sects Torture signed off by nervous wrecks These people all have friends They all have families that will weep So let’s hang them by their fucking intestines from the street lig- Show no weakness They’re bolstered by defeat Don’t make me practice what you preach Nerves like cotton You’re leverage indiscreet I’ll make you practice what you preach Wasting time Counting down the constants Hoping we won’t feast Well, I’m breaking us into hell And I’ll do it my fucking self I’ll chew on sinew before I choke down death For what sustains me are ideas given breath While the spineless might drink to your health Only victors distribute the wealth

Submitted by Pestilence — Apr 26, 2025

Bastards and prodigies invested in systematically staunching the ebb of energy that bleeds when it flows from pleas. Islands - adrift, at war - in chorus sing for prophets old and young. But I’m before the Lord with nothing on my tongue. Pray (precor). Pray I don’t enter (souls upon the grave). Pay (pendo). Pay for surrender (the pound of flesh I gave). Suit ties and signatures, like wax seals and indulgences, useless save for myths they twist like nooses we resist. Debonaire; a fucking coward with the blank eyed stare who I abnegate, and perforate, To claim what’s mine and clear the slate. Pray (precor). Pray I don’t enter (souls upon the grave). Pay (pendo). Pay for surrender (the pound of flesh I gave). Forthright obscene civility. Maintain machines that enforce humility. Legacies are made by artists paid to please. Histories reinforce dependency. Hard to blame, hard to force a mandate made of flames. Hard to hang yourself with bootstraps made of shame. The only reason to mine lead is to send a bullet through your head, cunt. Smug smiles that typify the type that we need purged with more than light and sound. Sound and rage. Your impotence is apocalypse. Turning backwards, congratulations. Never question who I am.

Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Apr 26, 2025

You Smug-faced crowd with the kindling eyes You arouse A passion for mortis befitting of a crown Supercilious weight On genes that will waste When interred with time and dirt No lie is as free as Galatians 5:23 Bring out your godless Sell me their flesh for a fee And what’s left a tableau That you banish below To the hell, where youth and laughter go Liars Thieves You cowards; Priests Now you’re fat on your mother’s milk The apostate an apogee Of indulgence defined Drunk on communion of apathy I’m the salt of your earth Thе bedrock of regency From which nothing rеturns Unless harrowed by my decency Your power derives From hiding the whites of your eyes But I see We can see You’re perceived I’m not locked in with you You’re trapped here with all of us And we’ll make you relate Only equals negotiate We could flay you alive; Fly your skin as a compromise Or you’ll learn to relate Only equals negotiate Tandem inter pares Tandem inter pares Call us the useless, call us deranged, call us degenerate Call us by anything other than fucking names Only equals negotiate Tell me it’s over, tell me we’re late, tell me it’s hopeless Tell me that daughters of my friends won’t see the end Only equals negotiate

Submitted by Morgoth — Feb 24, 2026